Working with Follow Through in After Effects

Joey Korenman : Yo Joey here at school of motion and welcome to day 11 of 30 days of after effects. What we're going to talk about today is part two of the tutorial, which includes a Boston terrier that my good friend, Matt Novacek illustrated it's name is Steadman by the way. Anyway, what we're going to do today is animate Stedman. And we're going to talk about the animation principle of follow-through. We're going to talk about some strategies to use, follow through in after effects. And then of course, I'm going to show you an expression that will do it for you. Of course, we can only cover so much injustice, one lesson. So if you want a deep dive into animation principles, you're going to want to check out our animation bootcamp course. Also don't forget to sign up for a free student account so you can grab the project files from this lesson, as well as assets from any other lesson on the site.
Joey Korenman : Now, without further ado, let's hop into after effects and get started. Welcome back to the room. So, uh, in this video, uh, as I said, I'm going to show you guys how to animate the dog that goes in this room. Um, by the way, the dog's name is Stedman, um, illustrated by the brilliant Matthew Napa shack. Um, also the haunted Matthew Napa shack. Um, if you guys like the way his, this dog looks go to Matt navo.com, M a T T N a B o.com and check out his illustrations. The man has such a unique way of drawing things. It's amazing. Um, he's also a big never-ending story fan. So, uh, you know, here we go, we've got this cool kind of 3d room that we made from the last tutorial, and we've got a nice little camera move going. Um, and so what I want to show you is how you get this dog to animate and do something interesting.
Joey Korenman : Um, and maybe just a way to think about animation. Um, and then of course, I'm going to show you a little trick tube. So, uh, why don't we start out by hiding all the stuff we don't really care about right now, I'm going to go into full Rez here, by the way, the hot key to go into Rez is command. J a lot of people don't know that. So we've got our dog and the speech bubble I'm going to hide the speech bubble for now. Um, I went into illustrator and I separated all this stuff out into layers would be easier to work with. Um, and actually, I don't even want to, I don't even want to see these layers right now, so I'm gonna select all of them and I'm going to shy them. So I don't have to worry about them. All right, cool.
Joey Korenman : So we've got the head and the body in, you know, essentially what I want to do is have the head kind of like turn back and forth and, and have the ears follow and just have it feel pretty good. So I'm gonna click on the head layer and I'm going to move the anchor point. So you hold, you know, you hit Y which brings up this tool called the pan behind tool or the anchor point tool. And then you can click the anchor point and move it about where the dog's neck is maybe right in there. And just to it, if I rotate this head on Z, look at that rotates back and forth. That's wonderful. Um, now here I'll let me put a quick rotation on there. Okay. So why don't we go forward a few frames, put a key frame on Z. Um, and let's just have it, you know, I don't know, 12 frames.
Joey Korenman : It's going to go like this. Right. There you go. All right. So here's, here's a quick little recap for you. Why does this look like crap? Okay. Um, I mean, there's many reasons there's no easing, um, there's no anticipation, uh, there's no overshoot. There's none of, none of the hallmarks of good animation, right? Um, I'm telling you this, this is the kind of stuff that really makes you seem like a pro like, you know, what you're doing is when you understand animation principles, um, and, and you know how to apply them. All right. So first things first, I'd say a hundred out of a hundred times. I don't ever leave linear key frames unless I make them easy ease, and then make them back to linear because there's some reason most of the time key frames should be set to easy ease, and then go into your curve editor.