As a former DJ and dance music aficionado, designer Matthew Fowler spent the 1990s spinning records and creating flyers. These colorful mini-posters advertised live music events, and less legal raves that took place in British fields and warehouses. “I was always heavily into dance music and the rave scene,” says Fowler. “Now that look is back. People want that kind of early ’90s rave feel, with a duotone, bright color scheme, and blocky imagery.”

In the digital age, few posters get printed anymore. But the art form lives on, says Fowler. Since founding orderdesignuk in 2008, the designer has created artful ads for the giants of British dance music: Ministry of Sound, Resident Advisor, Printworks, and Paul Van Dyk. The only difference? Flyers are square now (because Instagram), and they move. Fowler creates kinetic typography, spinning shapes, and posters that magically slide in and out of frame. And he’s ready to share his tricks.

So put a record on, fire up After Effects, and learn how to create that animated flyer look, in eight simple steps.

 

Step 1: Import the PSD
 

Matt designed this poster in Photoshop and saved it as a PSD. Let’s bring it into After Effects to add motion.  

Download his layered Photoshop starter file.

With After Effects open, go to File > Import > File and navigate to the downloaded file “RAVE_Poster_layout.psd”. 

When importing layered files from Photoshop or Illustrator, Ae will ask you if you want to recognize and retain that layer structure. We do. Choose Composition–retain layer sizes from the import dialog dropdown and hit okay. 

Ae then imports the PSD and turns it into an Ae composition by the same name of the file. In this case that’s “RAVE_Poster_layout.” Compositions (or “comps”) in Ae are the equivalent of artboards in Ps, Ai, or Xd. If you double-click on the comp to open it, you’ll see all your layers in the timeline. 

Open the comp’s settings by clicking Composition > Composition Settings and verify that this new Ae comp inherited its dimensions from the Ps file. We want this animation to be 10 seconds long, so let’s make it that way at the bottom of these settings: 00:00:10:00 (If you’re new to time code, the first number is hours, then minutes, then seconds, then frames). Keep in mind that frames, or the still images that will make up the animation, are fractions of seconds each. 

Step 2. Create your checkerboard

We want to create a sphere wrapped in a checkerboard pattern. Let’s generate the checkerboard first. Go to Composition > New Composition and in the comp settings dialog, name it “Checkerboard.” Make the width 2000px and height 1000 px. Match its duration to the rest of our animation: 10 seconds. Hit OK. 

With our new Checkerboard comp open, let’s add two layer solids. Go to Layer > New > Solid, set the color as black, and make sure the dimensions are the same as your comp (2000x1000). Repeat the process and create a white layer. With the white layer on top, select it and apply the Checkerboard effect by clicking  Effect > Generate > Checkerboard. 

Let’s scale up the checkerboard grid a little. With the white solid still selected, in the Effects Control panel, set Width to 50 to make each checker 50px tall and wide.

Step 3. Create the sphere

Return to the “RAVE_Poster_layout” comp we created when we imported the starter file, and drag the newly-created checkerboard comp from the Project panel (Window > Project) into the layer stack so that it sits beneath the "CREASES" texture layers. With the checkerboard layer selected, apply a sphere effect by clicking Effect > Perspective > CC Sphere.

With the checkerboard layer still selected, drag it into the center of the placeholder. To make it larger, open the Effects Control panel and increase the radius of the sphere by dragging right on the value.

Step 4. Make it spin
 

In addition to the Effects Control panel, you can also change parameters of a given effect in the timeline. Expand the effect controls for this layer in the timeline so we can tilt the sphere by modifying its Rotation X and Rotation Z. Then, create the spin animation for Rotation Y by clicking on the stopwatch next to it. This turns on animation for this value and automatically adds an initial keyframe to the beginning of the timeline–the beginning of our spin. 

Now go to the end of the 10 second timeline and increase the Y rotation value to 2x 0,0 (two full rotations). This will automatically add a second keyframe to the end of our timeline. Hit the spacebar to render and preview the spin, as the Rotation Y value changes from 0 to 2 rotations over the course of our 10-second timeline.

Step 5. Pre-compose and duplicate the posters

Ae comps are also akin to smart layers in Photoshop: We can combine multiple items and embed them into an intermediary object. Select all the layers of our Poster comp then go to Layer > Pre-compose. Name the new intermediary comp “Poster 1” and leave the rest as default settings. We’ve now embedded all our layers into the comp, "Poster 1." 

In the Project panel, select the newly-created Poster 1 comp and go to Edit >Duplicate to make a second copy of the comp. Drag this duplicate comp — name it “Poster 2” — from the project panel into the “RAVE_Poster_layout” comp so that both Poster 1 and Poster 2 are present.

Step 6. Change the color

Poster 1 already has a yellow overlay that was created in Photoshop. Let’s make a different color overlay for our new duplicate, Poster 2. Double-click on Poster 2 to open its timeline. You’ll see all our original layers in there including the yellow overlay. Let’s colorize this one by adding a bright cyan layer solid (or any other cool color). 

Just like in Photoshop, you can change the blend mode of every layer in After Effects. Change the blend mode of our cyan color solid to Multiply. (Layer > Blending Mode > Multiply)  Finally, delete the Yellow Overlay layer below it.

Step 7. Animate between poster copies

Verify that the Poster 1 is now yellow and Poster 2 is cyan. Return to the layout comp. Let’s do a shift-y move from one poster to the other. First drag Poster 2 to the right so it’s just offscreen. Just like in Photoshop, you can hold shift while dragging to lock in one dimension of movement. 

Now twirl down the arrows next to the layers to open the transform options for both layers. Create a one-second transition in the middle of the timeline. With both layers selected, click on the stopwatch next to Position to activate the animation. This automatically creates two initial keyframes at this point in time for both our posters. They’ll start moving here.  

Go to a half-second after the 5-second mark and drag both posters to the left until Poster 1 is just out of frame and Poster 2 is squarely in frame. This will automatically create a second set of keyframes marking the end position of the animation. Hit the spacebar to preview your animation. 

To make the sliding movement a bit smoother, select all four keyframes by clicking and dragging to highlight them. Then go to Animation > Animation Assistant > Easy Ease. Hit the spacebar to preview your animation.

Step 8. Export to Adobe Media Encoder

To export this animation as a cross-platform compatible video file, add it to the Adobe Media Encoder Queue. Go to Composition > Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue. Once Media Encoder opens and the file is loaded in the queue, choose your output format working left to right: Preset group: H.264. Match Source: High bitrate. Choose where to save it to and hit the play button at the top of the queue. The resulting MP4 is now ready for sharing.

Check out more from Matthew Fowler on Instagram.

Header image made with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.