Create animated characters from still images with After Effects
Table of Contents
Animate a still image
These little birds were just about everywhere, and I thought it would be funny to have this one peck the heck out of that bike tire.
Figure 1: The source image for my animation.
Before you begin, you need to separate a character (in my case, the bird) from the background of an image using Adobe Photoshop®. I used the Quick Selection tool to select the bird (you can see the selection in the image above), removed it from the background, and then used the Clone Stamp tool to clean up the background layer. For more information on these tools, see the topics Select with the Quick Selection tool and Retouch with the Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop LiveDocs.
Figure 2: The bird, the background, and the cleaned-up background layer.
- Select File > Import > File to import your Photoshop file into After Effects. Make sure to select Composition from the Import As pop-up menu in the Import dialog box.
- Double-click the imported Photoshop file in the Project panel, and then select the Puppet Pin tool (the tool that looks like a push pin on the right side of the After Effects toolbar).
Figure 3: The Puppet Pin tool on the After Effects toolbar.
- Select the layer in the timeline, select the Puppet Pin tool, and then click the image to place the pins. Place pins on the character based on how you want it to move—the fewer pins you use, the better the results are likely to be. For my bird, I put one on his head, foot, tail, and back.
Figure 4: Puppet Tool pins placed on the bird’s head, foot, tail, and back.
- To animate the pins, you can twirl down the controls for the Puppet Pin tool in the timeline and set keyframes, but the easier way is to use Motion Sketch (see the following step).
- To use Motion Sketch, press the Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Win) key and place your cursor over a pin. The cursor changes to a stopwatch.
Figure 5: The cursor changes to a stopwatch when you use Motion Sketch.
- While you press and hold the Cmd or Ctrl key, click and drag to record your mouse movements in real time; you’ll see an outline of your character as you draw.
It’s really easy to record an animation this way. You can do multiple passes, to animate as many pins as you want, and you see the ones you’ve recorded play back as you record new ones so you can easily synchronize motion.
I started out by doing a pass just wiggling the tail, and then I did a pass of his head pecking away at the tire. I then animated the scale of the scene to zoom in over time. When you’re finished, choose Composition > Preview > RAM Preview to see your work. Here’s what I got:
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Where to go from here
This is a really simple example. You can go in much deeper with this tool. Holding down the Puppet Pin tool in the toolbar reveals the Puppet Overlap tool and the Puppet Starch tool.
The Puppet Overlap tool controls which parts of the character cross in front of or behind of the others, and the Puppet Starch tool pretty much does what it says it does—it keeps unwanted warping from occurring. You click on the character to apply either of these tools.
For more information on working with After Effects, including using the Puppet Tool, see the following resources:
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