Sprout Animation in After Effects

Download Project Files here.

Intro

This sprouting plant tutorial is a great way to practice animated Masks! While Masks are great for hiding or partitioning off parts of an object, sometimes we will just want to have that Mask move along with the rest of the animated object. This avoids important parts getting cut off, and can be used to make fun, clever animated effects.

With a few other techniques in the mix, we’ll learn how to draw, adjust settings, and of course, animate the Mask. This is a step above other Mask tutorials we’ve covered, as this one goes a bit into the settings and small extra effects.

Overview

This project starts with us setting some Scale keyframes in order that our plant “grows”. We’ll have to move the Anchor Point for that to work, giving the program the appropriate reference point for it to size up. After that, we will draw the Mask itself. Next, we’ll be adjusting some settings before finally animating it to grow as the plant grows.

Let’s get started!

Growing the Plant

1. Move the Playhead to about 0;00;03;10.
2. Select the Plant layer in the layer stack.
3. Hit A on the keyboard to open up the Anchor Point options.
4. Change the values of the Anchor Point to 470,690.
5. Hit S on the keyboard to bring up the Scale options.
6. Hit the stopwatch next to Scale to set a keyframe.
7. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;10.
8. Change the Scale to 0.
9. Shift-click on both keyframes to select them.
10. Right click on any selected keyframe.
11. Navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
12. Hit Toggle Switches/Modes on the bottom left of the layer stack if the Switches aren’t visible. They’re the small boxes with symbols in them.
13. Click on the Motion Blur box on the Plant layer to give it some blur as it grows. That will be the three overlapping circles. They should already be switched on the Seed layer for reference.

Drawing and Animating the Mask

1. Move the Playhead to 0;00;03;10.
2. Go up to the top toolbar and select the Pen tool.
3. Click and drag right, below the base of the plant to set an initial Mask point.
4. Click and drag right, just beyond the top of the bottom left leaf.
5. Click to the right of that point, just above the broadest, roundest part of the leaf. That point will be just to the left of the stem, for reference.
6. Click and drag right, just beyond the point of the slightly smaller leaf on the left, the one above the biggest leaf.
7. Click just next to the left of the topmost leaf.
8. Click just above the tip of the topmost leaf.
9. Click to the right of the topmost leaf. We can see here that this Mask is essentially tracing a broad outline of the shape. Try to make it so the left half of the Mask is wider and more circular than the right as we go.
10. Click above the tip of the top right leaf.
11. Click below where the top right leaf connects to the stem.
12. Click just beyond the tip of the bottom right leaf.
13. Click on the first point we set, and drag right to form a circular shape below the plant.
14. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;15.
15. Hit M on the keyboard to open up Mask options.
16. Toggle open the options by clicking on the arrow next to the word Mask.
17. Hit the stopwatch next to the word Mask Path.
18. Move the Playhead back to 0;00;01;15.
19. Hit Z on the keyboard to activate the Zoom tool since we’ll be working small here.
20. Click on the plant to zoom in on it.
21. Choose the Pen tool again.
22. If the Anchor Point s don’t appear to be editable, hold down the Alt key as the cursor hovers over them.
23. Click and drag each point down to the base of the plant. It’s alright if some stem is showing, we essentially want to hide the leaves of the plant.
24. This edit will have automatically created a new keyframe.
25. Shift-click on both keyframes.
26. Right click on any selected keyframe.
27. Navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
28. In the Mask options, locate the Mask Feather option.
29. Change the value to 25.

Conclusion

That’s it!

With some careful set up, knowledge of keyframe timing, Anchor Points, and the Pen tool, we’ve created a plant growing animation.

For further refining and to hone Pen tool skills, try adding more keyframes along with the way. Adjust each keyframe to spread out around each leaf for more detail, add some more blur effects, and keep working to perfect those Mask techniques.

Happy animating!

Credits

Background vector created by brgfx - www.freepik.com

Background vector created by iconicbestiary - www.freepik.com

Video Transcript

Hi everyone. We are going to be learning how to do a sprout animation in this tutorial. It's a very cute animation with some masks. The files are in the description, so let's get started. 

The first thing that we're going to be doing is moving this split to about 3.10 seconds. Then right about there, we're going to start this plant layer-in-layer stuff, and let's hit A in the keyboard to open up the anchor point values.

Now, if your anchor point is not already positioned here, change these values to 470 and 690. So be the reference point for this program to know how to scale this. And I'll just hit s on the keyboard to bring up the scale options, the stopwatch next to scale to start keyframe. It will be moving to play it back to that 1.10 seconds.

Then right there and now we will be changing with scale to zero. So select both keyframes either drag and mark here them click right click on either keyframe but to keep consistent is easy. There we go. And it's going to look like it is rolling. If your switchers are invisible, toggle switches and modes. And if the motion blur box is not activated, these three circles just hit the motion blur vortex two-point.

The next thing that we're going to be doing is let's move that back to want to move to around one 310 and if we go, let's use this pen tool up here and now we're going to be drawing a mask around this point. Now, if you have never used the pen tool, just real quickly, we're going to start with the first point right below this one to click and drag the right.

And we're trying to trace the general shape of this plant with a little more roundness, an extra room on the left side And I will show you when I am done the general shape that we're going for so this general shape is going to use a little more room on the left side. It doesn't have to be too exact.

It's a bit of a floppy shape if you're not really. But if you want to add at any point, just click on one of these points and adjust these handles to change shape. This is like a general shape that we're looking for. And now that that has been done. We're going to toggle open, matched if you don't have mass open on your layers and just start them start up.

And those options I'll go up and masks. I'll go up and mass one. And now let's lower Playhead to about to 15 grand here and let's hit the stopwatch next to match path to start framing it. And let's go back to 150 and hit Z on the keyboard to zoom in actually let's move down a little bit.

I think here we go. We want to get a bit of a visual on this plant. So I'm going to be working at around 129 and I'm actually going to click and drag. It's keeping me a little bit later. So we were up to the two. Now let's change this next. So what we're basically going to be doing, we're going to be clicking and dragging all these points down to about the STEM level.

We're going to try to hide those leaves. Here you see me adjusting these fuzzy handles. Hey, there you go. You just have a bit of that scroll showing instead it will automatically create a new keyframe. And let's select both of these keyframes (right-click for most people). The system is eased, and let's also change the mask feather here to about 25.

There we go. All right, that's it. This has been Noble Desktop. Have a good evening.