After Effects 3: The Hand

The third after effects workshop involved adding a boiling effect to hand drawn imagery. To do this we needed 3 renderings of the same image, however each of them would be slightly different as no human can draw the pen lines exactly the same three times, even when tracing. I created three renderings of a leaf I had sketched for the Studio brief Organic Object. Using these three images in a loop creates not an obvious movement but more a sense of movement and reality to the object, known as a boiling effect. We were also shown how to add the effect to a line drawing to make it look like the line is being drawn in or the image is being shaded in on screen. This sketched in effect was done by adding a mask layer to the layer that would be getting sketched in, then adding a zig zagged line covering the full drawing (like a scribble). We then added a stroke to it (effect > generate > stroke), then increased the stroke on this to ensure the full drawing was covered. Then added start and end key frames, starting at zero and ending at 100%. Finally changing the paint style on the stroke to reveal the original image, then the effect should play successfully. Below is my completed animation from the workshop.

Leaf_Animation from Eve Whelan on Vimeo.