After Effects Tutorial - How To Make A Cardboard Cutout Animation

[Ruan Lotter]

I made an After Effects tutorial on how to create cardboard cutout animations! Let me know what you think

Thanks for watching!
Ruan

[A.I.1]

It's a good animation and a good tutorial. Perhaps the legs could move too.

Also, technically if the giraffe is eating the grass it would have more difficulty (bending knees and bending down according to a site) while it would be easier for it to eat leaves from trees.

[Ruan Lotter]

Thanks for the comment Yup I know the animation is not very realistic but I am basically just explaining the workflow in this tutorial.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Ruan

[Martin_Ritter]

Thank you for sharing this tutorial, Ruan!

In an addition, alternating textures will give a more realistic cut-out-feeling. Like if you have different sheets of paper cutouts.

Just drop some textures in an comp, let every texture display for maybe 1 second and then use this comp as texture overlay to your assets.

You can also wiggle() every asset, so they are not aligned perfectly frame by frame. PosterizeTime() will give a nice stop-motion-effect to the wiggle().

And last, you can also reshape all assets every frame (or every 15 frames, or whatever) with one of the deform-effects.

Cheers,

Martin

[Ruan Lotter]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the comment - yeah using different textures is a very good idea! Will also check out the PosterizeTime expression

Thanks,

Ruan

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

That was a pretty good tutorial from an enthusiast but there are a few things that keep it from reaching the level of an excellent professional grade tutorial. The problems are in workflow, finding assets on the web, and efficiency. Let me give you a few pointers.

1. Copyright - You suggested going to Google images to find and use an image in your project. There are copyright concerns that must be addressed when using any image or artwork that you did not create. You need to make sure that you are not infringing on copyrights. Failure to do so, even on a project you are not being paid for can result in problems. If the person that owns the copyright on the cardboard texture sees the tutorial and wants something from you they can demand you pay, take down the content or even sue you. You must check copyright on all images you use in your work. Adobe Stock would have been a better suggestion and including a suggestion to always check the copyright would also help. Fair use does not apply unless it is clearly stated on the page hosting the images. A federal judge just threw out a case where an artist claiming the right to use photos from the web and modify them for his project argued that he had the right to modify the images and use them without permission. The folks suing the artist can proceed with their suit and the artist is going to loose.
2. Scaling rastor images - You picked an image that was smaller than your comp, then scaled it up without any explanation that a scaling an image above 100% always reduces the quality. A suggestion to find an image sufficiently large for your project would have been a good idea. It is also not a good practice to select images that are a lot bigger than your composition frame because this increases render time and the detail in the image also can suffer. Ideally any raster image used in a project should be at or near 100% scale but not over about 120% scale at some point in the project.
3. Pre-composing efficiency - Adding the step of double clicking a nested (pre-comp) to open it can be avoided if you check the little box at the bottom of the pre-compose panel to open the comp. If you know that you are going to immediately go into the pre-comp and make adjustments selecting this option would speed up the process and is a good habit to get into. If you do not intend to immediately edit the nested pre-comp then unchecking the option is the way to go.
4. Adding additional copies of the same artwork from the project panel - It is far more efficient to duplicate a layer using a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl/Cmnd + d) than it is to drag it into the timeline from the Project Panel. I would have added the footage (cardboard texture) to the main comp once, then duplicated it and started the pre-comp work on the duplicate. I probably would have made all of the duplicates that I needed in the first step.
5. No mention of keyboard shortcuts - All operations that have keyboard shortcuts show the keyboard shortcut right next to the option in the menu. It helps for you to point that out and then use the keyboard shortcuts in your project.

I hope this helps you in the future. Tutorials are far more valuable if they get right to the point, teach efficient workflows, and use the best techniques to achieve the results you want. You did a good job and the presentation was quite good but it could have been a lot better. When you get really good at creating professional quality tutorials you will have a good chance getting paid for your work as a trainer.