Synthetic Stop-Motion in After Effects

Name: Synthetic Stop-Motion in After Effects
Rating: 4.3 (39 reviews)

Quick and Easy Techniques for Hand-made Animations

Created byRich Armstrong

Last updated 8/2017

English

What you'll learn

Create an synthetic stop-motion animation
Work with tools and effects to create an animation that looks hand-made
Work with After Effects expressions (code snippets) to simulate a stop-motion look
Make animations look hand-made and imperfect
The basics of stop-motion animation

Course content

1 section • 16 lectures • 1h 32m total length

Introduction1:36
This lecture is the introduction to the course.
2-What Is Stop-Motion Animation?2:39
This lecture offers some theory of stop-motion, and has some resources of stop motion films.
3-Easy-Peasy Stop-Motion4:33
This lecture teaches you the most basic way to make a stop-motion film.
4-Add Imperfection With The Wiggler Tool10:03
This lecture teaches you to add imperfection with the wiggle tool.
5-The Posterize Time Effect3:14
This lecture teaches you the posterize time effect.
6-The Paper-Cut-Out Look11:10
This lecture shows you how to achieve a paper-cut-out effect in your animation.
7-The posterizeTime Expression5:53
This lecture shows you how to use the posterize time expression.
8-The Wiggle Expression4:03
This lecture teaches you the wiggle expression and how to use it.
9-Controlled by An Expression Layer8:49
This lecture shows you how to use an expression layer to manage your animation's information.
10-Inconsistent Light7:59
This lecture shows you how to achieve an Inconsistent light effect in your animation.
11-Precomps and Time Remapping7:16
This lecture shows you how to use precomps in your animation as well as Time remapping.
12-Per-character Text Layers8:53
This lecture shows you how to achieve per-character wiggle in your text.
13-Recap1:38
14-Let’s Make a Film11:34
In this lecture you watch while Rich makes a stop-motion film from beginning to end. (Sped up)
15-Conclusion0:35
This is the conclusion lecture
16-Bonus-12:33
This lecture presents you with some bonus tips and tricks to use in your animations.

Requirements

You need to have Adobe After Effects installed
It would be beneficial if you understood a little bit about After Effects

Description

I love stop-motion animation, or perhaps you call it stop-frame animation. I love it because it’s rich in character; because it looks hand-made; and because it drips with human-ness. Most of the time we aim for perfect designs and animations, but this course is about reversing that idea to deliberately create a hand-made and imperfect look.

The course covers creating a stop-motion look inside of After Effects – that means no cameras and no endless moving of elements frame by frame. Normal stop-motion takes a long time time, but inside After Effects it’s quick and easy if you know how.

By the end of this course you’ll be able to create your own synthetic stop-motion films quickly and easily, with a range of different techniques ranging from dead-simple to highly detailed.

We cover tools and effects you may never have heard of, expressions (pieces of JavaScript code in After Effects), time remapping, work flow, frame rate theory, and more. You’ll learn a lot about After Effects in the process and you’re bound to have heaps of fun. You’ll also be able to apply the principles and techniques you learn in whatever animation app you like.

Who this course is for:

Animators and designers
Film makers wanting to add a human-touch to their work
Animators wanting to make stop-motion films without using a camera
Animators wanting to make a stop-motion films in After Effects alone