After Effects: Create Swirls
After Effects Tutorial VideoFort Jon creates swirls using Adobe Illustrator, then shows you how to imports the ai file to create a swirly animation. Start out by creating a 1920x1080 pixels, color mode RGB project in Adobe Illustrator. Then grab the Pen Tool, create two points, and make the line curved. Next grab the spiral tool (right click on the line tool) and create a spiral near the curved line. now select an endpoint on the curved line and the end point for the spiral and go up to Object_Path_Join.
After Effects Tutorial VideoFort Jon creates swirls using Adobe Illustrator, then shows you how to imports the ai file to create a swirly animation. Start out by creating a 1920×1080 pixels, color mode RGB project in Adobe Illustrator. Then grab the Pen Tool, create two points, and make the line curved. Next grab the spiral tool (right click on the line tool) and create a spiral near the curved line. now select an endpoint on the curved line and the end point for the spiral and go up to Object_Path_Join. This will join the line and spiral. Select this layer and name it Stem. Now create a few layers. Each layer will have its own spiral branching off from the stem. Name each new swirl “Branch” with corresponding number. Once you have the spirals created select everything by Drawing a box around it. With everything selected make sure there is no fill color, only a black stroke. From there go to your paint brushes and select the charcoal brush (or any brush of your choice). Save this Illustrator project as Swirls.ai and open up After Effects. Create a new comp 1920×1080, 24 fps, duration 10 seconds and name it Swirly.
Then import the Swirls.ai project as a composition and bring it into the Swirly comp. Open the swirls comp and you’ll notice it has the same layers as the Illustrator project did. Select the Stem layer and press CMD+E (Command E) on your keyboard. This should open up Adobe Illustrator. Select everything and go to View_Outline. This will show you just the outline of the swirls you have created. Now you need to go to the stroke options and turn off the stroke for all the layers. With everything selected you will copy the path. Close Adobe Illustrator, DO NOT SAVE. Go back into After Effects and go into the Swirls comp. Select the stem layer and past the path you just copied. Double click on the Stem layer to open it in a new layer window. You’ll notice that a mask has been pasted. Position the mask on top of the stem and then take the masks for the branches and place them on each branch layer accordingly. You now have a path for animation. Now apply a stroke effect to the Stem layer. Turn the opacity all the way up and set the stroke width large enough to cover the Stem completely. Now set keyframes for the Start and End controls. Depending on how you want the animation to reveal you will increase or decrease these values. Also set the Paint Style to Reveal Original Image. Move forward in time and set a keyframe for either your Start or End Values. Once you have the keyframes set to reveal your stem, move onto the branches and repeat the process. Time everything out and you should now have animating swirls! You can now take this comp into your Swirly comp and duplicate it and reposition it as much as you like to create many swirls for a highly dynamic and complex looking animation. Apply other effects such as glow to make the swirls pop. Set the swirls in a 3D space and add in a camera to create some awesome motion graphics too! What cool effects videos do you create? Post them in the comments below! Be sure to Like, Subscribe and head to http://www.VideoFort.com to use amazing videos for your projects!