Beginner After Effects Animation of a Cat

In this guide, we’ll show you how to animate a cute cat illustration downloaded for free from Freepik.com. This is a very basic tutorial that is perfect for beginners – even if you have zero experience with After Effects, you’ll be able to do this exercise.

Vector File

Download the vector illustration here and separate the sunglasses, the bow, and each one of the eyes into different layers. Those will be the moving elements.

Animation

Import in After Effects and select the option Import As: Composition – Retain Layer Sizes. Start by animating the eyes by adding keyframes for the scale. Then, animate the sunglasses with keyframes for the position and the rotation. The bow is animating with rotation and scale keyframes.

Boiling

Finally, add an adjustment layer with the Turbulent Displace effect. This so-called “boiling” will make your work look like traditional frame-by-frame hand-drawn animation.

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