Creating Dynamic Peeling Animations in After Effects

For this lesson, we're working with the peeling animation folder, and there's a peeling animation started project right here that I'll open up. This file was created in an older version of the program, so that's why it says converted up here. I'm just going to file, save as, and give it a new name.

Save as. You can call it whatever you want, I just usually use my name and this for the class files. My name, and then whatever the lesson is on, in this case peeling.

But you can of course call your files whatever you want. If you're working for a specific client, you should name the files for the client's work. So what I'm going to do is create an animation where the different pieces kind of like roll together.

Like they're furling, unfurling, peeling, that sort of thing. This is the actual result. This is in the preview movie folder right there, by the way.

We'll watch it again. Starts off with nothing, and then all the pieces fold in. So in order for this to work, you basically need some kind of starting graphic.

It's been cut into pieces. This is actually a side profile of this man, and it is in Photoshop cut into pieces. You can do that in any image editing program, cut into pieces.

And I basically added this little outline around it to look kind of like paper, because I thought it looked kind of nice. So that's why I did that. But that extra paper outline is not necessary for the lesson.

So this was done in Photoshop. So in Photoshop they were saved as groups, which when you import the Photoshop document as a composition will be converted into their own precomp. So I've got everything nice and organized here.

I'm just going to start with this one. I'll hide the top three layers and just work with this. And what I'm looking for is an effects and presets CC page turn.

I'm going to add that to just this head and neck layer. And you can kind of see something happen right away. So there's this control called fold position.

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And basically it allows you to fold the layer over itself like that. Okay. Now what I want to do is in the controls up here, just choose where it should fold from.

So I think I'm going to animate this coming in from the right to the left. So I want the fold position to be over here on the left side of the layer. So I'm just going to look for top left.

I think that's a good idea. If I play with that fold position, I can adjust it and eventually move. And that's what I'm looking for.

This kind of movement. Okay. So I want it to end being flat.

I want the animation and being flat. So I'll do a 15 frame animation, I think. And I'm just going to turn on the stopwatch for fold position.

I'll zoom in a little bit on the timeline and I'll press U to reveal the keyframes. So I can actually see a little time in here. I'll go back to the beginning and now I'm going to add that keyframe for the fold position.

If I zoom out a little bit in my timeline, I'm just rolling my middle mouse key. You could also just use the magnifier right there. And you can either set the fold position by clicking on this little point control and effect controls and clicking in your window.

Or, again, I'm going to zoom out a little bit more. I'm pressing H on my keyboard to get the hand tool to pan around. You can just manually drag the fold position control.

Either way works. I'll go back to fit. And now when that animates, this is what happens.

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It folds on. Okay, not bad. I like that.

Let's see what I can do with head and mouth. I'm going to grab head and mouth. Let's apply CC page turn to that.

And its setting is actually going to default to bottom right corner right there if I grab the fold position. Yeah, that's actually what I want. So I'm going to use that.

So I'll just make sure it ends about the middle where it's flat. Yeah, that's good. I'm at 15 frames already.

Turn on the stopwatch. For fold position, I can do it right here. You'd reveal the keyframes.

I'll go back to the end of the timeline and I'm just going to adjust fold position until the head slides in from the side. Like that. That's pretty good.

So this is an example where I can't really copy and paste the effect because each of them needs a completely different setting. So again, I'm at the end of the animation. I am going to want to add something else into this right now.

So right now, both of the pages back is a little funny. What it basically does, the effect is it takes a copy of whatever's the front of the layer and just applies that to the back. So I'll do head and neck first, I'm going to go into back page, I'll say none.

Page color, I'm going to click on that color box and do white, upper left hand corner. And then opacity, back opacity, 100%, so it's fully opaque. I'll do the same thing with this.

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