Creating Animated Characters in After Effects

Learn to create and animate highly controllable characters using After Effects. In this course, author George Maestri covers every step on the way, from designing the characters in Photoshop or Illustrator, or drawing them straight from After Effects; assembling characters with hierarchies; making realistic deformations with the Puppet tool; automating rigs with expressions; creating realistic head turns; and showing advanced techniques such as using null objects as bones. Finally, the course shows how to perform a basic animation with the character and ensure the rig works correctly.

Topics include:

• Importing Illustrator or Photoshop files into After Effects
• Animating shapes
• Organizing scenes with null layers
• Working with the Puppet tool
• Creating replacement animation using time remapping
• Automating head turns
• Creating a master control node with Expression Controls effects
• Setting up a scene for animation
• Animating dialogue