Welcome to lesson six of Animated Loops. In this lesson,
we're going to learn how to create a continuously zooming loop.
Our character will be on a watch,
wearing a watch with himself on that watch wearing another watch. And so on.
Let's get started.
I have our default character rig here from lesson two,
which I'll be using later. First,
let's create a watch. Create a new composition named 'Watch1' 1080
by 1080,
30 frames a second, 12 seconds long. You can design the watch any way you like,
just make sure that you use Shape layers as because they are vector layers,
they can be scaled up to any size without losing quality.
I use repeaters for the minutes and hour markers on the watch face.
The minutes markers are each six degrees apart and the hours 30 degrees
apart.
I created an infinity loop logo before which I copy and paste into the watch
composition.
I add a very slight shadow behind the watch face elements,
but this will become more visible as the watch is scaled up during the loop.
Okay. The watch is done.
Open the default rigged composition.
Name it 'Character1'.
It's still 1080 by 1080,
but make this 12 seconds long.
We can delete the Shadow and Background.
Put the Watch1 composition at the bottom of the layers.
Sets it to Continuously Rasterize.
Scale the CharacterNull down to around 85%. Rotate both
feet nulls to -10 degrees and
move that Position up slightly to -80 and 300.
For this animation, I'm also going to give him smiling teeth.
So I'll give the MouthDetail layer a white Fill effect.
Reduce the length of each arm in the wrist Effects Controls to 50,
because I want the arms to always be straight.
Adjust the Paths of the fingers and thumb on the left hand Shape layer to make
the hand into a point.
Copy all of the shapes within this layer.
Delete all of the shapes from the HandRight layer and paste the copied ones.
Flip the Vertical Scale of the HandRight Shape layer,
then parent HandLeftNull to CharacterNull and HandRightNull to
CharacterMirrorNull,
which we'll need to reveal with the Shy button if it's currently hidden.
I did this because I want the hands to stay still while the body bounces later.
Show
the shoulders,
move the LeftShoulder Position to -135 and -120.
Move the HandLeftNull close to the body to make a shorter arm because this is
the hour hand at around -90 and -170.
Set the Rotation to 42 degrees.
Duplicate the Watch1 layer and move this above the limbs.
Parent it to HandRightNull,
make the Scale 3.5% and the Position -25
and 0.
Don't worry about the watch not having a character on it for now.
For the right hand, we're going to rotate this by rotating the Mirror nulls.
But first we need to unparent any other layers parented to those nulls.
Parent FootRightNull to CharacterNull instead
and HipRight - to BodyNull.
We can link these rotations together so add an expression to the Rotation on
BodyMirrorNull and connect this to CharacterMirrorNull.
Now we can just rotate this null to control the right arm.
You can hide the shoulders now
and I'll just extend the end of these MirrorNull layers.
At five seconds,
keyframe the Rotation of CharacterMirrorNull at -42 degrees,
three frames earlier, make this -41.5 degrees,
about five frames before that -48 degrees,
then at four seconds, keyframe it at -48 degrees again.
Easy Ease all of these keyframes,
then add a loop in offset expression.
This makes the hand tick every second with a slight bounce.
Let's add some bounce to the body, too. At
the start,
select the BodyNull and keyframe the Position at 0 and -5.
Seven frames later, 0 and 5.
And eight frames after that, copy and paste the start keyframe.
Add Easy Ease.
And a loop expression from Character Tool.
On the FaceNull at the Start,
animate the Anchor Point.
Keyframe that at 0 and 5,
seven frames later, 0 and -5.
And eight frames later, 0 and 5.
Easy Ease,
add a loop expression
and move three frames later to give the face a delay behind the body movement.
I want to animate the face looking up towards the watch as the camera zooms in
now.
At three and a half seconds, keyframe the
FaceNull Position and Rotation at 0. 20 frames later,
move the Position to 38 and -68,
and the Rotation to -10.
Easy Ease both sets of keyframes.
This doesn't need to loop as this whole animation will be continuously flying
past the camera.
I want to add a blink halfway through the head turn.
Three frames before the midpoint of the head turn,
keyframe the eye Size at 60 and
60. Three frames later,
change the Height to 0.
Three frames after that, copy and paste the first keyframes.
Add Easy Ease to the Start and End.
I also want the shape of the mouth to change in time with the head turn.
At the start of the head turn,
keyframe the MouthMatte Path and Stroke Width.
At the end,
increase the Stroke Width to around 42 and keyframe the Path.
Back to the first keyframe,
reduce the Stroke Width to around 30 and flatten the Path up
slightly.
Easy Ease all of these keyframes.
I'm going to add some movement to the right fingers too, animating
the Path of Finger1 and Thumb.
First shift the Rotation keyframes of CharacterMirrorNull three frames later so
the Rotation hits on each second.
At 425 on the first Rotation keyframe before it moves, keyframe, the Paths.
Four frames later, bend them both back.
Four frames after that, copy and paste the original keyframes,
but then bend them slightly in the other direction.
Four frames later, back, very slightly again.
And four frames after that, back to the Start keyframes.
One second before the last keyframe,
set another keyframe so the first and last keyframes are one second apart.
Add Easy Ease.
Add a loop In expression from Character Tool.
This adds a slight bounce on the finger as the watch ticks.
Now the watch animation is done.
Delete the Watch1 layer from the bottom of the composition.
As you can't have a composition nested inside itself,
we will need to make copies of each composition,
which we can then nest inside each other to create the loop.
Duplicate the Character1 composition twice for three total copies,
duplicate the Watch1 composition three times for four total copies.
In the Watch4 composition,
the watch face can remain empty because this will be so small that you won't see
the detail.
In Character3,
the character should be wearing Watch4.
In Watch3,
drag in Character3 on top, set to Continuously Rasterize.
Duplicate the Character3 layer,
name this 'Character3 - Shadow' and move it above the Face layer.
Move it 5 pixels lower, give
it a Fill color the same shadow color as the other elements.
In Character2,
they should be wearing Watch3.
Move the Watch3 layer to start at six seconds.
Then enable Time Remapping and extend the start of the layer to the
beginning.
In Watch2,
drag in Character2 and duplicate it for the shadow.
Reposition and recolor that layer.
And set both character layers to Continuously Rasterize.
In Character1,
the character should be wearing Watch2.
Set that layer to start at three seconds, enable
Time Remapping and extend the start to the beginning.
In Watch1,
drag in Character1 on top,
set to Continuously Rasterize. Duplicate that layer, move above the face,
rename it 'Shadow'.
Move it 5 pixels lower
and make it dark blue.
Now, create a new composition named 'ZoomingLoop'.
1080 by 1080, 9 seconds long.
Drag in Watch1 and set to Continuously Rasterize.
Create a background layer the
same color as the watch face.
Place Start and End markers between three and six seconds
and set the work area.
Create a new null.
Name it 'ZoomNull'.
At the End, at six seconds keyframe the Position, Rotation and Scale.
Then go into the Character1 composition.
Also at six seconds, select the Watch layer,
duplicate it and unparent it.
Select the Position, Scale and Rotation and copy these values.
Then delete that layer.
Back in ZoomingLoop on the ZoomNull layer at the Start paste all of these
values.
Then duplicate this null layer and name this RotationNull.
Delete the Rotation keyframes from ZoomNull and set the Rotation to 0.
Delete the Position and Scale keyframes from Rotation null.
Set the Scale to 100% and the Position to 540 by 540.
We did this because we want the loop to scale from the watch as the center
point, but rotate from the middle of the composition.
At the Start, parent ZoomNull to RotationNull and Watch1 to ZoomNull.
At the End, duplicate the Watch, unparent it and move it behind.
Move the layer three seconds earlier and
reparent to ZoomNull.
Go into the Character1 composition and one frame before six seconds,
end the Watch layer, so there's no watch after six seconds.
This means that in the loop, there's only one watch visible at the Start.
Let's play the loop.
The Start and End points are matching up, which is good,
but the speed of the movement is all wrong.
This is mainly down to the speed of the Scale animation.
Select the Scale and open the Graph Editor.
You can see that it's currently a Linear Movement, but to make it a smooth zoom,
we need to make it an Exponential Curve.
You can do this roughly by using the Convert Vertex Tool to drag out handles,
making the curve flat at the start and steep at the end,
or more easily,
you can just select the keyframes,
right-click and in Keyframe Assistant select Exponential Scale.
This creates a perfect Exponential Curve by adding a keyframe on every frame.
Now, if you close the Graph Editor,
the Rotation keyframes can just stay as they are because it's just spinning from
the middle.
But for the Position, we also want to do some adjustment to the graph.
We can separate the dimensions of this as the Y Position always stays at 0 so
we can just delete those keyframes.
Then on the X Position,
using the Convert Vertex Tool,
we can create an upside down version of the Exponential Curve on the Scale,
flatten out the Start and pull the handle out to around the midpoint of the
loop. Then make the curve at the end a bit steeper.
Close the Graph Editor and play the animation.
Now the loop should be very smooth with a continuous scaling zoom.
That's where we're going to end the loop for this lesson.
I'll see you in lesson seven.
Thanks for watching.