AE 2D Walk Cycle

Production Process:

The Duik plugin for After Effects allows you to set up a rig for a 2D animation of a character.

Using the red rigging functions, and clicking huminoid, the Duik plugin creates a huminoid rig to connect to a 2D character.

The next step is to use the black joints to move the rig into place on the 2D model.

Then you select all of the rig and click these buttons.

The rig will then link together and give you hands, feet, head, hips and spine constraints.

Next you link up the 2D layers of the head to the head itself.

From here you link the head to the head rig.

From here you continue to link the 2D character's layers to the rig.

To help organise and simplify the layers you can click on the "Kilroy" (as it looks like a piece of graffiti from ww2) next to the layer to make it be hidden when you press the Kilroy at the top.

You can also hide the original rig with the Duik plugin.

From here the actual animation begins and we can place the current positions of the rig on the timeline in the key frames.

If you move the rig and then make sure it's selected when you press the key frame button by position it will make a frame on the timeline and allow you to create an animation.