[Marcus Dawson]

Trying to do something very similar myself. It’s for a chemistry video where something happens that straightens out a strand. The finished thing I’m trying to recreate is below.

Not a very hard image to bash out in illustrator. But I want to start with it all ‘scrunched up’ like the line in the image below. It would also be quite good if it had the ‘matchsticks’ on it all pointing in random directions.

The squirly pinkish line in the second image is the start ‘position’ for the yellow line in the first.
So can I set up the illustrator image as the finished (or even a perfect straight line version) and then distort it to a path I can key frame in AE

Any pointers will offset the grey hairs appearing on the head over this :o)