Thicc Stroke is a free, variable-width stroke plugin for Adobe After Effects.

The tapered stroke in Adobe After Effects has a checkered past. While you would think that After Effects has functionality for this, you’d be wrong. You need to look at a third-party solution, and most of those are a bit lack-luster involving scripts that use expressions and none-too-efficient effects. It’s worthwhile to note that that new After Effects public beta can create a tapered or variable-width stroke under the familiar turn-downs in vector shapes. Still, it’s ok, but it’s not this new Thicc Stroke thing from Plugin Everything.

Thicc Stroke is Free and Allows for Gradients.

There are some notable differences between Ae’s (beta) new native functionality and Plugin Everything’s free Thicc Stroke. The plugin’s trajectory has changed since the introduction of the Ae beta, as noted by the Plugin Everything team. “While we know Adobe just released tapered stroke in 17.0.6, as I mentioned, we’ve been working on this for a while; it does have Gradient along a path, something AE didn’t include.”

That something is the ability to apply a gradient along a stroke. That makes for some pretty impressive flexibility. You can have 2,3, and 4 color gradients, all with the ability to loop the color.

Works With Older Versions.

Another distinguishing feature for Thicc Stroke is that it works with previous versions of After Effects. You can use the plugin with AE CS6 and up.

Get Thicc Stroke for Free.

Download the new variable stroke plugin for After Effects here.