Drawing in Adobe After Effects – is a chapter from George Maestri’s lynda.com course: Creating Animated Characters in After Effects. In this brief tutorial, George will demonstrate drawing in After Effects. Watch the full course online on lynda.com.

Drawing in Adobe After Effects Course description:

Learn to create and animate highly controllable characters using After Effects. In this course, author George Maestri covers every step on the way, from designing the characters in Photoshop or Illustrator, or drawing them straight from After Effects; assembling characters with hierarchies; making realistic deformations with the Puppet tool; automating rigs with expressions; creating realistic head turns; and showing advanced techniques such as using null objects as bones. Finally, the course shows how to perform a basic animation with the character and ensure the rig works correctly. 

Topics include:

Importing Illustrator or Photoshop files into After Effects
Animating shapes
Organizing scenes with null layers
Working with the Puppet tool
Creating replacement animation using time remapping
Automating head turns
Creating a master control node with Expression Controls effects
Setting up a scene for animation
Animating dialogue

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About the instructor:

George Maestri is an animation director and producer based in Los Angeles. He has written a number of books on 3D character animation, including Digital Character Animation (New Riders), and Maya at a Glance (Sybex Books). His credits include work for such studios as Nickelodeon, Disney, Warner Brothers, and Comedy Central.