How to Animate Drawings in After Effects

Animating your own drawings is a time-intensive, but not impossible, process. Drawings, images or cartoons that you wish to animate should be saved on a transparent background. You will also likely need several layers to effectively portray movement, depending on your ultimate objective. With accurately prepared images, multiple layers and a bit of patience, you will find you are able to create a simple animation in After Effects.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe After Effects
• Drawings

1. Open After Effects and create a new project by going to "File," then "New" and then "New Project." Save your project right away in a location that will be easy to find. It is recommended when working with After Effects that you save your project file and all of the elements of that project together in one folder. This is because After Effects projects can contain hundreds of independent assets, and these can be difficult to keep track of.

2. Import your elements by going to the File menu and then "Import File." Select your image elements and click "OK." You will prompted to choose the kind of import. Import it as a “Composition” at “Document Size” and click "OK."

3. Drag your elements into the timeline from the project file. For example, if you want to animate a man waving his arm, you will drag a layer with a man and a layer with an arm.

4. Scale your objects to fit the frame. Select each element in the timeline and click “S.” Type in the number you will need. This may take a bit of finessing to get the arm and body to match.

5. Select the arm layer (or whatever your moving layer may be) and then click “P” to activate the positing key frame. Activate the keyframe of the arm at the beginning of sequence. The keyframe remembers what the originally position of the moving layer is at this point so that you can create movement.

6. Move your current time indicator forward 10 frames or so. Click on the “Rotate” tool in your toolbox, which looks like a circle with a layer on it. Go back to the monitor and click on the arm. Rotate it to its next position. Another keyframe will automatically appear to mark that movement.

7. Move forward another 10 frames or so and then, using the rotate tool, rotate the arm back to its original position.

8. Repeat the above several times. The closer your keyframes are, the faster the movement will be. You can adjust any keyframes as necessary to slow or quicken the movement.

9. Click on the "RAM" preview button in your toolbox. This will give you a preview of the movements you just created. Adjust as necessary and add more complex movements as you get more comfortable with the process.

Tips & Warnings

• You must use your own images or images that you hold the copyright to if you intend to make an animation that you will be selling or screening for public viewing.
• Remember to save often when working in After Effects, as you make a lot of changes to your project over time.