Frame-by-frame drawing in After Effects

[Jason Jantzen]

Don’t get me wrong, I find having the option to onion skin in AE invaluable probably a few times a month on various projects, sometimes even more, especially with some of the style I do.

Not sure if an onion skinning type feature in AE would address this, but I’ve looked around in forums and such to figure it out, and hopefully it does, but when you’re painting on a layer, you have to have the comp window opened alongside the layer window and use it as a reference when you paint. An example would be like an animated brush stroke on top of a bunch of other layers in your comp and you’d like to SEE those layers for reference as you paint. That right there would be really handy.

Maybe that’s an adobe.com/go/wish moment 😉

Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj

[Chris Thomas]

I remember it taking me a while to figure out how to paint on an image or comp—it’s surprisingly unintuitive. But if you:

• Precomp what you want to draw on top of
• Hit command+b to select the brush tool
• Double-click the precomp

It will open in a layer window, not a comp window.. and you can paint right on top of it. Super unintuitive.. but hey, that’s what it takes.

I’ve never understood needing to paint in a layer window. Personally I don’t see why it can’t be done simply in the comp window, so you don’t have to precomp the items you wish to draw on top of.

[Jason Jantzen]

Painting in the comp window? You mean like in Apple’s motion? haha, I only say that to poke at the simplicity with which Motion does certain things. I haven’t used it since 2010, but I’m sure it hasn’t gotten worse.

Thanks for the painting tip. I like it, but I don’t like being forced into a layer window like you say.

Another Motion poke – particle emitter AE!? Come on. That should be as intuitive as, if not maybe even more than, Particular and more robust than anything Apple, or Hit Film, or anyone can offer.

Sorry about that, end poking.

Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj

[Chris Thomas]

Glad you like the tip! It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

I never use the AE particle emitter; Particular is just too powerful! I probably use it in some way on every project I do.

[Joseph W. bourke]

The only decent implementations of frame-by-frame animation have always been in stills oriented packages – Photoshop, and (at the time) Fractal Design Painter. Painter had the ability, in addition to frame by frame animation (with onion skinning where you could choose the number of frames before and after your active frame), to record stroke by stroke, resulting in some very nice, painterly animations (hence the name, I suppose). Combustion had some cell animation capabilities, which far surpassed AD, but they also had incorporated the Paint software, another stills based package. I’m guessing that since frame by frame animation is stills based, that maybe it’s an afterthought for motion based software. That’s not to say that AE shouldn’t have it; I’d like to have the option to use it native to AE, but it wouldn’t be called for often in my work. I’ve done frame by frame animation on a Dubner broadcast system, in Painter, Combustion, and Photoshop, and I personally preferred Painter, but I now use Photoshop. But that said, there are effects in AE which would apply perfectly to the frame by frame style, so it would be nice to have it native (in addition to the full Photoshop brush set).

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Chris Thomas]

Very nice insight, Joe.. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that this functionality is added in the future. In the meantime, I’ll try to find workarounds, and will update this thread if I come across anything particularly great. And, of course, if anyone else out there wants to weigh in—I’m sure we’d all love to hear from you.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Thanks Chris –

Let me know if you find anything – oh…I forgot to mention Artrage, a very nice, very inexpensive natural media paint package:

https://www.artrage.com/ – I don’t think it has onion-skinning.

On poking around, I also found this, but it’s pretty expensive:

https://www.tvpaint.com/v2/content/article/products/tvpap.php

And since we were talking about Corel Painter (or I was, anyway), it appears to be still used for this type of work, and it’s on sale right now for $299. Here’s a PDF with the workflow:

https://www.corel.com/content/pdf/px/tutorials/premium_Gitanjali_Rao.pdf

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Oh…one more:

https://anime.smithmicro.com/anime-pro.html

This one may not fit your desired workflow at all, but it might be just what you need. Although it might look like a toy on first glance, based on the content it’s creating in the demo, it’s really very powerful.

And there’s also CrazyTalk Animator, which I own and use. But it’s a different animal altogether:
https://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/animator/animator_videogallery.aspx

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Francis Gelinas]

Photoshop has video layers that import seamlessly in AFX, no need to export etc.

–
Francis
couleur.tv

[Frank Boxman]

Has anyone tried the Paint & Stick plugin yet? It’s a few years old so wasn’t around at the start of this discussion. I’ve just downloaded the trial version from AEscripts. It has union skinning and way more brush options.

https://aescripts.com/paint-and-stick/

Other hand drawn options are Photoshop, maybe Paint TV – which I have yet to look in to. I would prefer to work in After Effects because it’s my go to program so I’ve been looking for a best fit for me. Paint & Stick might be it.