Animate Character's Face Using Illustrator & After Effects

Learn how to animate your characters in After Effects!

In this class you can make character's face come to life with several easy to learn approaches using built-in tools in After Effects.

These lessons are packed with helpful tips and tricks and will be a great resource for illustrators, who'd like to bring an extra layer of personality to their character work using animation or aspiring animators who want to broaden their skillset in character animation.

Some basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator and After Effects is required.

This class is structured for students familiar with Illustrator and After Effects, but if you're a bit rusty there will be a quick refresher in "Getting Started in After Effects" lesson.

What you'll learn:

• How to prepare vector illustration in Illustrator for animation in After Effects;

• After Effects basic tools and approaches;

• Animating emotion change from one state to another with a head turn using keyframes;

• Adding extra details using effects (glow, fast box blur, wave warp and grain) and a Wiggle expression;

• Organizing After Effects file;

• Exporting your animation as video and gif;

Choose your own vector character illustration made in Illustrator or download "Illustration project file" in the Resources under Project Section to get started.

We'll start by preparing the Illustrator file for animation, then switch to After Effects and look around there. I will show you some basic tools and shortcuts, and how to get started animating with keyframes.

Next, we'll rig the character’s face and get to animation with keyframes. When planning the animation I will use this quick sketch/ storyboard (you can find it under Project Section Resources as well) for reference. Feel free to reference it or use your own storyboard if you'd like.

We'll also create a loop and an intro to the main animation. We will use effects and one expression called Wiggle to polish the animation.

And our animation is done! Find my After Effects reference file under the Project Section in Resources.

The last step will be collecting the file and exporting the final piece as video and gif.