Puppet Tool

Since we spent the last week making our little moving birds to animate a landscape image, I decided to look further into ways to animate other still images. I found a tutorial that gave a pretty brief overview of the Puppet tool used in AfterEffects. Essentially, you set joints on an image, preferably a PNG file, and it allows for an organic movement, hinging the image in two places.


I have never actually used this tool in AfterEffects, but I was interested in the way not only you could move a part of a still image, but AfterEffects automatically makes the motion of the image flow so well by shifting the other parts of the image around it.
Since this video was done by what sounds like a 12-year old boy, I decided to see if Andrew Kramer had any more in-depth tutorials using the puppet tool. While he had none specific to it, he did include use of it in this lengthy and interesting tutorial using green screens and a car crash. You can find the video here.