Ultimate Guide to Animating Eyes in After Effects - Rigging Tutorial

A step by step animation tutorial on how to animating any eyes using Adobe After Effects. This tutorial is suitable for beginners - intermediate users, you will learn the fundamentals to create a blinky eye for your character animation. Please leave a comment if you'd like me to explain anything I skimmed over.

I'm uploading new motion design & animation tutorials every Thursday! (Sometimes Monday too)

►Please tag me on Instagram @ben_marriott_ if you've used any of the techniques from this video so I can see what awesome things you create

►Find me elsewhere!

►Music:
Massive thanks to madmomentsgo for providing that amazing music for my intro!

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
~ God bless Kevin ~

[Darkbulb]

Love these tutorials I almost feel guilty about watching them for free, your tutorials are far better and digestable than alot ive seen even on skillshare

[througheverything]

I hate how quickly you skipped over making the eye with the pen tool

[anasonyc]

Simple yet effective--The basic description of all the good tips I've gathered from you. Ty!

[NosebleeddeGroselha]

Followed the tutorial and it was a success! Now I'm making a more complex eye and seeing how it goes :)
I'll update the comment talking about the final result and if I end up finding some tricks!

EDIT: Okay!
Basically if you wanna make a more complex eye than this, it all comes down to trial and error. Just like he said, sketch your eye beforehand and know what you want it to look like.

Some tips I can share:
• Do eyebrows, they can convey a lot of expression. You can use the pen tool to make them and then animate the path to create different expressions.
• To make more complex eye shapes, you can make one layer in the original shape of the eye, and then do another layer with the perfectly closed version. Then you just have to copy the path as key frames and voilà, your eye closes perfectly with little to no overlap.
• I don’t recommend going too crazy with the eye shapes unless you have some time in your hands, because even with that hack, it might be difficult to line up the path so it’s not blinking weird.
• Make a shadow for the nose and cheekbones to add depth
• If you like an outlined style for animation, you can duplicate the sclera layer after you animated the blinking. Then stretch it horizontally, and fill it with however color you want, and you have a little outline for your eye.
• Eyelashes are a nightmare. Be careful with them and try out different ways to line up the blinking.
• You can use the shrinkage of the pupil to convey emotions
• If you apply a slight, short wiggle to the null object that moves everything, you can make your character seem anxious.

I think that’s all for now!

[UJWL]

Love if when your tutorials are for total after effects newbies

[ohno]

Start a Patreon man. You should get getting gold for all this gold you share.

[ezekiel]

Amazing quality tutorial as always. When I do reflections, I also like to move them around a little too. So what I would do is parent the reflection to the whites of the eyes, and keyframe the center of the bulge to move slightly left or right with the pupils. Really adds a small, finishing detail.

[CsabiKremser]

Ben, it’s always so great to watch your tutorials. You are the Messi of After Effects. (You make it look like AE is a piece of cake) :) keep it up!

[hybridd]

I like the tip on moving the eye whites a fraction too! Nice detail I hadn't really thought of. As usual, thanks Ben!

[kartikeyadwivedi]

You're a God. You give these precious information for free!

[uliwoo]

My English is not good but I really want to say thank you Ben. Every video help me a lot, you are my light.

[handlas]

The pick whipping of that path to the other path 🤯

[greeralex]

THIS IS THE EXACT TUTORIAL I NEED TO LITERALLY FINISH MY DEGREE THANK YOU

[gvuprise]

This is my favorite video. Can you please make more like this. I completely watched this yesterday and today almost 5 times. I love you so much please make more like this. Thank you hun

[chinemeremmba]

Watching this and amazed at the creativity 🥺

[ohno]

Dude I learn something new with every single one of your videos

[magspurvis]

Every time I say I am going to stop my Adobe subscriptions I find another of your tutorials gotta do this one thank you

[actualizeme]

Seriously man, what would I do without you? I love your tutorials! <3

[EelkeDekker]

Hi Ben, great tutorials. I noticed that your method introduces a slight error line where the Eye - Pupil touches the eyelid (pixel layer of Iris showing. Simple solution is to give the Pupil a Layer style -Stroke of a few pixels.

[VFusioN]

its been 4 years and i never though that would be relevant!