Animation Crash Course + After Effects Animation Tools

Animation Crash Course: 6 Big ideas and how to use them together

April 6, 2022

We follow Director / Animator Alex Grigg on Instagram and he posted about his Animation Crash Course that explains six fundamentals of animation. Learn about speed, acceleration and deceleration, squash and stretch, overshoot, and arch/ The video illustrates the principles clearly so that you can recreate these in Adobe After Effects, Maxon Cinema 4D, or whatever tool you are using. He doesn’t focus on any specific software in the video, just the concepts behind animation. Then, we’ll share some great tools to help you put these principles to work.

Animation Crash Course: 6 Big ideas and how to use them together

We’ll post class 2 when it’s available and link it back to this page.

Animation Tools for After Effects

Below, check out an assortment of plugins, scripts, and more, that will help you create fantastic animations in After Effects, using some of the fundamentals described in Alex Grigg’s Animation Crash Course.

Motion Boutique Newton for After Effects

The 2D Physics Engine For Adobe After Effects

Newton 3 brings realistic physics to After Effects, making your 2D composition layers act like solid objects that interact with each other – just like in the real world. It gives you many ways to control the properties of your objects, including type, density, friction, bounciness and velocity. You can also change world properties, like gravity. What’s more, Newton 3 allows you to create realistic joints between objects, so you can easily create complex motion. Once you complete your simulation, the animation is recreated in After Effects with standard keyframes, so you can adjust the timing however you choose. Easy, no?

Learn MoreTry Motion Boutique Newton for After Effects for free!

mamoworld Squash & Stretch Pro

Smart Keyframe Assistant

Create animations in no time with Squash & Stretch, featuring a vast range of ready to use behaviors, carefully handcrafted by professionals and controlled by an intelligent system. This Pro version includes over 60 extra behaviors and 350 extra sound effects and can also be extended with additional behavior bundles.

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Ebberts + Zucker Rubberize It!

Turn any layer to Plastic, Rubber or Goop in seconds.

Reacts naturally to motion without keyframes. Based on the kind of physics they taught in school!

Rubberize It! is a remarkably easy way to make your animations squash and stretch like rubber. It works with type, stills, video, shapes, vectors and any other layer that can accommodate puppet pins.

Learn MoreTry Ebberts + Zucker Rubberize It! for free!

Ease and Wizz for After Effects

A set of expressions for After Effects that give you more ways to interpolate between values.

The obvious use is in motion, but they can be used on animated properties of any kind. They're applied with an After Effects-ish palette that can be docked, so it's very easy to use.

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