(intense music) - Hello and welcome to the 46th video in this Beginner's Guide
to Adobe After Effects. In this tutorial, I'm going to demonstrate how you can animate a simple 2D composition in After Effects. So in the previous episode,
we built up a 2D scene for the last section in
the video presentation. We brought in a series
of Illustrator artwork that we placed in to create
this 2D London city scene. In this video, we are going to apply some simple animation to our element to complete the last section
of this video presentation. We are going to create
a dynamic transition where the buildings seem to
pop up from the baseline, the type appears, and the
clouds animate in behind. So, let's get into it. So here I am where we left
off in the previous episode where we brought in all
the Illustrator artwork and built the 2D scene
with the type layers above. Now if you're watching for the first time and wish to follow along,
you can find this document in the project folder
which you can download, link is in the description. The download folder comes with
lots of exercise documents we will be using on this
course that have been carefully developed to aid
your learning experience. The folder also comes
with document resources such as videos, graphics, and images you can use to build your
first video presentation from scratch later on in this course. To get the full learning experience, I recommend you get the project folder. Download link with instructions
is in the description. So with the project folder open, click into the S3 -
Create A Project folder, then click into folder 46-
Animate Simple 2D Scene, and open the Animate
Simple 2D Scene document. Now, if you're continuing
on from the last episode, make sure you have your
document open and ready. So with our document open, let's proceed. So right now, I have the
out draw composition open where we left off in the previous episode, and if we look down in the timeline panel, we can see all the layers
that make up this composition. So the first thing we are going to do is look to animate these buildings so they pop up to start
the animation sequence. So what I'll do first is just
come and click the eye icon for all the layers apart
from the buildings, to toggle off the visibility. What I want to focus on right
now is just the buildings. So I'll just zoom in a little here, so I can see what I'm working with. Now with the selection tool active, if I start to click on the buildings, we will see the bounding
box appear around them. Now if for some reason you
cannot see the bounding box, simply come up to View and make sure Show Layer Controls is active. Now with a building
selected, as well as seeing the bounding box, we also
see the anchor point. This is the circle point in
the middle with the crosshair, and this will be visible on
each layer as you select it. Now what we want to do
first before we start to animate these buildings
is change the positioning of the anchor point for each building. So let's start with Big Ben here, and I'll zoom in a little closer. So with the selection
tool, I'll select Big Ben so I can see the bounding box and the anchor point in the middle. So I'll come up to the Tools menu at the top left of the interface and make sure to select
the Anchor Point tool. With the Anchor Point tool active, the mouse cursor will
change and we will see this little box shape with
arrows next to the mouse pointer. So I'll carefully come and
click on the anchor point of the Big Ben layer and
drag it down to the bottom, down to the baseline and
in the middle, like so. Now, if you're wondering
why we are doing this, you will find out very shortly. So once I'm happy the anchor
point is set at the baseline, I'll come and click the next building. So with the Tower Bridge
selected, I'll come and click and drag the anchor point from the middle, and again, down to the baseline
and set it in the middle. Once I'm happy, I'll come
and click the next building. With St. Paul's selected,
I'll come and click and drag the anchor point from the middle, and again, down to the
baseline to set in the middle. Once I'm happy, I'll come and
click on the next building. So with the next building selected, I'll come and click and
drag the anchor point from the middle, and
again, down to the baseline and set it in the middle. So I'll do the same again
for the next building. Same again for the next building. And the next building. Now I'll carefully select
the silhouette buildings in the background, and
drag the anchor point down. Then I'll scroll across to the far left, click on the London Eye building and move the anchor point
down to the baseline. And lastly, I'll select the
silhouette building behind that and drag the anchor point
to the baseline, perfect! So I'll press Alt + / on the keyboard, and that will zoom out
to fit to the screen, to the composition panel like so. So after that, each anchor
point on each building should now be at the baseline. Now we can start to animate the buildings. So to help me do this, I'm
just going to place my mouse cursor between the composition
panel and the timeline panel. I'll see the mouse cursor
change to arrows pointing up and down, and I'll click and drag up, just so I can see more of the layers below in the timeline panel. So first, I'll click and
drag the time indicator back to the start of the composition, and in the layers panel,
I'll come and select the first building layer, Big Ben. I'll press and hold shift on the keyboard and select the bottom layer. With them all selected, I'll
press S on the keyboard, and this will reveal the
scale settings for each layer. Next, I'll come and click the
stopwatch on the first layer. By clicking this, it
will set a scale keyframe for every layer like so. So next, I'll drag the time indicator over to north point five
seconds, and then I'll come and click the diamond
shape on the top layer over on the far left,
and by clicking this, it will set a second scale
keyframe for every layer. So with the second keyframe set, I'll drag the time
indicator back to the start of the comp so it's
perfectly placed on top of all the first keyframes. Next, I'll need to carefully
come into each layer and click the lock icon
by the scale settings. What I need to do here is toggle off the lock icon for every layer. It's really important that right now, the lock icon is off for
each of the building layers. So I'll carefully scroll down and make sure the lock icon is off. Then I'll press F2 to deselect the layers. Next I'll need to select
each building one at a time. So first, I'll select the top layer and click into the
right setting for scale. With it selected, I'll
type zero and press enter. Upon click, the building will
appear to have disappeared. So I'll click on the next layer down. I'll click into the
right setting for scale. With it selected, I'll
type zero and press enter. Upon click, the building will again appear to have disappeared. So what I'm going to do now is
make my way down the layers, click into the right settings
for scale on each layer, and type zero for each
one and press enter. As we do this, each building
will seem to disappear. This is exactly what we want. So I'll do this until each
building is gone, like so. Now if I click and drag the time indicator from the start to one second, we will now see the buildings spring up. If we scrub the time
indicator back and forth, we will see the buildings
spring up and reverse back down. This is exactly what we want right now. So we achieved this
effect by first placing the anchor point at the
bottom of each layer, and then apply the scale animation. Because we unchecked the
constrain proportions, we only changed the scale
on the vertical axes instead of both, so we get this nice scaling up effect from the baseline. This makes the buildings look
like they spring up, perfect! Okay, so now I have applied
the animation to each building. Next I need to tweak the
placement of the layers. Right now, all the buildings
spring up at the same time. What I want to do here is
have the buildings pop up at different times instead of
popping up at the same time. So to do this, I'm simply
going to click and drag the layers across the timeline
at different intervals. So I'll start with Big Ben. So I'll click the layer
and drag it over a little. On this occasion, I'll drag
it to place my first keyframe in between the first and
second of the layer below. Next I'll select the layer
below and drag the layout across to place the first
keyframe between the first and second keyframe of the layer above. Next I'll select the building
below, the War Museum layer, and I'll drag the layer across
to place the first keyframe between the first and
second of the layer above. So now we are starting to create delays in the building animations. So I'll select the layer below, the Shard, and I'll drag the layer across
to place the first keyframe to match the top Big Ben layer. I'll leave the next layer where it is, and I'll select the
layer below, St. Paul's, and I'll drag the layer across
to place the first keyframe just under the second
keyframe of the layer above. Next I'll select the
layer below, Tower Bridge, and I'll drag the layer across
to place the first keyframe between the first and
second of the layer above. Now I'll leave the next layer where it is and I'll finish by selecting
the last two layers and dragging them out
so the first keyframe matches the position of
the Tower Bridge layer. So once I'm happy my
building layers are in place, I'll click on two seconds
on the timeline ruler to place my time indicator at two seconds, and I'll press N on the keyboard. This will set the end
of the workspace area on the timeline ruler. So I'll click to place my time indicator inside the work area,
and I'll press spacebar to preview the sequence. So here we can see the
buildings are now animating in more sporadically, which
creates a more dynamic animation sequence than them all
animating at the same time. Perfect! So I'll press spacebar to
stop the preview for now, and what I want to do next
is add a motion blur effect to the animations to add more dynamics. So I'll select the top building layer. With Shift held down on the keyboard, I'll select the bottom
layer to select them all. Next, I'll come into the
layer settings to the left on the layer names, and
at the top of the layer, I'll click the motion blur switch. Upon click, it will activate
the motion blur switch on each layer that is selected. Next, at the top of the timeline panel, I'll make sure the main motion blur button is active and checked in blue. So I'll press spacebar
to activate preview, and now we have a subtle
blur effect applied to the building layers as
they quickly animate in. Now this is a very subtle
effect, but does add just a little more
dynamic to the sequence. So I'll press spacebar to stop the preview and with all the building layers selected, I'll press U to toggle away the keyframes. So now we can think about the next part of the animated sequence. So with the buildings done,
let's move onto the clouds. So to start, I'll toggle the
visibility back for the clouds by clicking on the eye
icon for each layer. So what I want to do here
is animate the clouds in, as the buildings start to rise up, and move across the screen
slowly behind the type after it falls into place. So to do this, let's start with the fade effect of the clouds. So I'll come and select
the top cloud layer. I'll press and hold Shift and
select the bottom cloud layer. With them all selected,
I'll drag the layers over to the right so the start of the layer bars start at .5 of a second. Next I'll drag the time
indicator while holding Shift to snap to the start of
the cloud layer bars. And I'll press T to activate the opacity settings for the layers. With the opacity setting
visible, I'll come and click on the stopwatch for the first layer. Upon click, this will set an opacity keyframe for each layer. Next I'll drag the time
indicator over to one second. So I'll come and click the
diamond shape for the first layer to add a second opacity
keyframe, and upon click, this will apply a second opacity keyframe to all the selected layers. So with the second keyframes placed, I'll drag the time indicator
while holding Shift to snap to the start of the cloud layers, so the time indicator is directly on top of the first set of keyframes. With all the layers still
selected, I'll click into the opacity percentage
value of the first layer. In there I'll type zero and press Enter. Upon pressing Enter, the
zero percentage value should be applied to each selected layer and all the clouds will
appear to have disappeared. So I'll press spacebar to activate preview and now we can see that first,
the buildings start to rise, and just after that the
clouds all fade in nicely. And I'll press spacebar to stop. Next, I need to animate
them across the sky. So with all the layers selected,
I'll press P to activate the position settings for each layer. So just like with opacity,
I'll start by dragging the time indicator while holding Shift, back to snap to the start
of the cloud layers. With the position setting visible, I'll come and click on the
stopwatch for the first layer. Upon click, this will set a position keyframe for each layer. Now I'll drag the time indicator all the way to the very end of the comp. I'll come and click the diamond
shape for the first layer to add a second keyframe for position. And upon click, this will
apply a second keyframe to all selected layers. So now what I want to
do is place each cloud where I want it to be at the
end point in the timeline. So I'll press F2 to deselect
all the cloud layers, and to begin, I'll click on
just the top cloud layer. So here I can see it's the
big cloud in the top right. So with it selected,
I'll press and hold Shift on the keyboard and press
the left arrow a few times to move the cloud over
to the left slightly. Now I won't do this too much
as I don't want the cloud to move to far across the screen. So once done, I'll select
the cloud layer below. With it selected, I'll
press and hold Shift from the keyboard and press
the left arrow about five times to move the cloud over to the left. Next, I'll select the cloud layer below. And again with it selected,
I'll press and hold Shift and press the left arrow about seven times to move the cloud over to
the left just a bit further. I'll select the next cloud layer below, and this time, it's the
big cloud over on the left. So with it selected,
I'll press and hold Shift and press the right
arrow about three times to move the cloud over to the right. Then I'll select the
next cloud layer below, and with it selected,
I'll press and hold Shift and press the right arrow five times to move the cloud over to the right. I'll select the next cloud layer, and with it selected,
I'll press and hold Shift and press the left arrow three times. So with the next cloud layer selected, this time I want the cloud on the right to move right as well. So with it selected,
I'll press and hold Shift and press the right arrow about five times to move the cloud over to the right. So lastly, I'll select
the last cloud layer, press and hold Shift and
press the right arrow about three times to move
the cloud over to the right. So with the time indicator
at the end of my section, I'll press N on the keyboard to set the end of the workspace area. So now it spans the entire section. And now I'll press spacebar
to activate preview. So now we can see, after
the clouds fade in, they now move slowly across the skyline. Because we moved some of
the clouds across the sky further than others, we can see some move faster than others. This gives us a little more
dynamic to the sequence. And I'll press spacebar to stop. So that's the buildings
and the clouds sorted. All that's left to
animate is the last part of the sequence, the type. So I'll select each
cloud layer and press U and this will toggle away the keyframes. And I'll come back to my
type layers and the pin, and click the eye symbol to
toggle back the visibility. So what I want to do here
is animate the type in just after the buildings
have finished rising. As soon as the city scene is established, I want the five top places
to visit in type to fade in and the London type to
swoosh up underneath. When this lands, we will
have the pin animation fall into place to complete
the animation sequence. So to start, I'm going to
drag my time indicator across to find the time just after
the buildings finish rising. So I'll drag my time indicator over to about 1.5 seconds on the timeline. At this point, everything
has finished animating in, so I'll begin here. I'll select the top pin layer,
and while holding Shift, I'll select the bottom type layer. With them all selected,
I'll drag them over while holding Shift to snap the beginning of the layer bars to the time indicator. So first, I'll start with opacity. For now, I don't want to focus
on the pin layer at the top, so I'll just click the eye icon to toggle the visibility off. So I'll press F2 to deselect the layers and I'll click back
onto the top type layer and also select the layer
below while holding Shift. So with these two layers
selected, I'll press T to activate the opacity setting for both layers. With the opacity setting visible, I'll come and click on the
stopwatch for the first layer. Upon click, this will set the opacity keyframe for both layers. Next, I'll drag the time
indicator over to two seconds. I'll come and click the diamond
shape for the first layer to add a second opacity keyframe, and upon click, this will also apply a second opacity keyframe
to the layer below. So with the second keyframe in place, I'll drag the time indicator
while holding Shift to snap to the start of the type bar, so the time indicator is directly on top of the first set of keyframes. With the layers still selected, I'll click into the
opacity percentage value on the first layer and in there, I'll type zero and press Enter. Upon pressing Enter, the
zero percentage value should be applied to each layer and the type will appear
to have disappeared. Now if I scrub my time
indicator over the keyframes, we will see the type appear as
we reach the second keyframe. Now I don't want the two type layers to fade in at the same time. I want the London part to
appear just afterwards. So what I'll do next is click and drag the London layer bar left,
so the first keyframe sits directly on top
of the second keyframe for the layer below. So now, as I scrub the time
indicator over the keyframes, we will see the top
layer animate in first, and then the second. So now I need to add movement
to the London type layer. So I'll drag the time
indicator while holding Shift to snap to the start of
the London type layer. With the London type layer selected, I'll press P to activate the
position setting for the layer. With the position setting visible, I'll come and click on the stopwatch. Upon click, this will set the position keyframe for my layer. Next, I'll press U on the keyboard and the keyframes will disappear. I'll press U again and now
I will see the keyframes for both position and opacity. What I want to do next is place
the second position keyframe to match the second opacity keyframe. So I'll drag the time indicator
over while holding Shift to snap to the second keyframe of opacity. I'll come and click the
diamond shape for position to add the second position keyframe. So now I'll drag the time indicator back while holding Shift to
snap to the first keyframe. With the time indicator directly on top of the first position keyframe,
I'll press and hold Shift on the keyboard and press the down arrow about 16 times to move
it down considerably. So right now, we can't see the type, but what we can see is the
path over the anchor point to show us how far the type is moving. So once I have moved the type down on the first position keyframe,
I'll place my time indicator at three seconds and
press N on the keyboard to snap the end of the workspace area. And I'll press spacebar
to activate preview. So here we can see the
buildings and clouds animate in, and then the type animates
in nicely afterwards. Though right now, the
movement of the London type is a bit plain, so now I'm
going to add some easing. So I'll press spacebar to
stop and I'll come and focus on the keyframes applied
to the London type layer. To begin I'll right-click
on the first keyframe for position, scroll down
to Keyframe Assistant, scroll across and select Easy Ease Out. Next, I'll right-click on
the second position keyframe, scroll down to Keyframe Assistant, and move across and select Easy Ease In. So now we have easing
applied to both keyframes. So I'll press spacebar
again to activate preview. And now the movement of
the London type layer is moving much smoother. So all that's left to do now is bring back the pin animation to finish the sequence. So I'll come and click the
eye icon for the pin layer to toggle back the visibility,
and then drag the pin layer so the start of the layer starts on the second keyframe
for the London type layer. So the effect I want here
is the pin to animate in once the London type layer lands. So I'll carefully drag the workspace area out a little to four seconds, and I'll press spacebar
to activate preview. So just after the London type lands, the pin drops to complete
the word London, perfect! And that completes the animation sequence. But now we have one small
issue we need to resolve. So I'll press spacebar to stop. And if we look at the
pin layer, we can see it does not last the full
duration of the composition. Now this is because we
duplicated this pin comp from an instance used elsewhere
on the video presentation. All we have to do now is
simply extend the duration of this pin comp to last the
full duration of this comp. So I'll double-click into the
pin comp to open in a new tab. With the comp open, I'll press Command + K to open the composition
settings, and right now we can see this comp
is set to five seconds. So I'll come in and change it
to 10 seconds and click Okay. Then I'll come and click and drag the pin layer right to the end, like so. Then click X on the pin
comp tab to close it. Back in the out row comp, we
can now see the pin comp layer has been extended, but
the edit is still short. So I'll click the end of the
highlighted edit on the layer and drag it right to the end. So to finish, I'll come and double-click on the workspace area to span it to the entire length of the comp. I'll drag the time indicator
to the start of the comp, and I'll press spacebar
to activate preview. And that completes the animation sequence. First the buildings rise
up, the clouds animate in, the type appears, the
pin drops into place, and the clouds nicely pan across the skyline in the background. So that's how to animate a
simple 2D scene in After Effects. Now this may have seemed
tedious and complex, but this is what it can take
to animate something like this. Now at this point, if
you've been following along, I would recommend you save your document. This completes the last section
in the video presentation. Everything is now in place,
and we are now almost ready to finish and export the video. However, there are a few
more cool things we can do to add to this final city composition. What I want to do next is
add some further animation to some of the buildings to add details. In this example, we can see at the start, the Tower Bridge lowers,
the London Eye rotates, a helicopter flies across the sky, and some London buses then
travel across the bridge. In the next video, we are going to look at how we can isolate some of the artwork and apply some really nice 2D animation. So in the next video, we
are going to finish off our video presentation by adding these subtle animation
details to the sequence. This will be the final
video in this project where we will complete
the video presentation ready to export, so see
you in the next video. (upbeat music)
