Fluid, rhythmic, fun, and lively: the perfect After Effects animation!
Jr. Canest, a student at Vancouver Film School (VFS), created an opening title sequence for a school project that’s an absolute stunner for anyone familiar with After Effects and how animation works inside the software.
This guy is just insanely talented, and the hundreds of keyframes he must have created for this project were totally worth it: this animation is simply superb in my eyes!
So? Amazing, right? :) I must have watched this video at least ten times — the style perfectly matches what I love about 2D animation and motion design in After Effects: typography, smooth motion, geometric shapes, and colors… all achieved using only basic After properties like position, rotation, and scale, with a few distortion effects to simulate interactions between different solids. In any case, Jr. Canest clearly has nothing to worry about for his future as an animator — he’s got motion in his blood :)
If I had one critique, it would be to fine-tune the motion blur sampling a bit — it’s a little rough in some spots...
I don’t know if you noticed, but his solids deform when they meet, as if they were soft:
I recommend trying the Warp Mesh effect under Effects → Distort, with a low number of rows and columns. Or the CC Smear effect, also under Effects → Distort, which works great for this kind of thing! (I actually used it for the drips on the “Wake Me Up” typography for the Fubiz party happening tomorrow!) And since I’m in a good mood, here’s a little After Effects test using the CC Smear effect on a solid:
About the author
I am the Founder of Mattrunks.
I work as Creative Director and Motion Designer in my studio. I also create video tutorials to share my passion of motion.