How to Make Cartoon Animation After Effects
After Effects from Adobe is made for Web animations, video effects and has a large assortment of tools and effects made exclusively for cartoon animations. Using the basic transform and puppet tools, you can make cartoon pictures come alive on a project. The characters can walk, talk and move around the screen. Once you learn the basic cartoon animation effects in After Effects, you can expand and make your projects look more detailed and intricate.
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Instructions
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Click on the "Composition" icon at the bottom of the "Project" window. Select what size and how long you want your animated project to be. Press "OK" to create the new composition.
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Drag your media files into the "Layers" window at the bottom of the screen. The layers appear on the project from bottom to top, so place the background layer on the lowest part of the "Layer" window.
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Click once on a layer to make it the active editing layer. Use the small arrow icon on the left side of the screen to expand the layer and show to "Transform" section. Expand this to reveal attributes for the layer like "Scale," "Rotation" and "Opacity."
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Click on the key frame icon next to the object you want to animate. For example, if you want a cartoon wheel to spin really fast on the screen, choose the "Rotation" key frame. Drag the timeline navigator ahead and set the rotation to "5 x 360 degrees." Now, the wheel will spin five times around for the duration of the video.
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Click on the "Puppet Pin Tool" icon at the top of the screen. The icon is a small thumbtack. Click around areas of your cartoons that you want to animate. For example, on a person's arm, you could animate the wrist, elbow and shoulder to create a realistic arm movement. Click once to create a single pin.
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Select the main mouse cursor. Now move the pins around to create the animation. After each movement, move the scrubber forward a couple of seconds and then move the pins to the new animation position. Repeat this until you reach the end of the video.
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Tips & Warnings
Play around with different effects from the "Effects" menu. You can apply all kinds of visuals and filters onto projects to add more animation.
