Drawing In After Effects

by



  1. How To Animate Drawing In After Effects
  2. How To Make A Circle Drawing In After Effects
  3. After Effects Crop Image

Rotoscoping is a technique of drawing over the frames of a video to create a realistic animation. It’s a great way to create a professional-looking animation without having to organically draw each individual frame—and you can do it using Adobe After Effects. Designing Characters Creating characters in Illustrator 5m 51s Creating characters in Photoshop. After effects noob here, so I apologize in advance. I have imported a pen and ink drawing that was scanned into photoshop. I exported it as a transparent PNG so that only the line art is left. Now, how exactly do I go about animating it so that it appears to being drawn in real time?

Cover image via

How To Animate Drawing In After Effects

Learn to simulate hand drawn animation in this After Effects tutorial.

Sometimes sleeker isn’t necessarily better. If the style of your projects calls for an organic, hand drawn look check out the following After Effects video tutorial by Daniel Brodesky for LesterBanks.com. The tutorial covers the fundamentals of animating in After Effects, including:

  • The Roughen Edges effect
  • Fractal Noise
  • Transfer Modes
  • Shape Paths

Hand drawn doesn’t have to mean amateur or rudimentary. When purposefully designed and executed, this animation style can give your project an organic or whimsical look.

This video was first shared on LesterBanks.com – an awesome online resource for the latest tutorials and inspiration on motion graphics and animation.

If you enjoy the look and feel of hand-drawn animation than I highly recommend checking out our interview with motion designer Cento Lodigiani. He helped create a visual guide to the 12 principles of animation created by the animators at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Know of any other ways to create a hand-drawn look in After Effects? Share in the comments below.

Create a custom shape with the Pen tool

  1. Make sure no layers are selected in the timeline and choose the Pen tool from the Toolbar.
  2. Adjust the Fill and Stroke options to set the fill and stroke colors and styles.
  3. Click in the Composition panel to add points that define the shape, and drag to round the shape of the path through the points you created.
  4. Click back on the first path point to close the path and create a custom shape.
  5. Use the handles and drag points to customize the appearance of the shape.

Add complexity to a shape using the Merge Paths command

How To Make A Circle Drawing In After Effects

Drawing In After Effects
  1. Select the shape layer in the timeline and press UU to open any previously customized parameters.
  2. Select the name of the shape to duplicate in the timeline and press Command+D (MacOS) or Control+D (Windows) to duplicate the shape.
  3. Adjust the shape transform controls of the duplicate shape so that it is no longer the same as the original shape.
  4. Select Contents on the shape layer, then choose the Merge Paths command from the Add button in the timeline.
  5. In the Merge Paths command, change the Mode dropdown menu to specify how the overlapping paths will operate with each other.

Add more complexity to a shape with a Repeater

After Effects Crop Image

  1. Select Contents from the shape layer and choose Repeater from the Add button in the timeline.
  2. Adjust the Repeater transform options to customize the appearance of the duplicate shapes created by the Repeater.