Another series on character animation in AE

This post was erased by accident (undo, autosave), thanks to Blogger. There's an archive on Archive.org.

In any case, see the updated roundup Animate a character in After Effects: A survey of resources.

Animating with the Puppet tool

Angie Taylor shares a free tutorial from the After Effects CS5: Learn By Video DVD on how to use the Puppet tool in After Effects, Animating Characters with the Puppet tools.

For more, see Puppet tools overview and resources in AE Help, Animate a character in After Effects (with 3 links to detailed posts by Todd Kopriva), and other posts tagged puppet.

For many other examples from this DVD, see Todd Kopriva's free samples from After Effects CS5: Learn By Video, the DVD and book training set "designed to bring you from the beginner level to the intermediate level, as well as to warn and educate you about all of the common pitfalls and gotchas in After Effects."

Rigit Script: character rigging for After Effects

@hypoly (James Chiny) notes a beta of a new script by Marcus Loeper, RigitScript, for character rigging in After Effects. See also Duik Tools tutorial (IK script for After Effects) and Animate a character in After Effects.

Here's the musical quickguide for RigitScript (discuss at Videocopilot or Mograph forums):

Automatic animation: a tutorial breakdown

Todd Kopriva outlines details of the 2-part Motionworks tutorial on Automatic animation in After Effects in alternative animation techniques by John Dickinson. Todd also started an Adobe Forum thread on the topic.

See also Motionsworks' video specifically on Align and Orient in AE CS5. Todd's other in-depth breakdowns are also helpful; they include: CS5 videos for beginners, AE and 3D by Dave Scotland, character animation + from Robert Powers, Video Copilot Basic Training series, Steve Holmes Artbeats podcasts, and DSLR video with Premiere CS5 [and later Chris Zwar on After Effects features that most people don’t seem to notice].

Animate a character in After Effects

This post has been updated at ProVideo Coalition,

Animate a character in After Effects: A survey of resources

The 12 basic principles of animation for After Effects

AE Tuts Premium ($9 /month or less) is featuring an After Effects tutorial series by Bryan Clark on applying the Disney system of 12 Basic Principles of Animation. Here's a sample:

Wikipedia has a decent article on the 12 basic principles of animation, "a set of principles of animation introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation." I'm just excited because I found a paperback version in a used bookstore for $4 this last weekend.

If you don't have John Lasseter's seminal 1987 SIGGRAPH paper based on The Illusion of Life, there's a decent scanned copy available: Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation.

Fuel Your Motionography finished a 3-part explanation in October with examples from recent works; see Principles of Animation for Motionographers – Part 3 of 3. Also, in the recent Lynda.com training series After Effects CS4 Beyond the Basics, Chad Perkins explores techniques for animation according to several of these principles.

Duik Tools tutorial (IK script for After Effects)

Duik Tools, the inverse kinematics script for After Effects from France, now has an English language video tutorial. Here's an embed but check out the Vimeo page for more info and a skeleton source file:

DuIK Tools - Inverse Kinematics for After Effects! from FAMOS on Vimeo.

Update: FAMOS later posted this,

DuIK Puppet Tool Inverse Kinematics - A Quick Intro from FAMOS on Vimeo.