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jessejayjones
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Age 38, Male

Animator

Art Institute of Portland

Portland, OR

Joined on 9/29/03

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Tutorial: How To Animate in After Effects CC!

Posted by jessejayjones - November 10th, 2015


Hey guys! Here's my newest tutorial, I'm really happy with how it turned out! By the end of this tutorial, you will learn how to use After Effects, create your own character, and animate it in a walk cycle! :)

After Effects for Beginners Tutorial
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/665914


Comments

Awesome job Jesse :) This is a really good idea! I just learned Ae for animation in college a week ago, I never really realized it could be used for animation.

Thanks Joshua! Ae is great, it's one of my favorite programs to play around in, and there's always so much more to learn with it as an animation tool! :)

Always love these. You don't get enough thanks for your effort.

Aw, thanks man! :)

Hey man, I still have to watch this beast of a movie. I'm interested to learn more about after effects, so yeah. Anyway, I just saw your flash shortcuts video and it taught me a couple of new tricks, awesome! I was wondering if there's any custom shortcuts you use? I've got one myself, which I think will come in handy for you, since it's very useful for getting smooth lines in flash.

First of all, I hate going to edit > keyboard shortcuts, so I always make sure to replace that with "ctrl + k". Once in that window, I create a new set (if I haven't already), and under "drawing menu commands" I look for Modify > Shape. I set Smooth to "ctrl + ," and Straighten to "ctrl + ." which is easy for me to remember since both characters shapes sort of represent what they do. Those command are also totally not used for anything else, so yeah!

Something else I like to do is look under view > magnification. I make sure "ctrl + 1", "ctrl + 2", "ctrl + 4" and "ctrl + 8" are set for 100%, 200%, 400% and 800%. This too is easy to remember, or so I think.

Another shortcut I found myself using a lot lately is ctrl + alt + shift + c, which by default opens the options for vector optimization. It gets rid of unnecessary vector nodes, improving line smoothness and saving on the filesize (especially in frame by frame sequences where the nodes add up fast). However, if there's already a scarce amount of nodes, chances are it does the complete opposite; fucking up lines that were smooth in the first place.

I find myself using the default shortcut "a" sometimes to manually correct lines or delete unnecessary nodes. It's also very useful for cleaning up! You know when you've used the eraser, but you're not entirely certain if every bit is gone? By selecting the sub-selector tool and pressing ctrl + a, it becomes very easy to find and delete tiny bits of brush that didn't get erased. Thought I suppose viewing a layer as outlines works too.

I got a bit carried away, hope these were useful to you. Keep making vids, you're awesome! :D

Woah, thanks Joep! These are super helpful!! I will definitely incorporate them in my workflow next time I use Flash. Thanks for sharing man! :)

Hey, I just remembered how the "x" key is one of my best friends. Select something, hold x, and use the arrow keys. It will move with 1 pixel at the time, regardless of what your magnification settings are. Combine x with shift and it will move 10 pixels at a time. It's especially useful if you're working with grids or pixel art.