[0:00] Now these After Effects techniques that I love fall into two categories; quick and quicker.

[0:05] So let's not mess about if it fits the style this can add a lot of extra movement and depth to

[0:09] your animation these are made by creating four similar brush Strokes with the textured brush

[0:14] in Photoshop then looping them in After Effects so they change every four frames or so and then

[0:19] applying them where the Shadows or highlights might appear in your design and using a map or

[0:24] a mask to confine them to just that layer now you'll have to do this a few times depending on

[0:28] your design but good things come to those who in the olden times printers used to mess up sometimes

[0:35] not like the reliable bastions of Technology they are today if I want a retro printed feel

[0:40] I like to misalign the line art of an animation first we need to separate them so we'll take

[0:45] our finished animation add the extract effect and drag the histogram over from the left to

[0:50] remove the dark colored line art and just leave the colors remaining then duplicate that layer

[0:55] with controller command D and then on that layer adjust the histogram in the opposite direction to

[0:59] believe just the line art then we can select any of these layers and move its position about

[1:04] and misalign it as much or as little as we want and some looping texture over the top for good

[1:10] measure too here's an animation I made with some fancy gradients but I like the ball to

[1:15] really feel shiny and reflect the colors on the other layers so we can do that by duplicating

[1:20] the layer we want to reflect dragging that over closer to our object a little bit and adding the

[1:25] set matte effect to it then we're going to take the mat from our Circle layer and add a gaussian

[1:31] blur and we'll pump that up a fair bit now you can put the gaussian blur above the set mat and that

[1:37] creates an interesting more stylized effect but if you want it to look more realistic we'll drag

[1:42] that below our set matte effect and to remove the blur that is going on outside of the circle

[1:46] we can just duplicate that set matte effect again with controller command D and drag that below the

[1:51] gaussian blur to restrict it just to that Circle again and now if we increase the blurriness and

[1:57] maybe just move the shape back a bit we can see it isn't as visible on the very edges of

[2:02] our Circle which creates a nice realistic effect and looks like it's wrapping around a 3D sphere

[2:09] now you'll probably be fading things on and off a lot by keyframing its opacity so let's

[2:14] spice it up by animating its color at the same time so to do that we will add a fill effect

[2:20] and where that layer is transparent let's keyframe its color then move it along to where it is fully

[2:26] visible and change that fills color to white so now it changes color as it fades on and

[2:32] it's a little more interesting that same spice pairs very well with gradients too and I'll do

[2:39] this by adjusting our gradient fill so instead of going from black to white or any other two

[2:44] colors we'll add a new color in the middle which would normally be a 50 Gray but we can make it a

[2:49] bit more interesting just by adding a slightly warmer gray into the mix and you can do this as

[2:54] subtle as you want and I think it works better the more colors there are so we can even add a

[2:59] darker cooler color to the darker gray and keep the lighter gray a bit warmer it won't work for

[3:04] every project but if you want to add a tiny bit more life and color to your artwork that

[3:08] is barely perceptible this is a great way to do it okay we're halfway through I hope you're

[3:12] finding these techniques helpful if you're up for it living a like really does help these videos and

[3:18] me out a lot and if you're new to motion design in After Effects for the last year I've been creating

[3:23] the ultimate beginner's guide to motion design called motion Foundation which is coming out next

[3:29] month that is all I can share at the moment but uh please stay tuned for updates about that shortly

[3:35] you want to transition from a circle to a square or rectangle don't mess about editing the path and

[3:40] getting yourself all tied up in bezier handles just create a new shape with the rectangle tool

[3:45] open its rectangle properties its path and then animate its roundness and you can go from Circle

[3:52] to square seamlessly shake your animation around a bit not too much like a camera Shake but like

[3:59] the subtle shake that I've been using on all of those titles now I love this because it reminds

[4:03] me of Legacy Media like a film spool not perfectly aligned or a tape head in the VHS I'm not 100 sure

[4:10] why but all the stuff shakes around a little bit so on a new adjustment layer on top of everything

[4:15] we can add the transform effect and alter option click the stopwatch next to position to enter in

[4:20] the wiggle expression and we're going to add in a frequency of 12 and an amplitude of one so that

[4:26] 12 times a second it will randomly move one pixel in any direction and we get a tiny subtle Shake

[4:33] we can see more if we zoom in this will shake your layer away from the edges though so let's

[4:38] increase the scale just by one percent to cancel that out I also love the blooming highlights of

[4:45] film and old media that you can replicate by stacking some glows in After Effects but they

[4:50] can very easily overpower the image and be kind of finicky to a shelves using the threshold and

[4:56] the radius properties and you can't always get a good result reliably very quickly so what I like

[5:01] to do is add a glow effect to an adjustment layer on top of everything we can keep the default glow

[5:06] I'll duplicate it increase the radius a little bit more then duplicate it and increase the radius

[5:13] again and I'm not worried about how ludicrously bright the image is I'm just looking at how nice

[5:18] and realistic the fall off is how the glow kind of dissipates then I like to add a curves effect over

[5:24] the top of all of those glows and then drag the brightness down so the glow is starting to look

[5:29] a little more like what I want now if we toggle that adjustment layer on and off we do see that

[5:34] it is losing a lot of the contrast of the image so if we do want to keep that we can change the

[5:38] blending mode of that adjustment layer to screen so this is just adding glow on top

[5:43] and now we can just adjust this curves effect to decide how bright our glow is and what the

[5:48] threshold is which areas of our image how bright it needs to be to glow and I just find this a

[5:53] little more intuitive to to adjust then trying to balance a handful of different properties across

[5:57] three different glow layers to tweak around now putting eyes on anything instantly turns it into

[6:03] a character is this a cheap trick absolutely is it overused impossible I use it because it

[6:10] creates a connection between the audience and the character I'd mainly do it to get a bit of

[6:14] strangeness or humor to the scene a pencil is a little bit interesting but when it becomes a

[6:19] living thing and they're visibly loving it it kind of makes you think what kind of perverse sentience

[6:24] is happening within this universe and that's the kind of question I think we should all be asking

[6:31] not everything has to be an optical Sugar Rush with flashing colors and shapes zipping around

[6:39] hijacking your dopamine to keep you glued to your screen for that sweet sweet engagement

[6:43] as our ability to focus shrivels up and turns into dust in the gutter now I've

[6:49] animated plenty of work like that and when I do it's usually compensating for a lack

[6:53] of substance now I'm finding Stillness more and more refreshing and having that contrast

[6:59] will make your intense motion more impactful now I love this three minute sequence from

[7:05] Ghost in the Shell it doesn't move the plot forward it's just establishing shots of the

[7:10] city setting the tone most of the shots have very subtle animation and some are just stills

[7:20] of course fantastic design Sound and Music help enormously with this

[7:30] and obviously in motion design we're working to a

[7:33] brief where we often have to capture attention quickly but it is helpful

[7:37] to remember that more animation isn't your only tool to make better animation

[7:50] tomorrow

10 Quick After Effects Techniques I LOVE

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