After Effects Smears...the right way

imagine you could make your whole animation better with a single frame that's the whole point of using smear frames in After Effects and there is actually a really easy way to create smears in After Effects but and this is a big butt I've seen it torting correctly and used incorrectly so many times so I want to take us on a short Journey where we can talk about why this technique consists look at some examples so that when we actually get into After Effects we can use them correctly for Maximum Impact and I promise it will not only be interesting but fun as well smear frames originated in hand-drawn frame by frame animation and there's a reason for this smear frames are designed to simulate the motion blur you get in live action video during a very fast movement now I can already hear the gears turning in your little heads and I know exactly what you're going to ask me next but Cameron why do we need to use smear frames in After Effects when we can just use motion blur we do not use motion blur we do not talk about blur using motion blur is motion design blasphemy okay okay to be fair it has its place in VFX and compositing but if you're doing 2D animation leave it off and use smear frames instead so now that we know why they exist let's look at some examples to show how they're generally being used and if you've never taken a close look at some of your favorite animated shows you're in for a treat just looking at screenshots of smears is really fun the unrealistic distortions playfulness even plain weirdness of these frames is just really appealing to me and the way they caption enhanced movement is just so creative and a treat to look at I just love looking at smear frames but for our purposes it's best for us to actually look at the smears in context as a full action so here are some moving examples and what I want you to notice with these is that they are used for very fast movements and this is done to help the audience us read the animation properly you can see in some of these examples that smears are used to connect poses that are very different and the smear is necessary to bridge the gap so that we can understand the movement in many of the SpongeBob examples you'll see that there is literally just a single smear frame between two drastically different poses using smears can also save time and budget as you can sell an action with less drawings but these days it is often used as a stylistic choice the result is a very Snappy style of Animation which may not be what you're looking for with every animation but you can't deny that it has a certain charm to it that goes beyond its practical benefits you can also start to notice a few different types of smears like stretches and repetitions and there are many permutations of these types as well just in case you are starting to forget that this video is about smears in After Effects here are some motion design examples as well one more note I want to make is that smears should not be overused you should think carefully about the speed of the action as well as whether a smear will enhance the readability and overall aesthetic of your animation before we move on if you found this video interesting or useful tap that like button so I know you are enjoying it so far now let's finally get into After Effects because that's where everything we've just learned is gonna pay off so for starters let's keep it simple with a circle character so if I wanted to add a smear to this firstly I would want my action to be fast enough to Warrant it so let's start with this now in my opinion it doesn't matter how you create the smear frames as long as they fulfill their purpose so I could create my smear frame separately like this and then I could simply cut to those two frames during our animation and then cut back to our character like this look at that sexy smear another way I could do it is by using path animation on the circle and the face and this is what that would look like and of course the option that you choose will depend on your context and whatever animation you're trying to create but I did mention a really easy way to create smear frames and that's using the echo effect but let's talk about that because I have some issues so here's what happens if I just drop in an echo change the echo operator to maximum add to zeros to the echo time and change the number of Echoes to 100 and as you can see it adds a smear across the whole animation and it's just too much it contradicts the whole purpose of a smear frame which as we now know is to help sell a fast action and of course look good while doing it and this just looks bad let's put it this way imagine you are animating this frame by frame do you think you would add a smear frame to the anticipation and settle hell no instead we should animate the echo so that it only appears where we want it like this and in most cases your smear should not be longer than two frames and look how much better that looks the top character is getting all muddy with all the extra information but the bottom one is clean and the smear makes the animation more Dynamic and interesting now if you're thinking to yourself right now I don't want to add any extra keyframes to my echo effect well I got you covered battle ax has created a free tool called schmear which allows you to automate the process by adjusting smear length and distance threshold to get your desired result I hope this has inspired you to start using smears in a more thoughtful way to enhance your own animations and before I release you back into the wild world of motion design I have a bonus for sticking around so long you can grab these project files with everything we created for free and I'll even include this little guy Link in description you're welcome I've been doing this motion design thing for over seven years now and I've learned a thing or two along the way and I'd love to share some of that knowledge with you so hit subscribe to gain more motion XP [Music] thank you

Channel: MotionXP

Views: 12,786

Keywords: after effects smear, motion design smear, after effects, motion design, motion design tutorial, how to after effects, after effects beginner, after effects tutorial, after effects tips, motion design tips, animation tips, animation tips for beginners, animation tips and tricks, mograph, MotionXP, trails

Id: sA637p2kxlA

Length: 5min 50sec (350 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023