How to make a Character Animation from Among Us in After Effects

Published on November 10, 2020

Adobe After Effects Tutorials

among us, character animation, expressions, puppet tool

Character Animation in After Effects

An animation of a character usually goes from an Adobe Illustrator to After Effects workflow. Illustrator has all the right tools to make such characters more easily. You can then import your Illustrator file into After Effects and continue with animations.

The great thing is the dynamic link between the two programs, which makes it possible to always make changes to your character, even if you’re already working in After Effects.

Making animations takes a lot of time and it’s therefore advised to learn how to work with expressions. In this tutorial video we have used 2 expressions:

Repeat the keyframes:

loopOut()

Change the opacity to 0 if the opacity of another layer is 100 and visa versa:

if (thisComp.layer("Walking Comp").transform.opacity == "100") { 0 }else{ 100 }

In ‘GAME OVER‘, a recent animated short film, we tackled similar techniques. In collaboration with Adobe we also made 4 tutorials that cover more about the basics of this Illustrator – After Effects workflow.

The Among Us Hype

It doesn’t need many popular streamers for a game to become a big hit. Among Us is currently a big trend and it definitely deserves it. If you’re familiar with the social game ‘werewolves’, you already know how it works.

You’re all crew members of a space ship and need to complete different tasks. But one of the members is the bad guy, everyone calls it the suspect. It’s up the the suspect to sabotage and kill other crew members without getting noticed.

The graphics could either come out of a nineties game, but it proves again that a great game is all about gameplay. And besides, who doesn’t love the cute character animations!

Learn Animation in After Effects

Big thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. Recently I followed one of Jake Bartlett’s classes on animations in After Effects. It’s a great class that I can recommend anyone who’s into motion design.

With an active subscription you can watch tens of thousands of other classes on Skillshare. Grab your free 14-day trail now and start learning new skills.