Short Pencil Animation - A Breakdown
- Final Result -
I began designing a simple pencil in Illustrator then proceeded to add shading using Photoshop. Next, I imported it into After Effects as a pdf.
The circle was created using the ellipse tool with a trim paths modifier and keyframed in the graph editor to create a more natural pacing, following the movements a wrist would make when drawing. The circle was then stylized with two turbulent displace effects to mimic a rougher, more realistic imprint. One turbulent displace evolution property was animated using a simple script:
effect("Turbulent Displace")
time*2000;
In order to avoid having to use keyframes.
The circle was created using the ellipse tool with a trim paths modifier and keyframed in the graph editor to create a more natural pacing, following the movements a wrist would make when drawing. The circle was then stylized with two turbulent displace effects to mimic a rougher, more realistic imprint. One turbulent displace evolution property was animated using a simple script:
effect("Turbulent Displace")
time*2000;
In order to avoid having to use keyframes.
The shadow came into existence by duplicating the pencil layer with the drop shadow effect attached with the "shadow only" property ticked. This was so I could separate it from the pencil itself and angle it in such a way that the pencil looks like it descends down unto the paper and is affected by an external light source.
This shadow follows the pencil's X and Y position loosely by having a script copy its respective transform values with the following script:
var Follow = thisComp.layer("Pencil.pdf").transform.position
Follow + [750, 150] + transform.position;
This allows me to still be able to keyframe the position of the pencil to lift it up and down where needed, and full control over the rotational properties as opposed to simply parenting the shadow layer to the pencil layer.
This shadow follows the pencil's X and Y position loosely by having a script copy its respective transform values with the following script:
var Follow = thisComp.layer("Pencil.pdf").transform.position
Follow + [750, 150] + transform.position;
This allows me to still be able to keyframe the position of the pencil to lift it up and down where needed, and full control over the rotational properties as opposed to simply parenting the shadow layer to the pencil layer.
