(soft music) - Hello and welcome to the 47th video in this Beginner's Guide
to Adobe After Effects. In this tutorial I'm going to demonstrate how to undertake a simple 2D
animation in After Effects. So in the previous video we
animated a simple 2D scene. We took the 2D composition we
built in a previous episode and applied animation to
create this animation sequence. This completed the final section
to our video presentation. Now in this video we are going to apply some further animation to some of the buildings
to add some details. So 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 this video we are going
to look at how we can isolate some of the artwork and apply
some simple 2D animation. So we are going to finish
our video presentation by adding these subtle animation
details to the sequence. And this will be the final
video in this project where we will complete
the video presentation ready to export. So here I am where we left
off in the previous episode where we animated the 2D scene. 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. The 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
47, Simple 2D Animation, and open the simple 2D animation 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
outro 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 I'll click on the
timeline at five seconds to place my time indicator, and I'll press N on the keyboard to set the end of my workspace area. With that said, I'll press
space bar to activate preview. So this is what we created
in the previous episode. We have the buildings rising up, the clouds fade in and
move across the sky, the type appears and the
pin drops into place. So what I'm going to do now is
isolate some of the buildings and apply some further animation so we can bring the cityscape
to life a little more. To do this I'm going to
start with the London Eye. What I'm going to do here is make it so the London Eye wheel rotates around. So back in the outro comp, I'll come down in the timeline and click on the London Eye layer. And I'll zoom into the London Eye building so I can take a closer look. And if that's looking a little pixelated, I'll change the resolution factor to four. So looking in the layers panel, we can see the single layer that is currently the London Eye. With the layer selected, I'll press U, and we can reveal the
keyframes applied to scale that creates the rising animation. Now if I toggle down the
contents of the layer, we can see there are two
parts to this artwork, Group 1 and Group 2. When I develop this
artwork in Illustrator, I created the illustration in two parts, the main wheel at the
top and the base below. If we select the main layer then we will see the entire layer is selected. And if I click to select each group, we will see the bounding box
select each part of the layer, the bottom base part
and the top wheel part. And if I click on the
eye icon for each group, we can toggle off the visibility of the base part and
the wheel part like so. So right now I have the
scale-animated sequence apply to the entire artwork. What I need to do now is apply some animation to
the wheel part separately. So first I'll select the
top group and press Enter to rename the layer part
and I'll name this Base. I'll select the group below, press Enter and rename this to Wheel. So now I'm going to add the
rotation animation to the wheel. So I'll click on the wheel layer part and click the triangle to
toggle down its contents. Now what we can see here are all the parts that make up this artwork path, and there's quite a lot here. Now if I scroll down to the very bottom, we can see some transform options. So on a layer we have transform options for the entire layer as a whole and transform options for the
individual parts of the layer. So I'll click down to
reveal the transform option for the wheel part of the layer, and here we can see all the typical animation settings we can apply. So I'll click and drag the time indicator while holding Shift to
snap to the second keyframe already applied to the entire artwork. Next, I'll come down and click
on the stopwatch for rotation to add the first rotation keyframe. Next, I'll drag the time indicator all the way to the end of the comp. Then I'll come and click the diamond shape to add a second keyframe for rotation. With my second keyframe in place, I'll double-click the diamond keyframe. And up will pop the Rotation properties. So at the top here we have Revolutions. So in here I'll click and
type one and press OK. So now between the first keyframe
and this second keyframe, this wheel is going to rotate once. So I'll double-click on the workspace area to set it to the entire
duration of the comp. I'll press Alt + forward
slash to snap the comp to fit the composition panel, and I'll press space
bar to activate preview. So we have the rotation just right. But right now it looks like
it's rotating way too fast. So I'll press space bar
to stop and I'll come back and double-click on the
second rotation keyframe. I'll click back into Revolutions
and enter 0.5 and click OK. I'll press space bar
again to activate preview, and again it's still a little too fast. So I'll press space bar to stop and I'll come back and double-click on the second rotation keyframe. I'll click back into Revolutions, and this time enter 0.2 and click OK. I'll press space bar to activate preview, and that is looking about the right speed. So I'll press space bar to stop and I'll scroll up in the timeline panel so I can see my selected layer. Then I'll press U on the keyboard to simply reveal the keyframes applied to the layer. And I'll press space bar
again to activate preview. So that is the first building sorted. The London Eye is
looking really nice there rotating slowly on the cityscape. Now we can move on to the next building. So next I'm going to focus
on the Tower Bridge building. What I'm going to do here is make it so the Tower Bridge
starts with the bridge up, then I'll animate it
down, and after it lands, I'll have some London buses travel across. So back in the outro comp, I'll come down in the timeline panel and click on the Tower Bridge layer. With it selected, I'll right-click on the
layer and click Pre-compose. Upon click, the Pre-compose
window will appear. For this I'm going to rename the comp Tower Bridge Animation. I'll make sure Adjust composition duration to the time span of the
selected layers is checked, and I'll make sure open
in new comp is checked. And I'll click OK. Upon click, we will now open a new tab with just the Tower Bridge artwork inside. So I'll zoom into the
Tower Bridge building so I can take a closer look, and if it's looking a little pixelated, I'll make sure the resolution
factor is set to full. So why have I created a pre-comp here when I didn't for the
previous London Eye layer? Well, in this instance,
we are going to add some artwork to this comp
which we will be doing shortly. Composing it in this comp
as opposed to the main comp will enable us to focus just on this part and keep the main composition
as streamlined as possible. So looking in the layers panel, we can see the single layer
that is currently Tower Bridge. And if we select that layer and press U, we can reveal the
keyframes applied to scale that creates the rising animation. Now if I click to toggle down
the contents of the layer, we can see there are lots of parts that make up this Tower Bridge artwork. So I'll press V to activate
the selection tool. And now if we click Group 1 and 2, we can select these and
see the bounding box area around the left and right
bridge part of the artwork. For now we only want to pay
attention to these two parts. So I'll click on Group 1 and press Enter to rename the layer part, and I'll rename it to Bridge Left. Next, I'll click on
Group 2 and press Enter to rename it to Bridge Right. So I'll zoom right in, so I can see the two bridge
parts nice and clear. And now I want to rotate each bridge part so the position is set to up. And I'll begin with the left bridge part. So I'll select the left bridge part and focus on the anchor point. Notice that the anchor point for this group is set in the middle. Now what I want to do here is reposition the anchor point to the bottom left. So with the layer part selected, I'll come up to the top of the
interface to the Tools menu and click on the anchor point tool. With this active, I'll come and click on the
anchor point in the center, and click and drag it to the bottom left of the bridge like so. Next, I'll click the
right bridge part layer, and with the anchor
point tool still active, I'll click on the anchor
point in the center and drag it down to the bottom right. Perfect! So I'll click back onto
the Bridge Left part, and this time toggle down to
reveal the transform options. For rotation, I'll come down
and click and drag to minus 40. Upon drag, we will now see the bridge part rotate up exactly how we want it. Because we placed the anchor
points in the bottom left, when we rotate, it will
rotate from that point, allowing us to rotate the bridge up from the bottom left like so. So I'll drag my time
indicator to one second which is just after the building rises, and I'll click the stopwatch for rotation to add the first rotation keyframe. Next, I'll click on the
Bridge Right part of the layer and I'll do the same. I'll toggle down to reveal
the transform settings, and I'll come down and this time click and drag the rotation to plus 40. Then I'll come and click
the stopwatch for rotation to add the first rotation keyframe. Now I'll come up and select
the main layer and press U to quickly snap to reveal the keyframes applied to the layer. So now we have the first scale keyframes for the rise part of the animation, and our first keyframes for the rotation for the bridge part of the artwork. So next, I'll drag my time
indicator over to two seconds. And for the Bridge Left part, I'll click into the rotation settings which is currently set to minus 40, and here I'll type zero and press Enter. Upon pressing Enter, the bridge part will snap
back to its original place, and we will see our
second keyframe applied. I'll do this again to
the Bridge Right part. Click into the rotation setting and type zero and press Enter. Upon pressing Enter, the bridge part will snap
back to its original place and we will see our
second keyframe applied. So I'll click on the
timeline at four seconds and press N on the keyboard to set the end of the workspace area. And I'll press space
bar to activate preview. So now we can see the
animation of the bridge. The building rises up
with the bridge open, and then the bridge lowers down. Perfect. So I'll press space bar to stop, and now I need to bring
in the London buses. So I'll come over to the project panel and double-click into the gray area. And upon click, we will
get a browser window. So I'll navigate to the Project Folder and click into the Project Assets folder, in there I'll click
into the Images folder, then into the AI folder, and I'll click on the Vehicles
folder and click Open. Upon click, we will have a new
folder in the project panel, and inside we will have
two vector artwork files, London Bus and Helicopter. Now these are some artwork
files I have prepared earlier. So first I'll click and
drag the Vehicles folder into the Assets folder,
then into the Images folder, and then into the Vectors folder. So I'll click on the London Bus file and press Command + forward slash on Mac or Control + forward slash on PC to quickly place the
image layer into my comp. With the vector layer now in my comp, I'll right-click on the layer, scroll down to create and
click Create Shape from Layer. Upon click, we will get a new shape layer, and the vector layer
below will still remain. I'll click the layer
below and press backspace to delete it from the layer stack. So now I'm going to scale down the bus and animate it traveling
across the bridge. I'll press V to activate
the selection tool. I'll select the bus and
click and drag it down and over the bridge like so. I'll press S to activate the
scale settings for the layer. I'll click into the scale settings and type 10 and press Enter. Then I'll drag the bus over to the left just on top of the left pillar like so. Now I want two buses to
travel on the bridge, one on the left and one on the right. So with the layer selected, I'll press Command + D on Mac or Control + D on PC
to duplicate the layer. This time I'll click and drag the layer over to the far right of the bridge. I'll come up to Layer, Transform,
and click Flip Horizontal. So with my buses in place,
I'll now animate them. So I'll drag the time
indicator while holding Shift to snap to the last keyframe
for the bridge parts. I'll select the top bar
and press and hold Shift to select the layer below. With them both selected, I'll press Alt + open square bracket to trim the start of both of the layers. With both layers still selected, I'll press P to activate the position settings for each layer. Then I'll come and click the stopwatch for position for the top layer, and we will set a keyframe
for position on both layers. Next, I'll drag the time indicator right to the end of the comp and press F2 to deselect the layers. Next, I'll come back and
click on the top layer and drag the bus from the right and over to the middle of the bridge while holding Shift so it
drags in a nice straight line. Upon dragging, this will
set a second keyframe for position on the layer. Next, I'll select the layer below and click and drag the bus over to the far right of the bridge while holding Shift so it
drags in a nice straight line. Upon dragging, this will
set a second keyframe for position on the layer. Perfect. So I'll come and double-click
on the workspace area to fill the entire duration of the comp. And I'll press space
bar to activate preview. And we can see the buses now
travel across the bridge nicely once the bridge is lowered. But right now the buses
are on top of the bridge, so I'll press space bar to stop, and I'll click and drag the
Tower Bridge layer on top. So now I'll click the x on the
Tower Bridge animation tab, and we will come back to our outro comp. So now down in the layers we can now see we have a comp layer for Tower Bridge which we can tell by the
comp icon next to its name. Also notice we have a new comp layer over in the project panel. So I'll come into the project panel and click and drag the new comp layer into the pre-comps folder. Then I'll come down and
click into the timeline and press space bar to activate preview. So now after Tower Bridge rises, the bridge lowers and we can see some London buses travel across. Perfect. So now I'm going to focus on the final animation for the city scene. Next, I'm going to animate a helicopter flying across the city skyline. And what I'll do here is
apply a very simple effect to make it look like the
helicopter blades are spinning as it flies across the city skyline. So back in the outro comp, I'll come over to the project panel and into the Vehicles folder
we brought in previously and placed into the Vectors folder. So I'll click on the Helicopter file and press Command + forward slash on Mac or Control + forward slash on PC to quickly place the image
layer into my main comp. With the vector layer now in my comp, I'll right-click on the layer, scroll down to Create and
click Create Shape from Layer. Upon click, we will get a new shape layer, and the vector layer
below will still remain. I'll click the layer
below and press backspace to delete it from the layer stack. So now I'm going to
scale down the helicopter and animate it traveling across the sky. So I'll press V to select the helicopter and click and drag it down and over to the far right like so. I'll press S to activate
the scale settings, and I'll click into the scale settings and type 25 and press Enter. So with my helicopter in
place, I will now animate it. So I'll drag the time
indicator while holding Shift to snap to the start
of the pin layer below. I'll press Alt + open square bracket to trim the start of the layer. Next, I'll press P to activate the position settings for the layer, then I'll come and click
the stopwatch for position. Next, I'll drag the time indicator right to the end of the comp. Then I'll drag the
helicopter from the right over to the left just before
the Shard building like so while holding Shift so it
drags in a nice straight line. Upon dragging, this will
set a second keyframe for position on the layer. So next I'm going to
animate the propeller blades to give the illusion they are rotating. So I'll zoom right in on the helicopter, and if we toggle down
the helicopter layer, we can see the contents. Here we can see some groups that make up the helicopter artwork, and if we click on these, we can see the bounding
box around each part. So right now we just want to focus on the propeller blades of the helicopter which are Group 1 and 2. So for Group 1 I'll toggle down to reveal the transition settings
for the layer part. So with my time indicator
at the start of the layer, I'll click the stopwatch to
add a keyframe for opacity. So with my first keyframe set, I'll zoom right in on the timeline panel as close as I can go. Now I'll press and hold
Command on Mac or Control on PC and press the left arrow two times. This will move the time indicator two frames along the timeline. Next, I'll come and
click the diamond shape to add a second keyframe for opacity. Next, I'll press and hold
Command on Mac or Control on PC, and press the right arrow once. This will move the time indicator one frame along the timeline. Now I'll come and drag
the opacity to zero, and that will apply a third keyframe. Next I'll press and hold
Command on Mac or Control on PC and press the right arrow two times, and this will move the time indicator two frames along the timeline. Next, I'll click the diamond shape to add a second keyframe for opacity, and now we have four keyframes. The first two keyframes are
to reveal the right blade and the second two keyframes
are to hide the right blade. So what I'm going to do now
is duplicate these frames across the layer to repeat
the on and off sequence. So with my time indicator
over the fourth keyframe, I'll press and hold Command
on Mac or Control on PC, and press the right arrow once
to move the time indicator one frame along the timeline. Now I'll come and click and drag over the four previous keyframes, and I'll press Command + C on Mac or Control + C on PC to copy, and I'll press Command + V on Mac or Control + V on PC to paste. Upon paste, we will replicate
the keyframes from before. So now we have eight keyframes. So I'll click and drag my time indicator while holding Shift to
snap to the last keyframe. I'll press and hold Command
on Mac or Control on PC and press the right arrow once. This will move the time indicator one frame along the timeline. Now I'll come and click and drag over all the previous keyframes, and I'll press Command + C on Mac or Control + C on PC to copy, and I'll press Command + V on Mac or Control + V on PC to paste. And upon pasting we will replicate all the keyframes from before. So now it's just a case
of repeating this process until these keyframes are replicated across the entire duration of this layer. So I'll come to the last keyframe, I'll press Command on
Mac or Control on PC, and press the right arrow once. This will move the time indicator one frame along the timeline. Then I'll come and click and drag over all the previous keyframes, I'll press Command + C on Mac or Control + C on PC to copy, then I'll press Command + V on Mac or Control + V on PC to paste. Upon paste, we will replicate
all the keyframes from before. So I'll continue to repeat this process until they cover the duration
of the layer like so. So once they're across the
entire duration of the layer, I'll press Alt + forward slash to fit the comp to the composition window. With the workspace area set to the entire duration of the comp, I'll press space bar to activate preview. And now we can see the right rotor blade is flicking off and on
to give us the illusion of the blade spinning. And I'll press space bar to stop. So now all I need to do
is copy the same keyframes onto the left rotor blade. So I'll select all the
keyframes for opacity, and I'll press Command + C on Mac or Control + C on PC to copy, I'll click on the Group
2 part of the layer and toggle down to reveal
the transform options. With my time indicator right
at the start of the layer, I'll press Command + V on Mac
or Control + V on PC to paste, and this will paste all the keyframes. So I'll come up to the layer and press U to snap it close and reveal
all the keyframes applied. So I'll click to place my time indicator just before the helicopter layer and I'll press space
bar to activate preview. Okay, so the blades are
flickering as I want them, but right now it's
looking a little bit slow. I'd like them to flicker a bit faster so I'll press space bar to stop. Now we have applied a lot
of keyframes to this layer, and it would be a lot of work
to go in and tweak them all. So one handy trick I can do here is use the time stretch feature. So I'll right-click on the
layer, come up to Time, come across and click on Time Stretch. Upon click, the Time
Stretch window will appear. So in the stretch factor
I'll type in 50 and click OK. Upon click, we will notice the layer bar is now half of what it was. So again I'll click the time indicator just before the helicopter layer and press space bar to activate preview. So the blades are flickering faster, but on this occasion I'd like them to flicker
just a bit faster. So I'll press space bar to stop and I'll right-click on the
layer, scroll up to Time, come across and click
on Time Stretch again. This time in the stretch factor I'll type in 30 and click OK. Upon click, we will notice
the layer bar shrink again and is now slimmer than what it was. So again I'll click on the timeline just before the helicopter layer and I'll press space
bar to activate preview. So now the blades are
animating just right. But now the helicopter
is moving way too fast. So I'll press space bar to stop, and I'll place my mouse cursor over the far right end of the layer bar and I'll click and drag
it to the end like so. Next, I'll click the
last position keyframe and drag that to the end. So I'll click the time indicator just before the helicopter layer and I'll press space
bar to activate preview. And that is much better. But now the keyframes do not extend the duration of the comp. So I'll press space bar to stop and I'll zoom right in on the keyframes. So first, I'll click and
drag to select any keyframes that do not match up with the two parts and I'll delete them. Next, I'll click and drag to select all the keyframes for opacity. I'll press Command + C on Mac or Control + C on PC to copy, then I'll move the time indicator to the end of the opacity keyframes, make sure the gap is roughly the same, and then I'll press Command + V on Mac or Control + V on PC to paste. Now if the keyframes still don't extend to the duration of the comp, I'll click again to the end
of the opacity keyframes and move the time indicator to the end, making sure the gap is roughly the same, and then I'll press Command + V on Mac or Control + V on PC to paste. So once the keyframes extend
to the duration of the comp, I'll press U on the keyboard
to hide the keyframes away to just see the layer bar. I'll double-click on the artwork area to expand to the full width, I'll place my time indicator
at the start of the comp and I'll press space
bar to activate preview. And that now completes the
full animation sequence for this last section on
the video presentation. So I'll click back onto the Main Comp tab over on the far left
of our timeline panel, and now we can see we have
all seven sections complete. So at this point, if you've
been following along, I would recommend you save your document. So I'll drag the workspace area over the end of section seven, I'll place my time indicator at the start of the composition, and I'll press space
bar to activate preview. So right now I don't have the sound on for the background music. In this instance I have
toggled the sound off for the music layer at the bottom. Though if you're following
along with the file, you should be able to hear the
background music just fine. So over the last 17
episodes we have built up all the individual elements that make up all seven sections of
this video presentation. We have covered loads of techniques and ways to build the
project, manage content, and animate in 2D to create a
video presentation like this. So that's it guys. We have finished the video presentation. All the hard work is
done which now brings us to the final video in this
section on the course. So once we have finished
our video presentation, it is now time to export. In the next and final video, I'll be showing you how
to wrap up this project and export it off ready to share. Now I'll also be giving
you some good pointers on where you can go next after this course to continue your learning and
build on top of everything we have learned in this course. So see you in the next and final video. (soft music)
