To start I have been going through a phase trying to learn 2D animation using after effects, not going all that well as I don’t know anything of character animation, rigging or creating the character. BUT!! As iv been searching through the world wide web iv come across a number of amazing tutorials and plugins, which I have kindly put together for you to go through.

Marcin Zeglinski

AETUTS+

Learn How to Rig and Animate a Character and Create your Own Odyssey Day 1

Learn How to Rig and Animate a Character and Create your Own Odyssey Day 2

 

Daniel Gies

PART I. Making Bones for Puppets in After Effects

PART II. Using Sliders to Control a Rigged Character in After Effects

PART III. Bringing It All Together Animating a Character in After Effects

Rigging Multi-Layered Characters PART I

Rigging Multi-Layered Characters PART II

Rigging Multi-Layered Characters PART III

Rigging Clothes for your Character in After Effects

FAMOS

famoscreative.com

DIUK TOOLS PLUGIN

DuIK Tools – Inverse Kinematics for After Effects!

DuIK Puppet Tool Inverse Kinematics – A Quick Intro

Hope you enjoy this post what you’ve created in the comments below or if theres more then add it in the comments and ill update this post. thanks

There are many shortcuts that work with paint strokes and paint tools, which also work with the Roto brush strokes and the Roto brush tool.

Here are a few:

• Set brush size for Roto Brush Tool
  • Ctrl + Mouse Drag up bigger down smaller ( windows)
  • Command + Mouse Drag up bigger down smaller ( MAC)
• Remove area from selection
  • Alt+Click then select area (windows)
  • Option + Click then select area (MAC)
• Move forward one frame
  • press 2
• Move backward one frame
  • press 1
• Show paint strokes, Roto Brush strokes, and puppet pins in timeline.
  • press PP

Well to try these out you need to have the time line selected then.

PRESS SHIFT + ; (semicolon) in the Timeline panel to zoom all the way out to show the entire composition duration.

PRESS SHIFT + ; (semicolon) again to zoom back in to the custom time range set by the Time Navigator.

To quickly fully zoom in and out of the timeline just press ; (semicolon), this expands the time line to its fullest and zooms in to its maximum.

If you DOUBLE – CLICK the Time Navigator you can toggle the zoom level between single-frame units or showing the entire composition duration.

SHIFT + DOUBLE – CLICK the Time Navigator to toggle between the current zoom level setting and showing the entire composition duration.

Well i hope you enjoyed that next tip is all about the Roto Brush Tool cant wait.

You can apply photoshop style layer effects like drop shadow, emboss, inner shodow, outer glow etc, by right clicking the desired layer then choose Layer > Layer styles.

like in the image below.

In This quick tip, i am going to show you how to use world languages like arabic, hebrew, etc in side of illustrator without the need to purchase the Middle Eastern version of adobe.

Resources needed :

http://www.thomasphinney.com/2009/01/adobe-world-ready-composer/

To activate alt + click on the stopwatch next to a layers property, then you get an arrow from there go to Property and select    wiggle(freq, amp, octaves = 1, amp_mult = .5, t = time). Then just change the parameters with your own personal values.