For this project I wanted to give myself a challenge. Before starting school I began to teach myself the process of character rigging in After Effects, something I had wanted to learn for some time. I had begun a project, but lost momentum somewhere along the process.
My first step when creating my animation was to learn how exactly to rig a character in After Effects. I used Jake Bartlett’s Skillshare class on using and animating with the Duik plugin.
Working though the tutorial, I designed a character. There were a number of problems with the initial build of the character. First, I had way too many layers, which I had started with intentionally because I thought it would give me more control when animating. Additionally, I created my character forward facing when the tutorial had suggested something like three-quarters perspective, which proved to be a problem later on.
When I had finished creating my character, I began the long and tedious process of rigging everything in After Effects. This part wasn’t too bad, though I did have a number of hiccups when it came to parenting layers.
Animating was where I had the most trouble. I had hoped to have my character casually cruising down the street on her roller skates. I eventually realized that this animation was not within my current abilities given the amount of time I had left if I wanted to be able to turn in something complete. I played around and found a way to simplify the animation that worked well enough to my liking and aesthetic.
When I finally exported my animation, I uploaded it into EyeJack. I found this experience to be more or less as simple as when we did it in class.
Here’s what I ended up making. All things considered, I’m pretty proud of it.