[illustration] Rex Crowle, www.rexbox.co.

uk

ANIMATE A CHARACTER IN AFTER EFFECTS

Youve designed a character but its looking a bit static? This tutorial will show you how to turn your creation into a stomping, biting, bundle of joy
nimating in After Effects is like building a paper cut-out of your character, its joints held together with pivots. And just like a real-world paper model, moving its torso will affect any limbs attached to it, so complex movements can be built up quickly and easily. However, unlike a paper model, we can take it much further, not only changing the position and rotation of the pieces, but also adjusting the scale and visibility, allowing for some ne-tuned facial animation that still doesnt require any additional frames to be drawn. So, unlike traditional cel-animation, you can build up whole sequences from a single piece of artwork, but its an expandable system, so you can animate separate elements of a character in different ways. A character could be built in this paper doll method, but then you could take it further, adding traditionally hand-drawn hair or lmed footage for inside the mouth theres really no limit to the styles and technique you can use or combine. Getting back to the basic principles of this tutorial, we take a layered Photoshop le and import it into After Effects. By following this tutorial, youll be able to take any layered le of your own and bring it to life in a similar way. The tutorial covers three main areas: rst, how to parent layers to each other and set the individual properties of them, ready for keyframing. From there we will touch on layer masking, and ways it can be used to animate elements such as blinking eyes and gnashing teeth, simply by obscuring and revealing layers. Finally, we complete the tutorial by placing the character in a simple pseudo3D environment and chasing it around with a virtual camera.

Expertise provided by Rex Crowle, an illustrator and animation director specialising in creating work for broadcast and interaction. See more of his work at www.rexbox.co.uk. The les you need to complete this tutorial, as well as the nal animation, can be found on CD102 in the DiscContent\Tutorials\Tutorial les\After Effects animation folder.

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Part 1: Connecting it all up

Import your artwork into After Effects and keyframe the limbs of your character

First, re up your copy of After Effects. Choose File>Import>File from the menu and browse to the pinkstaa.psd le on CD102 in the Tutorial les\After Effects animation folder. Before clicking Open, change the Import As drop-down menu from Footage to Composition Cropped Layers. This will ensure the artwork is imported as separate layers.

You now need to attach the layers to each other so they form a hierarchy of movement, so, if the body moves, the arms move with it. Click and hold on the word None to the right of layer Arm_L, and choose Body from the drop-down list.

Close the Arm_L tab in the top left of the Composition panel. Moving the pivot also moves the arm, so drag the arm back to its correct position. This process needs to be repeated on each layer, but its been done for you in the Pinkstaa_Parented. aep le on CD102.

Strong characters
Keep your character designs simple, making it distinctive and memorable with the least amount of detail, because too much detail will slow down the animation process and wont work well if the character is scaled down. A great character should be totally recognisable from its silhouette.

Currently, this arm layer will pivot from the centre point of the layer, but we need it to pivot from the shoulder. Double-click on the Arm_L layer to isolate that layer, and click and drag the small crosshair from the centre of the layer down to the shoulder.

You can now skip ahead by opening the Pinkstaa_Parented.aep le, where youll nd all the layers linked. Lets start by making the character walk. Click the triangular arrow to the left of the name of layer 16, opening out its properties, and click once on the stopwatch icon next to Position and Scale properties.

Having set the rst keyframe by clicking the stopwatch icon, set all subsequent keyframes by changing a value or copy and pasting a previous keyframe onto the timeline. Move forward nine frames on the timelime (press Ctrl or Cmnd+Right Arrow) and change the positions Y value from 1361 to 1277.

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Move forward four frames and click once on the icon representing the rst keyframe and press Ctrl/Cmnd+C to copy it, and Ctrl/Cmnd+V to paste it down. Move forward another nine frames and set the Y value to 1401. Move forward four frames and paste the rst keyframe down again.

Now you can set keyframes for the rotation of the leg in the same way as above. Experiment with values, making sure the rst and last frames have the same values so it will loop. Load up Pinkstaa_Walk.aep to see an example of the arms and legs keyframed in this way.

Artwork preparation
Preparing your character artwork well in Photoshop is crucial. Keep separate elements on separate layers. But, where possible, merge layers together that wont need independent movement from each other, to keep the number of layers more manageable.

In order to watch the playback of the animation, locate the right end of the bar indicating the work area of the timeline and drag it back to the left, so that it lines up with the last frame. Now simply press the space-bar and youll see the animation looping.

Part 2: Faces and masks

Use layer masks to animate the facial features of the character

Locate layers 6 and 7, and click the eye icon in the far-left column of these layers 1 (these will be the only layers not displaying an icon) to make them visible. The teeth look very toothy at the moment, but well sort that out by using masks.

Choose the Pen tool and draw a rough ellipse mask on the teeth_top layer, as in the screenshot. Repeat the process on the lower set of teeth so they are both masked. The teeth and their masks can now be keyframed independently. Open Pinkstaa_Mouth.aep from CD102 to see the result.

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Faces and masks continued...

Were now going to make the eyes blink using a similar technique. Select layer 5 and use the Pen tool to draw a curved lozenge shape inside the eye to mask it. In the timeline panel, locate and open the Masks property for this layer.

Click the stopwatch icon next to the Mask Expansion property to start keyframing. Change the property from 0.0 to 43.0, which will appear to restore the eye to its non-masked state. Move forward four frames and change the property back to 0.0 to set another keyframe.

Move forward two frames, and then copy and paste the last keyframe onto this 5 frame, so that the eye stays closed for two frames. Now move forward two frames and copy and paste the very rst keyframe down again, so that the eye closes once more.

Now repeat the previous three steps on the other eye, so that they both open and close simultaneously, making the character blink. You can add extra air by introducing keyframe values for Scale, Rotation and Position of the eyes, so that they squash and stretch with each opening.

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Part 3: Creature, camera, action!

Put your newly animated character in front of the lens, and into a scene

Open Pinkstaa_Complete.aep from CD102. From the main pull-down menus select Composition>New Composition. Choose a preset for your composition weve chosen a PAL square-pixels size, and made it ten seconds long. Drag Pinkstaa Comp 1 from the Project panel into the new composition.

Open the properties of Pinkstaa Comp 1 in the timeline, and locate the small cube icon in the column to the right of the layer name and click the blank icon underneath this cube icon to make it a 3D layer. This gives it a new Z-depth position parameter to tweak.

Save time
Tweaking all the keyframes of an animation can be very timeconsuming if you wish to alter the speed of the action. A quick way of achieving the same effect is with Time Remapping. Just select a layer or composition, choose Layer>Enable Time Remapping. Open Pinkstaa_ Camera.aep to see it in action, putting more spring in your characters step!

Choose File>Import>File and browse to the le called Pinkstaa_Background. Click OK and then drag it from the Project panel into the main composition. Make it a 3D layer by turning on the cube icon on its timeline, and set the position to 384.0, 288.0, 3000.0 and the scale to 500%.

The next step is to set a keyframe on the rst frame of the Position property using the stopwatch icon, and set its X, Y and Z values to 0.0, 400.0 and 2500.0 respectively. Move to the nal frame and set the values to 1500.0, 400.0, 900.0. Then press Home on the keyboard.

Choose Layer>New> Camera and the 35mm preset, and click OK. Open its timeline properties and keyframe the Point of Interest and Position. Pressing C on the keyboard tabs through the cameras pan, zoom and tilt tools, so try these yourself or open Pinkstaa_Camera.aep to see the nished piece.

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Expert prole: Rex Crowle

Specialising in illustrative and animated things, Rex Crowle is also partial to characters with facial hair

BACKGROUND: Rex Crowle trained in graphic design, but specialises in illustration and animation. Ive worked mainly for clients in interactive and broadcast media, as well as producing personal short lms for festivals such as onedotzero, says Crowle. YEARS PRACTISING AS A CREATIVE: Seven. CLIENTS: Disney, MTV, Sony and The BBC.

MISSION STATEMENT: Draw a smile on the face of the world. Then colour it in, give it an eyepatch, some pointy teeth and a beard. WEBSITE: www.rexbox.co.uk

Above: Legends is a short lm created for onedotzero. Top right: Play Nice Skeletor was created for the MOTU exhibition in Magic Pony, Toronto. Right: Masked Ballsup, a still taken from an animated sting for E4.

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