Expert: Andre Hickman - 7/23/2008

Question
Any way to do frame by frame (traditional) animation on After Effects?

I recently got the program and appreciate any help.

Answer
Hey Jim,

Sure you can, but I'm not sure you would want to try do draw the frames in After Effects.

I would suggest drawing your frames in a paint program, and naming them in a numbered sequence (i.e. running-man-0001, running-man-0002, etc...) Then when you import into After Effects, import the first file and make sure that you have the "sequence" box checked.  It will import the frames as a movie sequence.

You can animate in After Effects, but I am not sure what type of drawing or art you are trying to develop, so I wouldn't tell you to start their in drawing the frames.  If you are doing some simple stuff, it could be worth trying in AE, but the more complex the drawings, I'd suggest working in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc...

Also do your drawings in layers.  Animate the characters, then put the background, props, etc. in separately in After Effects. That way you can have control over doing things like depth of field focus pulls (where you make a background object blurry and the foreground in focus, and then pull the focus to the background object, leaving the foreground out of focus...)

If you want some in depth tutorials just do a search for "After Effects Tutorials" in google or yahoo, and you will get a better idea of what the software is capable of. Then if you have any further questions, feel free to contact me.

Cheers,
Andre'