u/KashuAcademy

Hey all,

I run a motion studio and live in After Effects daily, so I did a full breakdown of the plugins I'd actually spend money on in 2026. I share my honest opinion about what they're good for, when they're NOT worth it, and the annoying parts tutorials usually skip.

Quick takeaways you can use right now:

1. Overlord

If you design in Illustrator / Figma, it can be the biggest time-saver. Sends over editable shapes + text instead of digging through a giant Illustrator import. 2026 updates made Figma way smoother. 

Watch for: text spacing shifts, layer order flips, complex gradients not transferring 1:1. Always do a clean-up pass after transfer.

2. Deep Glow

Only if you do a lot of light work, After Effects' native glow is technically a glow. Deep Glow actually looks like light. Nicer falloff, cinematic tone-mapping, RGB radius, lens dirt in v2. 

Watch for: it's ~$100 for a glow, it gets overused fast, and we've hit black previews + export crashes with it in the studio. If you mostly do flat vector explainers, skip it.

3. True Comp Duplicator

Imagine you have 1 main comp with 5 pre-comps inside and 12 nested comps. Then the client says, "Can we make another version?". This duplicates everything correctly linked, renames, and keeps expressions. Moreover, it is name-your-own-price for individuals.

4. Newton 4

Only when you need real physics. Full 2D physics engine inside AE, bakes to editable keyframes. Amazing for falling/colliding/bouncing setups where keyframing 50 objects would take hours. 

Watch for: ~$250 and not a daily driver. Grab the trial with export limits first to see if you actually need it.

5. Joysticks ‘N Sliders

Joysticks ‘N Sliders is great for building poses and driving a whole face / UI rig from one controller. 

Downside: heavy rigs + lots of expressions can slow AE down, and adding new parts after you rig is clunky.

6. Duik Angela

Duik Angela is free, open-source, and can rig a full character. It's just huge, so it feels intimidating if you only need a simple arm up/down. Still the one I'd tell anyone serious about rigging to learn.

6. BadFX

One free panel with easings, stagger, gradients, transforms, presets, utils. Great if you don't want to hunt 40 tiny scripts across 40 sites. We use it daily.

7. Glasser

Applies editable glass to shape, text, footage or precomp layers, then you refine it through Essential Properties. Best part: it generates a Control Null so you can move, scale, and rotate the glass with your design.

8. Putty

Lattice + cage deformer that reads the layer's alpha and places the lattice right on the visible pixels, instead of a grid across the whole layer.

9. Pixion

Particle system that generates particles from any source layer and drives behavior from pixel data like luminance and color. GPU accelerated. 

Watch for: most interesting of the three for hero backgrounds, product reveals, music visuals. Still v1 territory and not cheap, so trial first.

If you want the full breakdown with examples and links, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/QNBG0DxsaYY

Hey all! I've been doing motion design for 9 years now and run a small animation studio. I learned a lot of this way too late, so sharing in case it saves someone time.

This isn't about the interface. You still need layers, keyframes, comps. This is what to focus on after that:

1. The 12 principles of animation

 

This is grammar for movement. If your work feels like fancy PowerPoint - move, stop, move, stop, it's usually missing overlap, anticipation, and rhythm. 

Learning outcome: you'll be able to watch your own work and actually name why something feels off. 

Start here: 12 Principles of Animation Official Full Series

2. The Graph Editor, for real

 

Easy Ease is not understanding easing. Same 2 keyframes can feel totally different depending on the curve. Try this: take one dot moving left to right and make 5 different versions using only the graph.

Learning outcome: you'll stop guessing and start controlling weight and timing. 

3. Basic character animation + rigging, even if that's not your job

You don't need to become a character animator. But rigging one character teaches you weight, timing, and planning like nothing else. And always use reference. Film yourself, generate a reference, whatever. Don't invent a walk from a blank comp. 

4. Learn just enough expressions to stop doing manual work

Not 6 months of JavaScript. Just loopOut, wiggle, linking properties, and one controller driving multiple layers.

Learning outcome: you build projects you can actually revise without 4 hours of copy-paste. 

5. Compositing + sound

Light, shadow, depth, contrast, texture, and sound. Watch any great ad muted vs. with sound. Totally different piece.

Learning outcome: your work starts feeling finished instead of flat, without adding more complex animation.

If you want the full breakdown with examples for each one, I put together a video walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JemgIktpwBM

Do you have more suggestions for what really helped you get past the beginner stage?

Hey everyone! I spent some time cleaning up my workflow and realized Adobe shipped a few tiny native features that replace stuff I used to need expressions and paid scripts for.

Thought I'd share the actual breakdown, since they flew under the radar with all the 3D/SVG talk:

1. Proportional Scrubbing:

Select multiple layers, hold Ctrl + Alt (Win) / Cmd + Option (Mac) and drag any numeric property like Opacity or Position.

Instead of setting everything to the same value, AE spreads it proportionally from your first-selected layer to your last. Works on keyframes too. Select 10 layers with the same drop animation, hold the shortcut and drag the keyframes to get a perfect cascade.

Tip: The order you select matters. Top-to-bottom vs bottom-to-top completely changes the spread direction.

This one alone replaced my staggering plugin.

2. Copy Frame to Clipboard

There's now a button in your Comp panel that copies the current frame to your clipboard as a clean render. No more **Composition > Save Frame As...**or screenshots full of guides/nulls.

Just park your playhead, click it, and Ctrl+V straight into decks, communication, anywhere. Super handy for storyboards and quick client checks.

3. You can finally edit Illustrator gradients natively

If you import art with gradients, right-click the layer > Create > Create Shapes from Vector Layer > delete the extra group.

Now under Gradient Fill, you get full control over Scale, Rotation, Opacity, Start/End points.

All inside AE. No need to jump back to Illustrator to tweak it.

4. Crop Comp to Selected Layer Bounds

Not brand new, but they finally put it where you need it.

Select any layer > Right-Click > Crop Comp to Selected Layer Bounds and AE instantly resizes the comp to that layer's exact size.

Perfect for cleaning up pre-comps for icons, character parts, or reusable assets. No more manually creating a new comp and copying layers over.

None of these are flashy features, but together they've cut a lot of annoying busywork. 

If you want to see real examples, you can check out the full breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y4hveZUvY4

I figured out a really simple way to turn any flat 2D vector icon into a 3D extruded icon inside AE and wanted to break down why it works.

The whole trick is faking depth by stacking the same layer in Z-space instead of using a real 3D renderer.

1. The setup 

Put your flat icon in a 1080x1080 pre-comp first. This is your "master" icon. Animate it here if you want (I just used a simple scale pop). Everything else references this, so when you want to swap the icon later you only change this one comp.

2. The core stacking trick

Drop that pre-comp into a 1920x1080 main comp, enable 3D, then add this expression to Position:

x = value[0] + (index - 1) * 0;

y = value[1] + (index - 1) * 0;

z = value[2] + (index - 1) * 3;

[x, y, z];

Every copy of the layer gets pushed 5px further back in Z-space based on its layer index. Duplicate it ~40 times and AE automatically creates a solid block of depth. It's actual 3D, you can orbit it.

3. The shading 

Select all the middle copies (not the top one) and add Brightness & Contrast > Brightness -80. This instantly darkens the sides, which sells the extrusion. Leave the top copy bright and clean - that's your front face.

4. Making it look finished:

• Radial gradient in the background for separation
• Drop Shadow on the top copy for ground contact
• Deep Glow on the stack for that soft, inflated 3D edge (optional, looks great without it too)
• CC Light Sweep on top for a glossy highlight pass

5. Making it controllable: 

Parent all ~42 layers to a single 3D Null. Now you don't have 42 layers to keyframe - you just rotate/scale the Null. I trimmed to a 6-second comp and did a simple rotation + scale with Easy Ease.

6. Why it's reusable: 

Because everything points to that first pre-comp, you can literally alt-drag a totally different vector (I tested with a simple flat envelope) into the pre-comp and the entire 3D build updates instantly. If your icon has holes/negative space, Linear Color Key makes those parts transparent.

Anyone else use this stacking method? 

I have the project file with the pre-made template if anyone wants to pull it apart, happy to send it over - just comment below.

Check out the full breakdown here: https://youtu.be/tN8nX1m2dHQ?si=dCJpFAm02B2KrV7N

I created a mini-series on walk cycles and wanted to share the first part - rigging a 2D character from scratch using Duik in After Effects.

I see a lot of beginners jump straight into keyframes and end up with messy, unnatural movement. The fix is almost always in the setup. Here's the condensed version of what I cover:

The biggest mistake people make is diving into animation without a reference on screen. Drop a reference video into your comp before you keyframe anything. It will instantly fix timing guesswork and keep your timeline clean.

The parenting chain (most important setup rule). Every body part needs to be its own layer, and they need to be parented correctly from the start:

• Face layers → Head → Neck → Body
• Hand → Forearm → Arm → Body
• Same chain for the legs

Everything routes back to one body layer. Get this right, and the rest follows.

Last but not least, rigging with Duik. It narrows down to 3 easy steps: setting up the anchor points to the joint, selecting the limb layers, clicking Auto-Rig. Done.

That's it for Part 1. Part 2 covers animating the actual walk cycle - contact poses, passing poses, timing, and polish.

If you want the step-by-step with visuals, you can follow along the full breakdown here: https://youtu.be/hJT9K3WqeEs?si=8-qrwK--fHJLwxlu

Happy to answer any rigging questions in the comments!

I know I'm not the only one who's opened the Lottie state machine, stared at it for 30 seconds, and quietly closed the tab. 😅

So after wrestling with it for a full project (and losing about 2.5 hours to an opacity bug I'll never make again), I put together a beginner-friendly tutorial that actually explains the whole workflow end to end.

Who this is for:

• You know After Effects, but have zero state machine experience
• You have character animations, UI demos, or product walkthroughs you want to make interactive
• You want clickable, triggerable animations without writing a single line of code

What you'll learn:

• Converting a rendered After Effects animation into Lottie
• Slicing a continuous timeline into named segments
• Building clickable buttons that actually work
• Wiring up the state machine with inputs, interactions, and transitions
• Looping the idle state so the animation always returns to neutral

It sounds more intimidating than it is, I promise. Once you see the logic laid out, it clicks fast.

If you're curious, you can watch the full breakdown: https://youtu.be/t_fCgV86KXI?si=ov7_suKSHysvSl5O

Would love to hear how you're using Lottie interactivity in your own work. And if you've got state machine horror stories, drop them below :))

I've been working on a 3-part series breaking down character expression animation in After Effects, and Part 1 just dropped.

The goal was simple: take a single character rig through four distinct emotions. Cute → suspicious → annoyed → angry, without touching a single third-party plugin. No Duik, no Joysticks 'n Sliders. Just native AE tools and fundamentals you already have.

What Part 1 covers:

We block in the first two poses and handle everything between them. Eye movement, blinks, eyebrow path changes, pupil scaling, and in-betweening that doesn't feel robotic.

What you'll walk away with:

• A clean layer-structure workflow for expression rigs (parented to nulls, easy to modify)
• How to time blinks and micro-movements so expressions read clearly
• A reusable in-betweening approach that works across any character style
• The color-control trick for synced background/eyelid shifts

Who this is for:

If you're comfortable with After Effects basics: keyframes, layers, parenting, but your character animation still feels stiff or mechanical, this is built for you. It's more intermediate than absolute beginner, but I explain every step, so if you're motivated, you'll keep up.

I've also put together source files for the design and the animation, so you can follow along with the exact project. Happy to share them with anyone who wants to dig in.

If you are interested in the whole process, you can check it out here: https://youtu.be/x2ofJTFrhtA?si=DALQgI2ao2AQ5Q5n

I've been seeing a lot of curiosity and, honestly, a lot of hesitation around using Claude with After Effects. So many motion designers are in the "I've heard of it, but I don't really get what it does or how it works" camp. 

So I decided to go deep on it. Not a quick skim. I actually tested it across real motion design workflows and documented everything I found.

I just put together a full breakdown that answers the questions I kept seeing over and over:

What Claude can actually do inside After Effects. Where it helps, where it doesn't, and where it straight-up wastes your time.

How setup works, because this was way less obvious than it should be, and most guides skip the parts that trip you up.

Real use cases for motion designers and not generic "AI can help you brainstorm!" stuff. 

I'm talking about specific things like expression generation and workflow shortcuts that actually make a difference in daily work.

There are things it's genuinely useful for and things that are still faster to do manually.

If you're a motion designer who's been curious about Claude but hasn't taken the plunge because the info out there feels either too vague or too hype-y - this is for you. It's also for you if you've tried it once, got underwhelming results, and figured "yeah, not for me." There's a good chance you just didn't have the right setup or prompts.

What this isn't:

It's not a "Claude will replace you" video. It's not a sponsored thing. It's me sharing what I learned after actually using it in my workflow, so you can skip the trial-and-error phase.

I also put together a cheat sheet with all the prompts I used during testing. If you want it, just DM us or leave a comment, and I'll send it over: https://youtu.be/ayZnTA4dnZk?si=y0ri5-rU5ejwK4QV

Happy to answer any questions in the comments, too. 

I’ve been experimenting with After Effects' native layer styles to achieve a puffy, inflated 3D look on flat vector characters. It’s something I did pretty quickly and gives good results, of course not as good as creating an actual 3D icon, but I hope this quick overview is helpful if you’re in a rush and wanna add more dimensions to our character

Here's roughly how I do it:

1. Convert your Illustrator file to shapes

 

You start by right-clicking your Illustrator layer in After Effects and selecting "Create Shapes from Vector Layer." If your controllers end up scattered, which happens when your .ai file uses clipping masks, there's a quick fix: search for a subgroup in our contents that will be called  "Group 1". That snaps everything back into place.

2. Stack three-layer styles to fake volume

 

This is the core of the technique. I apply three-layer styles in sequence:

• Bevel & Emboss: set to Inner Bevel with a Depth of 102 and an Altitude of 67. This is what creates the inflated, balloon-like shape.
• Inner Glow: a subtle radiance that softens the edges and enhances the puffy feel. Size set to 30.
• Inner Shadow: adds depth from the inside, giving the character a proper sense of dimension. Opacity 20, Noise 10.

3. Finish with Glow + Noise

A Glow effect (radius 10) adds a soft luminance around the whole character. Then an Adjustment Layer with 10% Noise adds just enough texture to make the surface feel tactile rather than plasticky.

5. The whole thing is reusable

Once you've built it once, you can copy and paste the layer styles onto any other flat vector shape in seconds. Some values like Glow Threshold and Intensity might need a small tweak per character, but the system is essentially copy-paste.

We put together a full tutorial walking through every step. Happy to answer any questions about the process in the comments.

Full tutorial here if anyone wants to follow along → https://youtu.be/K8MxR3__cck