Puppet Animation - Adobe After Effects Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood April 1, 2004   1 First thing we want to do is import the Photoshop file as a composition.   2 Open up the file so that you can see all of the layers. Begin dropping the layers into the timeline one at a time to set in it's appropriate place. Basically put your puppet back together one piece at a time.   3 Using the Pan Behind tool, move all anchor points into place before going further.    4 Move the anchor points into place where there would naturally be a joint and not necessarily to the edge of a piece. Do this for every joint. Next step is to select, for instance, the upper arm and pickwhip it to the torso, pickwhip the forearm to the upper arm, select the hand and pickwhip it to the forearm. Also, pickwhip the head to the neck, the neck to the torso, etc. until everything is connected in the proper order.   5 The next step is to animate the arms. First though you need to select the layers that do not apply and click on the Shy slot. Once that is done, click on the Shy button above to hide the layers. Now the layers we want to work on are the only ones visible.   6 The next step (if you are familiar with 3D animation) is to connect the pieces together. How do we do that? Begin by selecting the hair, mouth, teeth, eyes, and pupils. With all items selected, select the pickwhip from one of the layers and drag to the head layer.   7 With all the layers of the arms selected, hit the R key to open Rotation. Make sure you are at the first keyframe. Click on the clocks to set the keyframes.   8 Move to halfway between 0 and keyframe 1. Select the Rotation tool and move the upper arm upwards then select the forearm to rotate into place and then the hand. Continue making different movements with the arms. Then select all of the frames and hit F9 to ease.   9 Press Home and the spacebar to play the animation. Click below to view the animation. Copyright 1998-2004, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved