Brush Strokes - Adobe After Effects tutorial

[@SteviaCookies]

You've just blown my mind to the moon. I am a traditional artist who spent the last two years trying to recreate brush strokes in blender and now I find your video by sheer luck. Never clicked the subscribe button with more violence. Now, if you knew how to give a graphite animated shading look to images and animation and made a video about it I would... promise you my first born?

[@effectsmaster1]

Thought to myself...I wanna learn something new from ECAbrams today....pulled up your channel and saw... NEW video... 1 minute ago 😂 Love that timing!

[@ECAbrams]

We aim to please! hopefully this is that very thing!

[@GhostMcGrady]

A very interesting work around for the fact that AE won't let you import brushes. I appreciate the ingenuity.

[@ECAbrams]

Only the best work arounds around here.

[@michalvician5435]

You are a very talented teacher. I have my brush stroke + learned tons of very useful things along.

[@АлисаЧернова-ц9т]

I love your "squeeze these values" - your voice is something invigorating, your tuts are very useful and interesting. Thanks you very much!

[@belquior]

Great tutorial! I watch your channel since years ago, and still one of the bests tutorial channel from KZbin.

[@ECAbrams]

Well, thank you very much. Glad it still holds up.

[@jacobmcconnell]

Rock solid tutorial. Thanks for making this!!

[@GifCoDigital]

Mentions 4:20 then immediately paints a joint on the screen. Brilliant!!!

[@MohammadAlshahrani]

The real starting point is at 02:00

[@11305205219]

Got to learn love this effect !!

[@ECAbrams]

Glad you dig it!

[@rahuldeshpande9997]

DUDE THIS IS AWESOME! Thanks man! God bless Canada!

[@ratchetdrums]

Super useful technique. Can you share the math behind the echo effect leaving behind a static trail rather than one that follows?

[@peterheynen]

What a great idea! Thanks for all the inspiration. I will try to add to some of the parameters expressions based on the velocity to make it more depending on the speed. This tutorial is simple AWSOME!

[@JoeBodego]

Abrams you're a damn genius

[@ECAbrams]

I don't know about that. Just louder and more confident at public speaking I think.

[@ВолодимирЗавялкін]

Great tutorial! Thanks!

[@adamfrench2337]

This is a really useful tutorial. Thanks Evan!

[@ECAbrams]

Thanks! I hope it helps people in some way.

[@darko.v]

Great tutorial and many useful tips and shortcuts.

[@eddievolondo]

Been watching your tutorials for a good year at least, thanks a lot.

[@TheCanadienMickeyMouse]

hello bud , oot of three other videos with similar tutorial this one WORKS I run a oooooollllld computer the other tutorials would not work but this one is GREAT

[@Now842]

Excellent tutorial!

[@ECAbrams]

Glad you liked it!

[@DanielWilliamsonion]

Great tutorial! I could have done with this a few weeks ago though! I made a load of more abstract animations using flat strokes and then displacing them using pictures of paint strokes as the matte as well as using roughen edges. Your technique is much more versatile. Nice one :)

[@ECAbrams]

Thanks! There was someone who emailed me about performance issues using image sequences of brush strokes, was that you?

[@froschberg18]

i love your tutorials! love your voice

[@KyleZager]

Oh wow I was not expecting that. Great tutorial - illuminating.

[@ECAbrams]

Always expect the unexpected here on the ECAbrams channel

[@LoganPinney]

Sweeeeeet!!!!! Check out the water colour tutorial from graphic in motion it ties in perfectly with this tutorial!!! Thanks Evan! Excited for the final motion hotline today

[@ECAbrams]

Thanks! Glad someone is watching those live shows :)

[@Unitedlabel]

Not sure if Echo is the best FX for performance . Correct me if I am wrong, but can’t you use CC Glue with a big dot and Distortion on it... gonne try both methods.

[@ECAbrams]

Glue gun is more of a particle system. It would can an interesting thing, but maybe not the same thing.

[@darkarps]

great tutorial as usual Evan, unfortunately my experience with Echo is cripplingly slow for some reason

[@MikelKiriakos]

set your resolution to half or quarter until you're ready for a final render I find helps alot. (ctrl+shift +J) or (ctrl+shift+alt +J)

[@LoayElAswad]

Pretty smart! Thanks :) One concern, the tutorial's pace is too slow for me.

[@melbendigo]

This one seems just right for me, but just play it at 2 speed. I watch most tuts at 2 speed and just slow them back down when it gets to a part I don't know how to do.

[@a_mizani]

Thank you so much!

[@robt82]

Hi teacher I loved your classes thank you! I'm learning a lot!

[@GenoArcska]

11:54 i laughed so hard when you suddenly became Donald Great video! thanks a lot

[@ECAbrams]

I do a flawless Donald Duck impression. It does, as I think people can also hear, absolutely wreck my vocal cords.

[@Roachesneedlovetoo]

I got held up when you jump into the graph editor, right after easy ease ( around 8:06 ). The lines in my graph editor are red and green with no handles. The only way I was able to get handles to show up was by right clicking on position and clicking separate dimensions. You didn't do that though and I have no idea why mine doesn't look like yours, I'm pretty positive I've followed along. Any help you can give would be great! Thank you.

[@ECAbrams]

sounds like you're looking at a value graph. Change to look at a speed graph using the view options on the graph editor window. That should get you where you want to be.

[@Roachesneedlovetoo]

@@ECAbrams Yup, that was it! Thanks for the help and answering so quickly.

[@jgondimfilho]

Tutorial maravilhoso Muito obrigado, professor

[@laynebrougher1984]

hey there! I felt as if I did everything right on the tutorial, however the black solid on the brush shape is showing up and not transparent on my final product! any help would be tremendous! EDIT: nevermind figured it out! I had my shift channels and levels in the fractal layer and not the adjustment.

[@ECAbrams]

Glad it got sorted out!

[@shumiyao]

in my case it was the black solid was not in complete black solid (nearly black gray).

[@keithhopkin]

at 7:32 you're bringing up transform properties one by one. I didn't know you can do this. I thought you can only bring up one at a time when using a keyboard shortcut. Is there a modifier you are using??

[@ECAbrams]

I think I was doing that by holding shift after the first one. So P for the first position, then Shift+s to add in scale, shift +r to add in rotation. I hope I'm remembering that right.

[@keithhopkin]

@@ECAbrams yeah I confirmed that with a friend as well. Great shortcut!

[@2424rocket]

Once you use the grid to get the original spot from one point to another, shut it off so we can see what you’re doing.

[@CatalinGulan]

Awesome tutorial like alaways on your channel Evan!❤ Thank you very much for sharing!

[@ECAbrams]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@RenanFelicianoOn]

I love you, Evan.

[@YoIomaster]

Amazing, thanks! subscribed!

[@lizziegsack]

Why is after effects so bad at having nice brushes... seriously this makes life so much harder than it needs to be! thanks for the tutorial tho :)

[@skuudigital9346]

RIght? I have heaps of brushes on illustrator and Procreate and would love to just bring those over and go from there

[@jacquesbroquard]

Awesome, kind of reminds me of the Trapcide Particular light streaks stroke technique. I love the variation roughen edges bring. Quick question, though, is there a way to use the brushstrokes from illustrator in after effects? I have artwork I want to preserve the look that the illustrator did and just bring it in via Overlord, but the brushstrokes styles aren't honored, they just come in as clean vector graphics.

[@MyResearchProject]

Very Cool cheers for sharing, excellent delivery

[@jorgelopez9620]

killer , thanks

[@ZappahVideo]

Hey Evan. This is a great tutorial as always, and I really, really like the effect. You're the best. However, I'm finding that during the last couple frames of the stroke (in whatever form it is, like a letter) the whole thing gets a little thicker and brighter and the internal brush iterations seem a little more.... aliased? It's like it changes resolution at the freeze frame. Resetting the "Time remap" keypoints back or easy-easing them doesn't seem to solve it. Is there a setting in echoes effect need to change? Or is it some other setting? Again.... I really like the effect and will use it in the future!

[@ECAbrams]

You might want to just adjust the opacity down towards the end of a stroke. Sounds like you're just getting many copies on top of each other bunching up. But, let me know if that doesn't solve it.

[@ZappahVideo]

@@ECAbrams That certainly fixed the main problem! I'm still getting some edge movement artifacts before the freeze but I can minimize that but adjusting some of the "subjective" effect controls. Thank you! You're the man now dog!

[@EvanFotis]

Great tutorial! Is there a way to apply custom strokes to shape layer paths? Imagine not just a curve that you manually shape, but hundreds of curves / paths from an illustration for example . If one can get Adobe Illustrator brush strokes recognized in AE with the ability to add them to shape layer paths.

[@penvirohk6771]

Import or copy shape from illustrator Expand the contents under path option click on path and copy(ctrl+c) and paste it on position now automatically it will move along path

[@Azuniite]

Saved my project, cheers man :))

[@fendydjong9865]

DUDE, I got so frustrated 'cause of that problem, thanks a lot!

[@ganeshpatil1448]

You can voice Batman!

[@Plaayaa69]

deserve many more views and many more subs! you are incredible!

[@ECAbrams]

Thank you very much. I'm glad the people who find it like it. BUT if you tell two people, and they tell two more people, that'll be at least 4 more people :)

[@Plaayaa69]

ECAbrams Exactly i’ll have to share it with friends!!!!

[@kostasfassoulas6915]

What kind of sorcery is this?!!! haha! Awesome!! Thank you!!

[@evan0316]

Great tutorial! Around the 3:45, when you are talking about defining the shape, are you referring to the fractal pattern or the comp size?

[@ECAbrams]

Both I suppose. Our goal is to approximate what is left behind when our "brush" contacts our "canvas" like leaving behind your fingerprint. So for a fan brush like shape, you might get away with just using a more elliptical mask on this same comp. Or since the extra information on the left and right is not used, you might make the whole comp narrower. Does that make sense?

[@SebDJ]

Great tutorial!

[@ECAbrams]

Thank you!

[@bradleyanimation120]

holly useful.

[@seanromeramc]

My paint stroke begins to disappear after the last keyframes, like as if it's being wiped off in the same flow it was painted in. How do I stop this from happening?

[@evanabrams2735]

Because of how the echo operator works, eventually, the echos must fade away, they can only live for a certain duration. You'll likely want to precompose and time remap to get permanent brushed strokes.

[@seanromeramc]

@@evanabrams2735 alrighty I'll give that a go. How would one precompose?

[@evanabrams2735]

​@@seanromeramc Select the layers you want in a comp, right-click, and choose pre-compose. Or use the appropriate keyboard shortcut. For me on a mac it's command shift C. Pre-composing is a critical concept in creating more complex things in after effects so I hope this helps get you started with the idea.

[@seanromeramc]

@@evanabrams2735 amazing, thank you so much!

[@jphdez15]

Just gonna say this video right here just earned you a sub. Keep up the good work! :)

[@ECAbrams]

I'll keep making the videos so long as people keep watching them.

[@alanfreedman2500]

When you add the levels adjustment layer early on to the brush and take out the deep black and bright white, why does your background stay black? Mine turns gray.

[@ECAbrams]

Is by background black or transparent in this one? I can't recall. It'll been a while.

[@takasaburou8478]

Thank you very much !!😆

[@malucoloco9143]

I LOVE IT!!!

[@bread_flakeHI]

머머리 아죠씨 감사합니다. Thanks for the tutorial always

[@kimgyulgamgyul]

wa! 한국인이네요! 저도 머머리 아죠씨 강좌 듣고 감탄했습니다. 진짜 애프터이펙트 내에서 제공하는 효과를 제대로 활용할 줄 아시는 숙달된 분이신 것 같아요.

[@motionwithoskar]

Hi Evan, I am using this effect to make a tear drop rolling down a piece of paper. My comp is 30 fps, and you didn't really teach/point us anywhere how to figure out all the echo settings out on our own. Could you referr me any calculations for figuring it out?

[@ECAbrams]

Hi. You'll need to adjust it visually. A lot of how many or few echos you need, and the spacing (time offset) can be goosed by how blurred your result gets, but is countered by the speed your "brush" is travelling. So, at 30 fps, if you had the time offset at (-1/30) seconds you would have one echo every frame. depending on the speed of the droplet, that may not be good. Sadly there is no hard and fast math, but consider starting at -1/30 and work the denominator to get your sub-frame echos as you need. It's a lot of tweaking to taste for what you can tolerate, and what your machine can handle.

[@motionwithoskar]

@@ECAbrams That was quick, thanks! here is a screenshot of what I am currently on, trying to get realistic (ish) blood to roll down from the eye. It looks out of place rn but thats because it doesn't have the lens blur on it. i.imgur.com/NDBt1sq.png

[@ThePauby]

Hey, love this tutorial! Really was exactly what I needed for my project! Just a question I hoped you could help me out with. I followed your tutorial and managed to get my brushstroke and I went to mask an image inside of it, Luna Matte manages to make the brush show up but it goes black and white. Do you know how to make the mask true colour instead?

[@ECAbrams]

Hey Laura. If I'm following correctly, you have another layer that you are revealing by using this brush stroke comp as its luma matte? If that's the case, Ae is only going to use the luminance information of the brush stroke comp to determine if pixels should be transparent or opaque. If you want to use colour information from the brush comp you'll likely need a second copy of the brush over top set to a bending mode, or underneath. Does that make sense?

[@ThePauby]

ECAbrams thank you! I’ll have a try and see if it works.

[@ThePauby]

I did as you said, and put a stencil alpha blending mode on top - exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much for your expertise

[@conchaid8197]

thank you !!!

[@KrishnaKaipa]

Amazing..!..Thank you.

[@ECAbrams]

You're very welcome.

[@hakimgraphiks5903]

This is a new stuff actually 👍

[@zezierlich]

Fantassstic! Thank you

[@oceansky8564]

thankyou!

[@Suver7]

cool! Thanks

[@jorgepradoungodevelasco8390]

Gracias por enseñar.

[@antblisss]

4:42 why not use the effect extract here instead of two effects? You can take out the black and gray bits just the same as using two effects.

[@ECAbrams]

If it works for you, do it. Why not?

[@buntykinny]

Thank u bro

[@ECAbrams]

Welcome

[@paulinakulawik9448]

works, chock-full thanks!

[@omaral-afa8879]

Awesome

[@ECAbrams]

thanks!

[@Buklen]

Evan Abrams sounds like Babish (Andrew Rea)

[@threia469]

I’m just trying to change my brush in the brush library how do I do this

[@ECAbrams]

The brush window in Ae is admittedly not very good. What are you trying and what happens when you try it?

[@mgr5550]

If i want to animate only simple objects such as squares and circles etc, geometric shapes morphing into other shapes, text borders, text conforming to a path and path following, etc NO CHARACTER animations needed, then is it better to work with AfterEffects or Adobe Animate ?

[@ECAbrams]

My guy says after effects because it's property and keyframe based. Animate is usually better for traditional work flows. Does that make sense?

[@mgr5550]

@@ECAbrams > The word traditional workflow is a little abstract for me. Well i want to mainly use it for video overlays. Lets say i want a photograph of a bottle to morph into a word. Can images also be manipulated well in aftereffects ? I think animate is more towards web oriented stuff ? But only advantage is i know flash animation moderately to have made entire websites with heavy bling, masks, effects and AS2 and all that for celebrity websites. So animate is a little similar right ?

[@anwitodas2447]

@@mgr5550 use "timewrap" effect in after effects to convert the image

[@mgr5550]

@@anwitodas2447 > Timewarp can morph an image into another ?

[@anwitodas2447]

@@mgr5550 yes you can checkout tutorial also

[@malucoloco9143]

GREETINGS FROM BRAZIL!

[@ECAbrams]

Hello from Canada!

[@ivanferencak1298]

Getting a weird noise from my Macbook each time the Echo effect is rendered...and I mean not just when doing a RAM preview, but whenever I'm changing the Number of echoes in real time. Sounds like laser guns shooting, but very quietly, lol. Something to be worried about?

[@ECAbrams]

Good question. I'm going to guess... maybe?

[@ivanferencak1298]

@@ECAbrams Guess I'm gonna have to find a new way to make brush strokes...too bad cause I really like this tutorial the most so far! My guess is the noise I hear is because of the echo effect (every "phew" is one piece of green bar getting rendered) I used the echo effect before without problems, but never with this large number of echoes. Not gonna risk the brand new Macbook I guess.

[@ECAbrams]

@@ivanferencak1298 interesting. That would mean it's something to do with your ram cache. Maybe even something off with the ram itself. I would recommend checking there is nothing wrong at a hardware level and the ram is seated correctly or not damaged in some way.

[@jasonngynn]

thanks slime

[@ToasterFilms404]

Setting echo operator to composite in front or composite in back completely gets rid of the stroke exact for 4 iterations. I followed everything exactly but its just mostly black, not to mention this takes forever to render something pretty simple.

[@ECAbrams]

I'm not sure what to tell you. If you followed the steps exactly and achieved different results I would suggest there is something drastically different with your installation of after effects or other software and hardware limitations to look into. Render speeds depend on many factors after all. Your system may simply not be optimized for this kind of work. But there are others methods, certainly. Perhaps a particle based approach would be more in line with your limitations.

[@giovannanathalie7054]

Que hino de vídeo

[@aulerius]

Once I saw echo effect with 420 echoes I curled up into a ball from terror. I love the effect but it has a habit of blowing my render times out of proportion.

[@ECAbrams]

I was surprised by how quickly it rendered myself. Are you using the latest version of Ae?

[@aulerius]

@@ECAbrams yes, haven't tested recently though. Maybe it's because I put it on big comps and bury it somewhere within a thick sandvich of effects on such chomp.

[@ECAbrams]

@@aulerius in this case, since we're only asking it to do 30 frames, maybe less if you do faster strokes, it's quite light. I was surprised at the speed since I had done this method years ago with very unpleasant results. Something may have changed about either the effect, or how Ae handles cached comp frames. I'm not sure, which. But with 20 on the screen it still rendered very quickly.

[@mehdiarjmandi5280]

wow !

[@lucielesnard6775]

how do you make the letter stay the way it is ???? mine disappears as soon as its done being drawn

[@ECAbrams]

I would advise using time remapping on a precomp. Let me know if that helps.

[@kevinheiden]

Precomp the animated brush and set the compisition end to when the brush stroke is completed. Then right mouse button --> time --> Freeze on last frame.

[@arasucg]

Yes Good

[@Panther-]

Thank you for this but honestly this is ridiculous,all for a brush, adobe needs to sort itself out, these brushes which I just import into photoshop easily, here u take an hour to make a stroke smh

[@casandraport6558]

How do you "draw on" 14:58

[@Adilkamal-j8p]

these were key frames from previous comp, check the key frames below which make like when you select.

[@bilalattique7974]

Very informative and educational, but reduce your pace Evan, you're way too fast.

[@Mindvorteks]

when trailer park boys will start again?

[@ECAbrams]

Good question. Worst case Ontario, there's the animated show on Netflix.

[@Mindvorteks]

@@ECAbrams I asked you because you're the only person I know who lives in Canada and thanks for answer :D

[@ECAbrams]

​@@Mindvorteks I am also a long time TPB viewer. We watched that show in university way too much.

[@Mindvorteks]

@@ECAbrams you know, I already asked because I guessed it. every time that's show remind me of you :) by the way i and my brother are still sad because of the lahey's dead. The liquor man passed away.

[@ECAbrams]

@@Mindvorteks I met him and Randy here in Ottawa once.

[@Trenton.D]

Good tutorial but WAY too fast.

[@ECAbrams]

Sorry about that. I get comments saying these videos are too slow too. Sometimes on the same video. It's a real goldilocks situation out here.

[@melbendigo]

Trenton, you can just use the speed controls on the video to slow it down to your liking. That's the magic of KZbin! ;-)

[@onlyhappydayz]

420

[@ECAbrams]

Truly dank tutorials around here.

[@IanZainea1990]

now we need a more different S ... oh wait, wrong tutorial.

[@ECAbrams]

check a check the emails.

[@Real_Nilam]

420 ... ;)

[@ECAbrams]

It's my dankest tutorial so far!

[@096dragonballz]

Thank you so much!!!