After Effects Tutorial - Worm Animation

Worm Animation from Emma Nicholson on Vimeo.

To start this animation I created this simple worm character in Adobe Illustrator, and to ensure I can edit each body part I put each into its own layer. So my character was bold enough to be seen on screen when placed among other objects I needed to make the strokes thicker than I would for print, this is a typical rule of thumb for cartoons and animation for screen. Once my character was complete I imported it into After Effects. From this point I learnt how to change the anchor point of a layer and how to work with keyframes from the options panel below the layer. To make my character move I added keyframes and lowered and raised each segment of the worm, I subtly rotated some parts to make it look realistic. The shortcut for rotating was helpful (the R key) and it sped up my workflow as I moved each body part. Since the movement was very repetitive throughout the animation I coped the keyframes to keep the movement consistent as I was luckily to makes mistakes from doing it over and over again, and it also made the process a lot faster. However I could only copy the keyframes one layer at a time which did hinder me a little. Once the basic movements were in place I tweaked the increments in which the worm moved as some were inconsistent and looked odd, I had to do this keyframe by keyframe. At this point I noticed some features on my character I didn't like so I went back into my illustrator file and deleted them, and since the file is linked into After Effects it transferred the new character seamlessly, and I double checked the play back to make sure. I also added a background and a Sun which I made in Illustrator too however after another look I didn't like the sun so I removed it. I then added textures to my background using the multiply effect and lowering the opacity. I did some final tweaking and then exported my video in HD and then at a lower 720p resolution for the internet so it uploaded quickly.