Line animation ('La Linea')

[finv1995]

Hey guys,

I've been doing some research on this style of animation I want to do, but I'm not getting much result. I hope you can help me!

I want make an animation that looks like this: Gigi D'Agostino - The Riddle - YouTube or La Linea 141-142 - YouTube​. It's going to be a 2 minute animation so it's important to find the best and most time efficiënt to do this. The trick here is to make different shapes (and their outline) flow into each other. So far I've come up with two different ways to do this:

1 - I made two shapes in the same shape layer, which I can then give the same stroke. The problem here is obviously that I can't place a whole animation worth of vectors in one shape layer. Can I achieve this effect without putting every shape in the same layer?

2 - I made every Vector twice. One layer on top with a solid color (made it gray here for clarity), and one at the bottom with an outline. It works, but not perfect either:

A) I have to make two layers for every single object in the animation.

B) It will probably be very hard to make the Line do any fancy stuff besides what I can achieve by moving the shapes around.

Thanks in advance!

[Mylenium]

Not sure what you are asking. Some of this stuff is simply laborious and will require tons of duplicate layers and pre-comps. You can't expect there to be a simple "one fits all solution". Most likely you'll have to use each and every technique in the book, including ones you haven't even mentioned yet like applying stroke layer styles or the Vegas effect to pre-comps.

Mylenium

[finv1995]

What I'm essentially asking is: Can I place two different vectors in AE and have their outlines flow into each other / combine their strokes?

I'm not asking for a one fits all sollution. I'm asking for a few of those techniques in the book you mentioned. Which I "did not even mention yet" because, well, I don't know about them. Which is why I'm here : ).

Thanks for the reply

[ScooterD76 · Accepted solution]

It seems to me you could create all your vector animations as need be, precomping, etc. as needed, and then nest it as one layer in a final comp where you apply the stroke.

[finv1995]

That's exactly what I needed! Thank you so much Scooter and Towerguy.

[Towerguy]

As ScooterD76 suggests; precompose your animation then in your main comp use Layer>Layer Styles>Stroke.