You can do anything in After Effects. If you’re looking to improve your work, don’t do these:
1. Stop Adding Motion Blur to Everything
I did this, because I thought I should. It took longer to render, so it must be worth it. It certainly has its place. Especially in VFX, if you’re compositing elements into live footage, you should match the motion blur so it looks like it was captured by a camera. Animation is traditionally captured one frame at a time, with no blur. That’s typically a look a lot of 2D motion graphics are trying to replicate. So, unless you’re using motion blur for a specific reason, you should leave it off.
2. Stop Adding Too Much Stuff
You’ve just learned a new technique, or found some expensive plugins that fell off the back off a truck, and a stock library of loads of cool cell-animated assets. But your job is to communicate a message clearly with a scene. Not jam as much as you can into it to show off and make it look expensive and premium, because you’ll end up doing the opposite.
3. Stop Creating Unorganized Projects.
At first, you won’t even realize its happening. You can see all of your elements in the project panel, its fine. You’ve only got two comps to keep track of, one more can’t hurt. But let your guard done for one second, and you’ve got this. If you’re working with others on a project, trust me no one wants to deal with your mess. And if we’re being honest, neither will you. You’ll save so much time in the long run by keeping it organized.
4. Stop Putting Everything in One Comp
It can be tempting to create multiple scenes in just one composition, especially if you’ve got transitions or an element we follow through multiple scenes. You can easily end up with hundreds of layers and it will make working in that comp unnecessarily slow and more importantly, a nightmare to navigate. Sometimes, it is necessary, but most of the time you should find or make moments where you can make a seamless transition to a new comp. Like in movies where they make it look like one continuous shot, but there are hidden cuts cleverly placed where we didn’t even notice.
5. Stop Using Plugins as a Crutch
Plugins can be a great way to augment your toolkit. To let you do what you want faster and to give you some more options. But Don’t let them take control. There are some easing plugins that make it a bit easy to avoid the graph editor. If we’re letting a tool control the speed for our motion, what are we here for, that’s the whole show. You’re letting someone else take the wheel at that point. You should be pushing your abilities to make creative decisions and execute them well.
6. Stop Eyeballing.
There will be many times where you need to animate something in the center of your composition. Make sure it’s actually in the center. Even if its off by just a smidge, that triggers something instinctual, coded deep inside our DNA, that something is off. After Effects has an alignment panel. Make sure that panel is visible, and never let it out of your sight.
7. Stop Puppet Pinning Everything
Im not denying the puppet pin is fun to use. But, 90% of the time it looks janky. Stick to using it for subtle motion and you’ll be fine. For character animation, building a rig will serve you much better.
8. Stop Animating the Fun Stuff First
This is the eating your veggies first approach. Take the time at the beginning to block out all the more important, larger motions. Like a more detailed animatic. Then animate it in passes with more and more refined motion. You’ll be able to manage your time and project better. Then at the end, treat yourself.