in this video you'll learn how to turn your animations into animated tattoos all inside
of after effects whether they're vector-based motion graphics or frame by frame animation
now this video went quite viral on tiktok recently and it inspired me to see if i could recreate
some of these elements and textures to create an animated tattoo inside after effects now this was
done by the incredible tattoo artist Phil Berge who has created many many animated tattoos so how
does he do it well he finds the original animation and then isolates those elements that he wants to
tattoo by copying every frame then he prints those to a transfer paper to apply and then tattoo to
his patrons now his execution is just fantastic and i love the idea of getting an animated
sequence tattooed on myself or even a single frame from a collaborative project like this
Phil has a ton of examples on his youtube channels and instagram it is really inspiring stuff so
i used his examples as a reference but really nothing can beat the real thing so first we need
to create our animation i'm making one with shape layers and after effects and one that's frame by
frame then we need to apply all the effects to realistically compose it onto some skin
and you can download these project files for free down in the description so for the frame by frame
animation i took this lovely looping .gif from the simpsons of homer calmly driving then i took that
into photoshop to trace over just the line art of the head making the lines much thicker which
i think adapts it to a tattoo a bit nicer i used photoshop with a now unsupported animation plugin
called anim dessin 2 but you could use any frame by frame software adobe animate critter procreate or
even blender with a grease pencil they all work largely the same for this process so once that
was done i rendered it out as a movie and imported that into after effects in its own composition and
i also slowed it down by half as well just so it would match with my skin texture a little better
which you will see a little later for the vector shape layer tattoo i created this simple geometric
anchor line art design and i added some simple position animations and trim paths to get it to
reveal on and disappear again but you can take a deeper look at these if you want to find out more
about that they're all within the project file in the description but before we apply and composite
this onto our skin we need to add some effects that will make it a bit more tattooy so let's add
a new adjustment layer with ctrl alt y and let's name that effects because we always label our layers
first we need to create a subtle boil now an animated boil is what happens in frame by frame
animation where the lines aren't exactly drawn perfectly one frame to another and adding this
boil will make it look a bit more like each frame is a new tattoo executed slightly differently so
first let's add the effect turbulent displace now this will warp our animation but we don't want it
warping anywhere near as much so let's turn the size down to 50 and the amount way down to about
three so that is pretty subtle but if we flick it on and off we can see there's a slight difference
great now we need to get it animated so we can add the simple expression to the random seed
property which is hiding below evolution options and random seed is the number that is the basis
for the random warping and distortion so if we change this number we change the distortion so
we need to animate that and we can do that by adding a simple expression so let's alter option
click the stopwatch and type in time asterisk four which is time multiplied by four and what
that will do is change the random seed every four frames so now every four frames it looks like a
slightly differently drawn anchor now to get some more detail and grit into the edge of this we are
going to duplicate that effect again but this time we are going to increase the amount from three
way up more to something around 30 but then decrease the size way down to three so this
now gives some small distortions along the edges of the lines as well as the big distortions which
distort the line itself and this seems a bit like little imperfections in the tattoo where it has
been drawn then we're going to give a random shape to the position of each frame so to do
that we'll add the effect transform which brings up all our familiar transform properties position
scale rotation etc and we're going to add a wiggle expression to position so again alt option click
the stopwatch and we're going to type in wiggle then in parentheses 12 comma 2 so it will wiggle
12 times per second up to a maximum of 2 pixels so now we can see it's shifting around a little bit
the last thing we're going to do is add a posterize time effect and this will lower our
frame rate so i'm going to take it down to eight frames a second and let's see how that looks so
this will make it feel not as clean or digital or precise and just make it feel a little more
hand drawn which is kind of the look we're after here and i'm also going to add a bit of texture
and shading to mimic an almost stippled technique you find in the shadows of a lot of traditional
tattoos and i'm going to use one of the many noise techniques i explored in my last video so
let's create a new solid with ctrl or command y and let's make sure this is exactly 50 gray
let's put that below our effects layer and then we're going to add the effect
noise hls auto and let's increase the noise on the lightness up to 100 so it
is very very noisy and then we're just going to increase the scale of the layer itself from 100
up to about 350 so it is much larger and then set its blending mode from normal to overlay so
we can view the layers beneath it and then we're going to set this layer to preserve underlying
transparency which is in this column here so now this layer won't be visible on anything that was
transparent below it so it's only visible on our anchor and on our shading and because we're using
noise hls auto this noise is animated and we get a nice subtle dancing noisy grain effect
okay now time to composite these onto our skin but first a quick word about this video sponsor
walling is a visual workplace to organize all of your work and plan your new project
in collaborative walls it's super simple to use even for a dummy like me you can quickly arrange
your ideas on a wall and keep everything visually organized a walk can contain any sort of content
really notes bookmarks mood boards anything to visualize the entire context of a project
and collaborate more efficiently with your team or clients here's a wall that i created to help
me track this project which is the creation of this video that you're currently watching
i started with a brief on what i wanted to include lots of references for me to refer back to and
this is something that i have open in a browser tab while i'm designing and animating so i'm not
having to look up each of these individually and i'm also tracking my tasks in this task section
currently in progress is the recording of this tutorial which i'm hoping goes well but once
that's done i'm going to place it into the done column and start working on the next thing which
is editing the rough cut of this tutorial now i find this is the most useful section for me
where i can set up all the steps that i need to do and it's just really helpful for my process
to just keep me on track and then i've added some additional sections at the bottom here
to show the middle stages of these animations for client approval which in this case is me
so i don't generally need these too much but it's always great to have your client approving things
and keeping that approval somewhere where they can see it so they're less likely to change their mind
and of course you can invite your client to the wall to add their own ideas and requirements or
you can send them a link they can easily leave comments or any idea on your wall walling is
free so if you think this might be as useful to you and your project as it is for me and mine
you've got nothing to lose so try out walling by clicking the link down in the description
okay now for compositing so i'm in a new comp that i've called tat main 01 motion graphics
and i'm going to drag in a comp that i've called skin plates looped now essentially this is just
a looping texture and you can see one of the many tutorials i've done about looping textures up here
on the right but instead of paper or watercolor or something like that this is a texture of some skin
freshly shaved for a tattoo now i couldn't really find any photos online of some skin that has just
been shaved for a tattoo but with a tattoo yet to be put on it so i had to create my own and yep i
shaved four circles into my legs ah the things i do for tutorials so therefore unfortunately
limited by my technology we are stuck with pasty man legs for this example so next we're going to
drag over our tattoo let's drag over our anchor first and now we can see it playing over our skin
and look at that it looks nothing like a tattoo but we're going to add a ton of effects to make
it look more worn in and really feel like it's ink under the skin so the first thing we're
going to do is add the effect gaussian blur and let's blur it a little maybe to around 6 pixels
so it definitely doesn't have that hard pixel perfect edge and then let's also add a curves
effect and we're going to select the blue channel and just increase the amount of blue in the dark
areas and that will give the ink a slightly blue tint and then we're going to set its blending mode
from normal to multiply so we'll see a bit of our skin texture underneath let's also change
the color of this layer here as well let's go to cyan and then we're going to duplicate this again
with controller command d and on our bottom one we're going to increase the blurriness up to about
20 so it's just a little more softer and now in the next step we're really going to make it
feel like it is underneath the skin so we're going to duplicate our skin loops texture with control
command d put that at the very top of our effects stack and then we're also going to duplicate one
of our tattoo comps and pull that on top as well but this time i'm going to change this one's color
to purple and rename it to add the word matte at the end because we're going to be using it as an
alpha matte for our skin plates loop layer so on this layer we're going to select track matte and
alpha matte so now this skin composition is only visible in the areas of this anchor composition
which is now on top of it so let's set the skin's blending mode from normal to screen so we can see
below it once we darken it in a second because we only want to see the highlights eventually and now
let's add some effects to it so first let's add a curves effect and let's drag this down to the
bottom right so we're going to darken everything but the highlights and create a shape something
similar to this then we're going to add the good old hue and saturation effect and just drag down
the saturation so it is completely black and white there now it's starting to look close starting to
look like a real tattoo and now we can adjust the curves up here to determine how faded we want this
to look let's make this one pretty faded there now one last thing we're going to do is adjust the
blurriness of this matte on top here so i'm going to zoom in and i'm going to start increasing the
blurriness up to about 20. because it's a matte of this highlighted skin layer down here by blowing
this top layer the edges of that highlight layer becoming less defined they're becoming more soft
so these very edges we can see a bit more of a darker layer underneath showing through
and i just think this makes it look a little bit more realistic maybe as if the tattoo is raised
slightly or it is just inconsistent where the ink has settled underneath and there we have
our first animated tattoo but for our frame by frame animated one i want it to look like
it has just been freshly put straight into the skin so let's duplicate this tat main comp here
and rename it and we are just going to replace the tattoo animation here so let's select all of
our tattoo layers and then we're going to hold alt option on a keyboard grab our second homer
animation and drag them over the top of these layers once we release it will get replaced and
this animation is a lot shorter so let's trim our work area to the end of these layers by pressing n
over here and we can right click and trim come to work area there so now we've got our homer tattoo
animation and all the effects are still in place but for our newer tattoo it is going to be much
less faded so let's take our curves effect from our skin highlight layer at the very top
and let's just add some more contrast and maybe even bump up the brightness in the very shadows
just so it doesn't feel too flat on any of the frames and we get a bit of a highlight on the left
edge as well there i think that's feeling much shinier and we can even turn down the blur as well
of our line art as well to make it feel a little bit crisper there a little more like fresh ink now
there would also be some redness around the tattoo so let's duplicate our blurriest bottom layer and
on the very bottom layer we are going to add a fill effect and we'll leave that at completely red
let's increase that blurriness from 15 to about 25 pixels and then maybe lower its opacity from 100
to maybe 70. yeah that feels kind of accurate and let's also recolor this one to red so we can tell
what it is and let's duplicate this one again and on the bottom layer let's increase the blurriness
a lot up to 150 and then take its opacity way down to about 30. so there we have two extra layers of
red which are going to help it feel like new and there we have a freshly inked tattoo animation and
with this setup and all these effects applied to update your tattoo all you need to do is go into
any of these tattoo comps and replace this with your animation so please check out these project
files to take a deeper dive into them they are available for free to download down in
the description if you'd like to learn animation and motion design techniques i've got a playlist
of some of the best tutorials on this channel here to take a look at i'll see you in the next