How to make a portrait illustration animate in 3D

[val B]

Hello,

I am a semi-beginner in After effects.

I have drawn a portrait (illustrator) that is already 3D, I would like to make the head turn towards the camera and smile.

Any ideas how it is best to do it in After Effects? I was thinking of filming a head turning towards the camera and smiling and then drawing the frames but the screenshots will be blurry if I do this. Plus I will need to start my Illustration again...:(

I attach the portrait, it would be great if anyone has an idea of how I could approach this as simply as possible!

Thank you in advance!

[Mylenium]

Not sure what you are asking. Unless you care to venture into actual, geometry-based 3D with cinema 4D, all we're talking about is classical frame-by-frame hand cel-type animation. Whether that's done e.g. using the Puppet tool and otehr distortion effects or by converting the artwork to native masks/ shape layer paths and animating those path shapes is ultimately secondary. There are no easy, simple answers here. It's going to be a lot of tedious manual animation work with tons of keyframes.

Mylenium

[val B]

Thanks Mylenium, I thought that would be the case! Key frames, I have not used the Puppet tool yet, so maybe that could be worth looking at, it looks pretty good. Previously I have drawn the frames and just put them in as Keyframes (Animate) but it's not always so smooth looking...

Thanks for the approach tips!

[val B]

In case you were interested to see the result, I finished a few weeks ago but it took a while! I did it in Animate after all, seemed easier with just 1 layer with Keyframes...it's pretty clunky, with mroe frames it would be smoother I guess!

[P.M.B]

looks great!