HOW-TO • VIDEO & MOTION
Fluid Motion: Add subtle sway and flow.
In this Fearless Motion session, learn how to use masks to make shapes move like liquid mercury.
RESOURCES
A quick note: After Effects gives you the power to make your art move in eye-catching, thumb-stopping ways. If you haven’t used it before, the interface might look overwhelming, but stick with it. We’ll give you what you need to navigate After Effects and make something awesome.
Welcome to Fearless Motion! This series was designed to make motion an accessible, actionable part of your creative toolkit. Each tutorial will focus on foundational concepts. You can tackle each how-to on its own, but if you’re an After Effects newbie we’d recommend giving our first session — Elemental Motion — a go, then jumping in here.
This session: Fluid Motion. Get comfortable in After Effects! Learn how to use masks—just like the kind you know and love in Photoshop—to generate organic shapes that move like liquid mercury. Bring in video footage to create hypnotizing blob-on-blob-on-blob vibes.
Alright. Ready? Yes! You’re totally ready.
Open FluidPortrait.psd in After Effects
Open After Effects and import FluidPortrait.psd by going to File > Import > File. In the open dialog, make sure Composition - Retain Layer Sizes is selected under the “Import as” dropdown.
A second pop-up will appear to confirm more details about how you want your PSD imported. Be sure Editable Layer Styles is selected under Layer Options. This will ensure all our Photoshop layers will show up the way we’d expect.
Set the composition’s duration
Right-click on the FluidPortrait composition and choose Composition Settings. Inside the settings dialog, you’ll notice that a lot of your original PSD information — like Composition Name and dimensions — has been retained. Let’s set the duration for this comp to 10 seconds (0:00:10:00 aka 0 hours, 0 minutes, 10 seconds, and 0 frames) — a great length for short social posts.
Reveal your masks.
There were vector masks applied to some of the layers in the Photoshop file. After Effects automatically transfers those over. Let’s access them so we can get them moving and grooving!
Twirl open both the Neon Topograph Front and Neon Topograph Back layers in the Timeline to reveal their masks and mask properties.
Animate your masks.
To animate the path (shape) of our vector masks over time, activate keyframes by clicking on the stopwatch icons next to each Mask Path property. These first keyframes record the current shape of our masks.
Now move the playhead to the middle of the timeline and alter the mask shapes by dragging on vector points, handles, and/or lines. Notice how After Effects drops new keyframes to record your changes. Hit play or scrub the timeline to see how After Effects automagically animates from one shape to the next!
Loop the motion.
To create a seamless looping movement, make sure the masks are the same shape at the beginning and end of the Timeline. For each layer, select the first keyframe and use Control + C (Windows) or Command + C (macOS). You might recognize this shortcut; you just copied that keyframe!
Move the playhead to the end of the timeline and use Command/Control + V to paste it. Press the space bar to watch the looping animation.
Power move alert! Among the many ways After Effects unlocks massive creative possibility is by giving you the ability to swap out the media in any layer with anything. We’ve already got some lava lamp action happening with our masks on these static layers, but let’s give this a double dose of groovy by swapping these layers with some ambient footage!
Sub out the static for video.
Import the PurpleWave.mp4 clip (File > Import > File). With both “Neon Topograph” layers selected, hold Alt/Option as you drag PurpleWave.mp4 from the Project panel onto either layer.
Boom! This swaps the original layer for the new video footage. And the video footage inherits everything we’ve already done to these layers, including their masks and animated paths. Swap layers with anything — GIFs, PNGs, dogs puking on carpets — all media in your Project panel can be used infinitely, in as many contexts as you’d like.
Press the spacebar to see your progress. Looking good!
Good to know.
Stock photo and music sites like Adobe Stock offer a wide variety of hi-res video assets like these. Just select video as the media type and experiment with search terms like “abstract background” or “ethereal motion”.
Generate blobs from scratch.
Let’s generate some moving organic shapes from scratch and use them as a sort of clipping mask for the Summer Haze layer. First turn off the original vector masks on the layer by selecting “None” as the mask operator for each. Now choose Layer > New > Solid to create an empty layer. In the settings for this solid, name it “Lava Lamp”, make it red, and click “Make Comp Size” to ensure it covers our entire canvas. Ensure this new layers is above “Summer Haze”. Now go to the Effects & Presets panel, type in “mercury,” and you’ll see a simulation effect called CC Mr. Mercury. Drag and drop it onto our new solid layer “Lava Lamp” to apply it. Press the spacebar to see a bunch of blobs burst forth.
More about Effects: Mr. Mercury is just one of 200+ plugins that ship with After Effects. Third-party software companies offer hundreds more. These plugins are mini-applications that work inside After Effects to add or modify characteristics of layers (think exposure, color, blur, distortion, grain, lighting) or generate visuals from scratch (think snow, rain, lighting, and blobs!).
Set the blobs to function as a mask.
Select the Summer Haze layer and choose Alpha Matte so that Summer Haze is masked, or alpha matted, by the layer above it (in this case the Lava Lamp and its blobs created by Mr. Mercury).
Fine-tune Mr. Mercury.
As with every effect, Mr. Mercury comes with a number of parameters we can tweak to dial in the look and feel of our blobs. Select the layer “Lava Lamp” then go to Window > Effect Controls. Explore what happens when you change each parameter. Depending on where you are in the timeline, After Effects will show you changes at that moment in time. To preview in motion, remember to keep pressing the spacebar between tweaks.
“As a creative, I think it’s important to continue to grow and learn new things. Motion gives me a new skill to explore, and use to communicate ideas.”
Extra! Extra! More free practice files!
Check it out — these three animations were all made with the Elemental Motion techniques we just learned! Download the Photoshop files and experiment with fresh ways to bring your new skills to life, or experiment with a file from your own Creative Cloud library!
Spread the love.
Make your customers ooze with excitement when you liquify your product promo.
Montage your fashion collage.
Blend texture and imagery, then set things in motion for a virtual runway experience.
Turn some heads.
Catch your customers’ eye by adding a bit of personality to your brand.
Have fun and we’ll see you for the next Fearless Motion topic!
