Learn how to animate photos and create basic characters in the style of “South Park”, “Monty Python” and “Jib Jab” in this tutorial, Cartoon Animation Basics, by After Effects expert Richard Lainhart.

Character animation in After Effects can produce some very effective and entertaining results. In this tutorial you will learn all the basics of creating easy-to-produce characters syncing their mouth and body motions to voice and music tracks.

Richard’s first project is a Monty Python-style Mouth Animation. Richard animates his own mouth in sync to a voice-over track! (This is a real mind bender since he is also narrating the tutorial!) He shows you all the steps required to create this popular effect including duplicating, splitting, masking layers, and even designing silly-looking teeth.You’ll also learn how to “spot” the audio track with markers to synchronize the animation to the audio.

The next section is all about Replacement Animation with Time Remapping. Here you’ll learn how to easily “swap out” a series of heads with different mouth shapes to create some very cool quick-cut lip-sync animation effects. You’ll also learn how to generate automatic lip-sync with the Split effect using audio keyframes and scripting via “Expressions”—no JavaScript experience required.

In the last section, Richard shows you the basics of After Effects’ puppet animation features where you’ll learn to how to create a character in Photoshop, create hinged joint points (or “rigging”) for the character in After Effects, and then animate that character in perfect sync to a soundtrack! Included in this project are tips on designing a character for rigging, techniques for cutting up the character into separate parts in Photoshop , how to create correct Parent-Child relationships for your character’s parts in After Effects, and finally, how to make your character dance to the music.

If you want to learn how to animate characters, this After Effects tutorial “Cartoon Animation Basics” by Richard Lainhart is the perfect collection of videos to get you headed on your way!

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Importing and Duplicating the Head Layer
3. Setting Up the Mouth Layer
4. Adding Teeth
5. Marking the Audio Source Layer
6. Syncing the Mouth Motion to the Audio
7. Animating the Teeth
8. Importing the Replacement Parts
9. About Time Remapping
10. Applying Time Remapping to the Replacement Layer
11. Applying the Replacement Keyframes
12. Refining the Replacement Animation
13. Applying Split to the Head Layer
14. Automatic Lip Sync with Audio Keyframes and Express...
15. Adjusting the Effect with Expression Modifiers
16. Prepping the Character and About Alpha Channels
17. Tracing the First Limb with the Magnetic Lasso
18. Placing the First Limb on its Own Layer
19. Cutting Up the Rest of the Character
20. Importing the Layered Character into After Effects
21. Setting the First Joint Rotation Point
22. Parenting the First Limb
23. Adding Additional Joints and Setting Layered Hierar...
24. Creating the Final Hierarchies
25. Marking Beats in the Music
26. Animating Foot Tapping
27. Animating the Torso
28. Animating the Legs
29. Completing the Leg Animation
30. Animating the Arms
31. Finalizing the Scene