How to animate the wheels on this train? [beginner]

Question

This is an image that I drew for my friend, that she wanted to put on a shirt for her side business (she makes baked goods and alcoholic treats for parties) and now we are looking at doing an animated version. The image is here: https://imgur.com/a/CPgOY

The image was drawn in Photoshop, and I have everything on separate layers. I am thinking of importing the layers into AE and then manipulate them each. I've been able to do that before in the past for another project.

Basically, we want to make the train run along a track with its wheels spinning, and the conductor on top waving his hand with the bottle. The passengers would also move a bit, and if possible, I want to have smoke coming out of the stack at the front. Is all of this possible? I'm thinking of the following method, but of course if there's a better or easier way, please let me know:

- I'll put all the wheels onto a separate layer each in Photoshop, import everything into AE, and then once I get them to spin at the same time, I'll parent them to the train so that they move along with it as it goes across the screen (will this work?)

- I'll put the conductor's arm on a separate layer in PS, so that I can get it to wave in AE by using the Position and Rotation tools.

- The same for the passengers' arms, in terms of putting onto a separate layer and then manipulating with the Position and Rotation Tools.

Do you think that this will work? I'm currently working to put the different objects onto separate layers, but I'm worried the most about the wheels - how can I get them to roll together all at once? Should I manipulate one wheel in AE and then copy that layer various times but in smaller sizes?

Thank you so much in advance, and have a happy New Year.

P.M.B · Accepted Answer

Sounds like a good plan. Your idea of getting one wheel set & duplicating it is smart.

You could create simple expression on a wheels rotation time*number (example time*25 or time*-25)this will roatate the wheel over time (rotation speed depends on number & rotation direction depends on positive or negative number). But this gets more complicated if you plan on having the train speed up or slow down (would require a value multiplier in the form of an expression control slider effect).

Depending on the look of the wheel you might even be able to get away without having it spin at all if there is other motion going on to create the illusion that the train is moving (like a background or smoke). If people believe the train is moving their brains will "fill in" the wheels rotation. You just have to see how it looks as you go. To get super accurate different diameter wheels will rotate at different speeds but again...if the logo is done right nobody should be looking at the wheels anyway.

Smoke is easy too. Just create two or three simple smoke puffs in photoshop. Bring them into AE and animate the scale, opacity ,rotation & position so they fade in small from the smokestack, rotate and move backward and then fade out again while scaling up the entire time. Once you have all the smoke image layers animated create a null, parent the smoke layers to the null and parent the null to the train.

Mylenium · Answer

how can I get them to roll together all at once?

A simple pick-whip expression could take care of this, though in your case it won't work. There's nothing to animate the wheels since they are already drawn in perspective. you would have to draw one in flat side view and then turn it into a 3D layer to be able to animate it in straightforward fashion using rotation. Than you can link up more copies easily. Separating the layers is of course a good starting point, but you will still need to adjust the anchor points in AE to get correct results. Smoke cna be created in a million ways. In your case perhaps using multiple duplicates of the smoke layer with Turbulent displace applied using different settings every time might work and give interesting results while retaining the original look somewhat. Otherwise you wiull have to look into particle systems and how to manipulate the look with additional effects liek blurs, which for such a simple project could be overkill.

Mylenium

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