Quest to learn 2D animation in After Effects Pt.4

The first thing I wanted to do before I imported the character into After Effects was to split the limbs into separate layers such as the:

• Front Leg (FLeg)
• Body
• Back Leg (BLeg)

I was then able to import the PSD into AE. Previously when working with this program I would have saved each layer out individually as a PNG and imported those files into the program but having all the layers contained in a PSD file saves on screen real estate since I only need to import the single file that contains all the layers rather than the limbs individually. While I haven't tested this theory yet I am confident that by importing the PSD into AE you'll be able to edit the original PSD and have the changes show in AE without breaking the animation.

Watching "How To Make a Cartoon | Character Animation - After Effects tutorial [Basic Walk - cycle]" by Ross Plaskow http://goo.gl/gfcyKf I became confident that the techniques demonstrated in this tutorial could easily be transferred to my characters. Some of the things I've learnt by watching this video are:

• The importance of naming conventions since this will help when it comes to identifying puppet pins in your character.
• The importance of an anchor point on limbs since it can directly affect how the joint will move. (Anchor point should be seen as a major joint such as the joint between arm and torso or leg and hip)
• Hierarchy of the parenting of limbs in the correct order. Such as follows:
• Top of Leg
• Knee
• Ankle
• Toe
• Positioning of the puppet pins. It mentions how the pins should be pinned inside the mesh otherwise it will have an odd effect.
• F9 is the hotkey for ease in and ease out.
• Can cut down workflow by copying/pasting keyframes to create cycles. This is extremely useful when creating an animated loop.
• When animating a walk cycle, it is easier to animate both legs the same and once you complete a loop you can highlight the keyframes of the second leg and push them further down the timeline until it fits into a normal walk cycle. An extremely handy tip!
• Moving the root points on limbs to give it depth.
• Basic head turning effect.
• Delaying the limbs breaks the symmetry and makes it look more appealing!

By taking the information from this tutorial, I applied the techniques onto my characters.