TUTORIAL |

E
VI CD
MOTHE
ON

AFTER EFFECTS ILLUSTRATOR

ANIMATED SEQUENCES

When deadlines are tight, its good to have a few simple tricks up your sleeve. Arvid Niklasson reveals how to
utilise After Effects parenting and control layers to increase exibility and create animations in no time at all

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TIME NEEDED

1-2 hours
INFO

Arvid
Niklasson is
a 2D/3D
animator for
Mainframe in
London. He originally
worked in Sweden as a
freelancer doing anything
from visual effects to
videos and graphic design.
Find out more by visiting
www.mainframe.co.uk.

One of the best ways to pick up

useful techniques is simply to watch
how other people work. The techniques and
tricks that I use frequently to make
something look great are sometimes very
simple, but when used correctly they can
become incredibly powerful, too.
In this tutorial I will be showing you the
best way to animate a bird taken from
Mainframes self-promotional short called
The Seed. This is the brainchild of my coworker Mike Alderson.
Parenting layers in the right way will
allow you to animate lots of layers with
more speed and control. Parenting layers
with different Null layers will enable you to
rotate several layers around a given anchor
point. Setting up extra Control layers is an
easy way to tweak your nal animation
without getting lost within your original
keyframes, and this also gives you the
exibility to react quickly to client changes.
One of the problems with computergenerated images is that they can sometimes
look a bit too digital, but with a bit of
blurring and changing of Layer Modes you
can make colours bleed just enough to make
the nal image look more analogue.
The Illustrator les included on this
issues CD are prepared for importing into
After Effects. By separating these les into
layers you can jumpstart your After Effects
compositions because the layers will already
be set up for you.

Illustration and tutorial by Arvid Niklasson

www.mainframe.co.uk

Open After Effects and import Bird_

Layers.ai from this issues CD. Make sure
you choose Import As Composition Cropped
Layers. Change the bird_layers comps size
to 2,048x576px, 100 frames. The bird from
our promo will be animated ying in from
the right and then out to the left, so youll
need some room to play with.

Now import the StandingBirdXray.ai le

as footage. This will be used as a
reference image for both the standing bird
and the X-ray of the bird.

Drag StandingBirdXray.ai to the bottom of the

Bird_Layers comp and then position it in the
middle of the composition. Position the other bird-part
layers to resemble the StandingBirdXray.ai. Position
the anchor points of the tail, leg and wing so that they
look natural when you rotate them.

Add a Null (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+Y) and name it FlyCtrlNull. Add another Null and name it
FaceCtrlNull. Position the FlyCrtlNull somewhere in the middle of the bird, and the
FaceCtrlNull so that its anchor point is in the centre of the head. The placement of this
anchor point is important because this will be the rotation point of the birds face.

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AFTER EFFECTS ILLUSTRATOR

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5

Parent all the bird parts and the Null-layers as above. The FaceCtrlNull
controls the beak, eye and eyeball. The wing, leg, head and tail is
parented to the body. I animated the body and ne-tuned the birds ight
with the FlyCtrlNull. The extra control will give you the exibility to make
changes should your client request them.

Switch back and forth to balance the

rough motion with the secondary motion
and remember that one mucked up
keyframe can destroy the whole animation.
On the other hand, the right keyframe can
make a bad animation look awesome.

11

Next drag in the StandingBirdXray.ai

and position and scale it so that it
aligns exactly with your BirdLand at frame
40. Rename the layer X-RayBird and put it at
the bottom of the comp.

Now you can start

animating! Select each
of the layers, except the
leg and those parented to
FaceCtrlNull. Next, press
Shift+Alt+R and then
Shift+Alt+P to add rotation
and position keyframes to
the selected layers. Add
keyframes on frame 46 on
the same layers. This will
give you a couple of frames
to fade to the X-ray bird a
little later on.

You will notice that keeping the leg

planted when the bird lands is tricky, so
use two leg layers to plant the foot. Go to the
landing frame, split (Ctrl+Shift+D) the leg
layer and unparent the new layer (leg 2).
Move the anchor point of leg 2 to the claws.
Animate the rotation of the new leg layer so
that it follows the bird. For the take off, split
leg 2 and parent leg 3 to the birds body.

12

With the Time indicator at frame 40,

select BirdTakeOff and trim the in
point (Alt+[). Set a 0 per cent Opacity Key on
all layers. Now go to frame 42 and set a 100
per cent Opacity Key on all layers. Select
BirdLand and swap the two opacity
keyframes around. You can now trim the out
point by hitting Alt+].

INTERPOLATIONS
Its essential that you
learn and master the
different key
interpolations it makes
such a big difference
when it comes to making
your animations move
more naturally. Ctrl-click
on a key to toggle
between Linear and Auto
Bezier, Ctrl+Alt+click to
make a key hold and hit
F9 to make any keyframe
into an Easy Ease.

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Animate the bird ying in from the right

and landing from frame 0 to 40 and
continue take-off from 46 to 100. I usually
start out with the biggest moves so I can get
a quick feel for timing and weight. When
youre happy with that just add to the
animation with the more detailed stuff.

Now make a new comp (2,048x576px,

200 frames) and call it BirdXRay. Drag
in Bird_Layers Comp and duplicate it, simply
by hitting Ctrl+D. Name the top comp
BirdTakeOff and the lower comp BirdLand.

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Select Birdtakeoff and move it over so

that the rst Opacity Keyframe is set
at 125. Copy the two Opacity Keyframes and
paste them on to StandingBirdXray.ai before
swapping the copied keyframes around.

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Animate some text layers and images

between frame 46 and 125 for the
technical description of the bird. Even if all
layers have the same animation it helps to
offset the animation on each layer. Precomp
the animated layers and call it Text&Info. (We
also imported an image sequence made in
3ds Max to get a mix of 3D and 2D.)

WHATS IN A NAME?

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Open Illustrator, create a document

that measures 1,024x576px (RGB) and
call it MaincompMask. Use the Rounded
Rectangle tool to make a border and use the
up and down keys to make it rounded.

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Import squared_paper.tif and drag it

in above the BirdXray Layer. Rename
it PaperTexture. Set the Layer Mode to
Multiply. Hold down Shift and press the + or
- to cycle forward or backwards through the
Layer Modes. Go to frame 40 and set an
Opacity Key at 0 per cent. Go to keyframe 42
and add another key at 20 per cent. Copy the
two keys, go to frame 125 and Paste the
keys. Swap them around to get a fade out.

Naming things might not

be much fun, but when
you work in a team its
very important. Its good
to sort out some kind of
naming structure (also
with your colleagues if
you are working in a
team). It will make things
much easier later on and
will prevent you, and
your colleagues, from
getting yourselves lost
within a composition!

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Make a new comp and call it

Maincomp. Ensure that this comp has
a 1,024x576px resolution and is 200 frames
in length. Create a solid by selecting Ctrl+Y
and name it BackgroundRamp. Add a Ramp
lter to it and choose two nice sky colours.

Select Edit>Preferences>File
Handling&Clipboard and make sure
AICB is ticked. Now press OK and select your
rounded rectangle. Copy it by selecting
Ctrl+C and then switch back to After Effects.

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Go to frame 43
and scale the
BirdXray so it ts
nicely in the main
comp. Set a scale key
and go to frame 39. Create another scale key with the value of 80 per
cent. Copy the two keys, go to frame 124 and Paste the keys. Swap them
around to get a zoom out. Select the rst and last scale key and press F9.

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Drag in BirdXray, create a new black

solid and name it Vignette. Next,
create a white solid and name it WhiteBorder.

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Select Vignette and paste the mask by

hitting Ctrl+V. Invert the copied mask
and give it a feather of about 55px. Change
the Mask Opacity to 33 per cent before
selecting WhiteBorder. Finally, Paste and
Invert the mask again.

22

In the project window, drag the Maincomp to the Make New

Comp icon. Rename the new comp MaincompGrading and
duplicate the Maincomp layer (Apple+D). Add a Gaussian Blur lter to the
top layer, set it to a value of 6 and set the Layer Mode to Soft Light. This
will make the colours bleed and the animation look a little rougher.

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