[John Cuevas]

Well, hope it helps in the future.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Here a couple methods you could try. Copy the path in illustrator, add a solid above your vector graphic, add the Generate > Write On effect, click the brush position stop watch and cntl+v the illustrator path to the brush position. Change the Brush Time Properties to “Size”, and then you can keyframe the brush width, to the irregular sizes you need. Now just change your vector art to alpha matte. One drawback to this method, is you either need to adjust your illustrator artwork to be the same comp size in AE, or will have to make adjustments in AE to get the paths to match up.

2nd idea would be to use the motion sketch tool. Create a solid, turn off the visibility and do a motion sketch capture, tracking your artwork. Now you can copy those positions keyframes into the brush property of write on effect. Select all the keyframes, right-click and you can turn them into “Rove Across Time” keyframes. And you have the ability to keyframe the stroke width.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

It generates two, one from when you start and one when you end. If you select the layer you painted, press “U” to reveal the keyframes, or “E” and then twirl open the paint effect. You can’t really rove the keyframes, but you could add more keyframes and then adjust them to speed up the pauses.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You can use the align tool to align them, then use the distribute functions to spread them apart. Are you having issues importing your graphic?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

The image is it’s own layer with an alpha channel. YOu can change the image color by adding a number of different color effects, like fill, hue/saturation, tint.

Understanding layers and alpha channels is key in using AE. I’m assuming you are pretty new to AE, so I suggest you check out the links that are mentioned in this thread. Provides links to a lot of basic training for AE. https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/202/900520

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I strongly recommend the following:

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/01/getting-started-with-after-eff.html, in part 4 there are quite are links to two great free online training resources. Also free is Adobe TV

Also, I really like lynda.com, they have great teachers for learning AE, for beginners, I would start with Chris Meyers. He & his wife also wrote some of the best books on After Effects. Amazon Link of their books. & there website Chrish Design

Youtube also has a lot of really great, and some not so great tutorials, a google search will help you find a lot more…there is so much out there.

As to your question, Is After Effects Easy to Make Motion Graphics?. I believe After Effects is the best program in the world for making motion graphics, but it’s not easy, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. It took me 3 months to just learn the basics of AE 14 years ago….and I find myself learning new things about the program today.

Try out some of those links and if you have more questions, feel free to ask.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

There are a few automated scripts you can purchase that can take a lot of the work out of mask tracking, Tracker Bundle. You might want to check them out.

Also, I believe you can do this with Mocha, but you may need the purchased version, not sure though.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Here’s a couple of free presets from red giant people

Fluid Smoke

Magic Smoke

Search around there, quite a few. Or try RGTV…I found this searching for smoke:

Smoke Search

This one looks promising: Lost Smoke Monster

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

One thing you might try is to break down what you are writing into multiple paint effects, either per word or character if you can.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Achieve what? You need to be a lot more specific, please give the timecode and exactly what the effect you want to emulate.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.