Ups & Downs

People say life has ups and downs.

It is hitting me hard these days and I wanted to illustrate it.
I woke up at 3 in the morning on the day I was off to Jeonju and I made a rough doodling of how I perceive it. 
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This is the initial sketch on procreate.
Used Monoline for the white outline and the car. Then, Nikko Rull to paint the background.

I created car tyres, car body, and windows on different layers to add different motions to each element.
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Step 4. How to edit speed on graph editor.

In order to animate the illustration, I went trough these steps on After Effects.

1. Import the illustration to After Effects as a composition.

2. Parent car tyres and window with the car body layer.

3. Use Pen Tool and change the white outline to mask path.

4. Copy the mask path and paste it to the position of car object. Then the car will move along the path and parented objects will move along as well. 

Tips!

Use key frame assistant to make the car movement more natural.
When the car goes up the hill, the speed will be slow down the it rises again as the car goes down. Considering that edit keyframes on speed graph.
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5. Add wiggle expression to the car tyres to add more dynamics to the car. 

6. Create text and create mask path within the layer so the characters will be located along the path.

7. Create another mask within the text layer and create keyframes at mask path so the text appears in accordance with the car speed.

Initially, I added grainy texture to my objects by using Noise HSL effects from AE effects preset.
But when I exported it, the texture was different from what I intended in the first place, at the same time, too grainy when I optimised the exported to gif for my website.


Therefore, I went back to my psd file and added texture by using airbrush- grainy opaque.
These are the tutorials I found very helpful to achieve the style I want.
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1. How to create an object to follow a mask path

2. How to add texture to your object/shape on Photoshop

This tutorial needs further explanation.

If you created your object on photoshop or illustrator first, this is a great way to add more diverse texture to your element, shape, or object by using different types of brush.

But, if you initially created your object on AE, I would recommend you to use OVERLORD to export your shape layer to Illustrator or Photoshop.

Overlord is a plug-in aimed at importing Illustrator vector images to After Effects, or exporting shape layers created on AE to Illustrator.

So, by using Overlord, you can modify your AE shape layers on Illustrator, and then on Photoshop. 

But, if you neither have overlord nor initially created your element on Photoshop/Illustrator, please watch the tutorials below. By using Noise HSL effect from AE effects preset, you can add grainy/noise texture to your AE shape layers.

3. How to add texture to your AE object(shape layer)