How to Make a Person Float With After Effects

Animate a person floating in After Effects by using the program's keyframe tools to make animation frames of images made with the mask tools. Masks are shapes you draw to hide portions of an image and reveal other portions -- like a stencil made with construction paper. Keyframes are the start and end frames of an animated sequence. Once you specify these frames, After Effects creates other frames to complete the sequence.

Instructions

1. Click the "File" menu's "Import" command, then navigate to and double-click the photo of a person you want to make appear to float. After Effects loads the photo into the Project panel. Drag the photo's thumbnail onto the Composition panel to enable editing.

2. Click the toolbar icon shaped like a nib pen to run the "Pen" tool, then click a point on the person's outline to begin tracing the person. Drag to another point on the outline, then click again to add another point.

3. Continue tracing around the person until you've reached the first point you made. After Effects removes the background and shows just the person you traced.

4. Click the "File" menu's "Import" command, then navigate to and double-click video footage over which you'd like to add a floating person. Drag the thumbnail of the imported footage to the Composition panel, as you did the photo of the person.

5. Click the "Mask" item in the Timeline panel to select the mask you traced, then click the stopwatch icon to the left of the Transform row. This tells After Effects you want to make a keyframe for the current frame.

6. Drag the vertical slider in the right pane of the Timeline panel to the right until the slider is positioned at or beyond the "50" mark. This advances the current animation frame to frame 50, which lengthens your animation.

7. Click the mask you traced and drag it to another screen location. After Effects makes additional animation frames to smooth the transition from the person's initial position to the new position.

8. Click the Preview panel's ">" command to play the animation of the floating person.

References

• Adobe After Effects CS5 Classroom in a Book; Adobe Creative Team; 2010