Animate an Arrow on ONE LAYER | After Effects Tutorial & Free Preset

Learn how to create an animated arrow on one layer, that you can easily reuse across many After Effects projects. No plugins or third-party software required!
➡️ Download the free animated arrow preset and project file: www.meganfriesth.com/tutorial...
There are many ways to animate arrows in After Effects, but by creating both the arrowhead and line on the same shape layer, there are no nulls and it’s less layers to clutter your timeline. You can change the position, scale, and rotation, adjust the colors or stroke and add effects to stylize it. Even change the path of the line! Adjust the animation by adjusting the keyframes. All this, and the arrowhead will stay attached to the line!
It’s easy to copy and paste the layer to use it in other comps. Plus, you can save it as a preset so you can easily reuse the arrow, with its animation, across any After Effects project; no need to import anything.
This method uses expressions, but I’ll walk you through every step, so you don’t need to know anything about expressions to follow along.
In this video:
1:35 Create Arrow in After Effects
6:46 Animate Line Drawing In
7:15 Attach Arrowhead to Line
13:06 Orient Arrowhead Along Line
16:05 Animate the Arrow In and Out
17:32 Adjust Arrow
18:19 Create an Arrow with Artwork from Illustrator
23:22 Solutions to Arrowhead Orientation Issues
24:54 Switch the Direction of the Arrow
25:50 Save Arrow as Preset
➡️ Watch "part 2" to learn how to update the expressions so you can animate the arrow along a path (by animating the Offset value under the line's Trim Paths): • Animate an Arrow Along...
➡️ Get a 1-month free trial of Skillshare: www.skillshare.com/animatione...
My website: www.animationexplained.com
Instagram: / animationexplained
Pinterest: / explanimated

[@notsureaboutthis632]

fantastic tutorial - really appreciate walking through the expressions in a way that someone who is not comfortable with expressions can still understand

[@audiofreq4278]

This is great!! I love it when I find a video that explains exactly what I am looking for and makes it simple to understand and follow along. Thank you!!!!!!

[@animation-explained]

I'm so glad to hear that! 😀

[@202kt]

Such a useful tutorial. Thank you!

[@Yeshua_Will_Arrive_Soon]

Very thorough. Thank you!

[@BreannaWelsh]

Thank you so much!! ✨

[@bahez11]

you are doing a great job at teaching, keep up and thank you

[@animation-explained]

Thank you!

[@TVerge]

Wow! Great content! This is gonna be sooo helpfull. Thanks!

[@animation-explained]

Glad to hear it!

[@CathyFinnDerecki]

I love this tutorial because you explain WHY things are the way they are. Thank you. One issue I am having, however, is that the "convert to bezier path" selection is grayed out for a rectangle shape layer. I am trying to figure out why.

[@animation-explained]

You're welcome 😀 It could be as simple (and annoying) as making sure you're selecting "Rectangle Path 1" rather than "Rectangle 1". If that's not it, let me know and we can keep troubleshooting!

[@LinKaaxMu]

Great and very well explained tutorial. Thank you so much!! U R Z Best!!! 🤩🤩🤩

[@animation-explained]

Glad it was helpful!

[@golden_trident]

its look very nice, accept my gratitude

[@SalymGuer]

This is one great channel!

[@animation-explained]

Thanks! 😃

[@Diegosees]

Thank you for taking the time to upload! I'm in need of help: I've copied your steps to the letter yet my arrow head moves in the opposite direction of my line path instead of along side it. Any thoughts? thanks :D

[@animation-explained]

In the timeline, toggle open your arrow layer and find the line. Next to the Path property there are two buttons with arrows that will switch the direction of the line. Switching which one is selected will change the direction of the line, so the solution could be this easy. But if this makes your arrow go in the opposite direction that you're hoping for, I explain how you can switch the direction of your arrow at 24:54. Hope this helps!

[@DoodaDD]

[Question]: Video 21:40 Instead of Moving the Hand with Groups 1-7 after marking the location of the anchor point with guides. Wouldn't it be easier to use the Pan behind tool (Y) to move the anchor point of the Hand ?

[@animation-explained]

I did it this way because I wanted the anchor point to stay at 0.0,0.0. Moving the anchor point with the Pan Behind tool would have made the anchor point not at 0.0,0.0.

[@enjoy202]

Thank you

[@bondoman16]

Is there no Way to have it able to follow the trim paths if you also want to animate the Offset Of Trim Paths?

[@animation-explained]

Great question! There is a way to adjust the expressions to be able to animate the Offset of the Trim Paths so the arrow can move along a path. I wish I would have thought to incorporate this functionality in the original animated arrow so thanks for asking! Sorry for the slow reply; I'm making a "part 2" tutorial to explain exactly how to set this up that will come out Thursday, but in the meantime... For the position property, the expression should look like this: var pathLayer = content("line"); var path = pathLayer.content("Path 1").path; v ar offset = pathLayer.content("Trim Paths 1").offset; var end = pathLayer.content("Trim Paths 1").end/100; var progress = linear(offset,0,360,0,1); var point = path.pointOnPath(progress+end); point For the rotation property, the expression should look like this: var pathLayer = content("line"); var offset = pathLayer.content("Trim Paths 1").offset; var end = pathLayer.content("Trim Paths 1").end/100; var progress = linear(offset,0,360,0,1); var [tangentX, tangentY] = pathLayer.content("Path 1").path.tangentOnPath(progress+end); radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(tangentY, tangentX))+value;

[@channelI748]

How do you create for example your Intro ? and the text at the side?

[@animation-explained]

To animate the arrows for the into, I first created multiple wavy lines across the screen using Adobe Illustrator. I then brought these lines into After Effects (I use Overlord battleaxe.co/?ref=animationexplained but you could import and convert to a shape layer. I cover that here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/p4eWfIuIp6ygY6M). Then I used the animated arrow preset to make the lines into arrows. I pre-composed all the arrows, duplicated that comp, and offset the duplicate to get the staggered arrows. For the text, I used a text animator. I explain all about text animators here: www.meganfriesth.com/class/textanimators Hope that helps!

[@dizzenios1716]

Hi! Let me start by saying that I love your project's idea and practicality! I get requested to do graphs pretty often and making a new arrow type every single time was becoming cumbersome. I tried using the preset for now though and I am somehow running into issues. It works perfectly fine in the enviroment of the Animated arrows project, but once I use the preset on a different project it gives me an error on the rotation expression for Variable name expected. I made sure to use a clean shape layer without any other shapes in it. I haven't changed any path names whatsoever either. 1 var pathLayer = content("line"); 2 var offset = pathLayer.content("Trim Paths 1").offset; 3 var end = pathLayer.content("Trim Paths 1").end/100; 4 var progress = linear(offset,0,360,0,1); 5 var [tangentX, tangentY] = pathLayer.content("Path 1").path.tangentOnPath(progress+end); [[This is the line with the error prompt]] 6 7 radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(tangentY, tangentX))+value; this is exactly the expression. Numbers are just there to break the lines apart.

[@animation-explained]

Thanks for the detailed explanation of the issue and sorry it took me a couple days to get back to you. I think the issue is that your expressions engine is set to Legacy ExtendScript rather than JavaScript. To change this, in the Project panel, click the icon at the bottom that looks like a rocket. This will open up the Project Settings window. Go to the Expressions tab and change the Expressions Engine to JavaScript. This should fix the error message, but let me know if it doesn't 😃

[@dizzenios1716]

@@animation-explained Wonderful! No worries, It's still valuable information nonetheless. A lot of the effects I work with need Legacy ExtendScript, so I think I'll just plan ahead work the arrows in a separate project file, then render to use in the final project.

[@-cx5ux]

DEAR MEGAN. AS I TOLD YOU ALREADY YOUR CLASSES ARE EXCELLENT AND I WANT TO TELL YOU THAT I SPEND HALF DAYS WATCHING YOUR VIDEOES AND LEARN FROM YOU A LOT . IN THIS TURTORIAL I HAVE A PROBLEM IN THE 3.30 MINUTE.: I TRIED SEVERAL TIMES AND DON'T SUCCEED TO DELETE THE EXCSS PATH OF THE RECTANGLE . AFTER THE FIRST TIME THAT IT DELETED THE PATH BETWEEN THE TWO CLOSE POINTS IT SHOW THE 'CLOSE' OPTION UNCHEKED AND CLOSE THE PATH INSTEAD OF DELETING. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

[@animation-explained]

I'm not sure exactly what's going wrong, but here are a few things to check: - 'Closed' should be unchecked. Then you need to select individual points on the path and hit the delete key on the keyboard. - Make sure that you select either the path in the Composition Viewer, or where it says 'Path 1' in the timeline. There's also a 'Path' property with a stopwatch icon next to it. If you select that one, it will select all points on the path, so if you hit the delete key, it will delete the entire path. Hope that helps but let me know if you're still having trouble!

[@-cx5ux]

Thank you very much Megan on your patience. Instead of just click on the delete button i choosed again the two close points and then right click and wanted to uncheck the 'close' button . It is amazing how complicated i did such a simple thing. But at least i found another way to delete the excess points with the delete vertex tool. Your way is more simple and again thank you very much on all .

[@gaston.]

wow, super tut! just what I was looking for. Saved me from purchasing an over priced script. Subscribed & thanks again. For arrowhead rotation I am getting a "variable name expected" error at the -var [tangentX,tangentY] line.. ? not sure why. For some reason this worked for me.. (thanks ChatGPT) I would have purchased your project file..but it doesn't accept paypal. :( var pathLayer = content("line"); var path = pathLayer.content("line path 1").path; var progress = pathLayer.content("Trim Paths 1").end / 100; var tangentPoint = path.tangentOnPath(progress); var tangentX = tangentPoint[0]; var tangentY = tangentPoint[1]; radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(tangentY,tangentX))+90;

[@animation-explained]

Glad you found this helpful! It looks like the code ChatGPT gave you is doing the exact same thing, it's just written slightly differently, so I'm not sure why you were getting that error before. The only difference I'm seeing is the line: var path = pathLayer.content("line path 1").path; On the arrowhead layer, under Contents > arrowhead > Path 1, your path must be named "line path 1" whereas mine is named "Path". AE is very picky about having the exact name in quotes within the code so maybe that was the reason for the error.

[@andrasfako4921]

Thanks, I had the same problem and this solved it for me as well. 🙏🙌

[@jyoshiki]

Thank you

[@animation-explained]

You’re welcome! Hope this is helpful!