Overview of Shape Layers Inside Adobe After Effects

🛡️ Overview of Shape Layers inside Adobe After Effects

Courtesy of @millionframes
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Part 4 of After Effects Micro Course.
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These starting slides are more of a warm up so that when we move into
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Keyframing and animation at least we are ready with our basics.
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🔍 Let’s breakdown the shape layer into its contents and properties.
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1️⃣ Selecting the shape layer
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2️⃣ Drawing a simple shape
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3️⃣ Fill & Stroke Changes
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4️⃣ Contents of a Shape Layer
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5️⃣ Path Content
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6️⃣ Stroke Content
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7️⃣ Fill & Transform Content

Select the shape layer from the Tools Panel at the top

We have 5 shape layers to choose from.
Mastering shape layers takes practice. But for now well cover the basics

Draw a simple shape

Just like we draw a shape in any other design tool.
After the shape is drawn, a layer will be created in the timeline panel.

Quick Major Property Changes

You can access the “Fill” and “Stroke” options from the toolbar panel. This works similar to any other design tool like Sketch.
Click the bluish “Fill” text to open the “Fill” Option.

Contents of a Shape Layer

Click the Drop Down to open the contents of the shape layer. Voila!
This is where the Magic happens. You have control over so many options.
*Since we made a rectangle shape, AE automatically names the contents depending on the shape. You can easily change it by double clicking on it.

Path Content

Inside path, we have control over the rectangle size, position in 2D space and roundness (corners).
The “Stopwatch” at the left side of any property means that the particular property can be animated over time.

Stroke Content

Inside Stroke, we have control over the rectangle stroke’s color, stroke’s opacity, width, and Dashes.
Line Cap & Line Join, I’ll cover in a different slide.
For now, just remember, strokes have caps and joints.

Fill & Transform Content

Inside Fill, we have control over the rectangle fill’s color and opacity.
Inside Transform, we have overall transformational properties like skew and rotation of a shape.

Don’t worry about these.

This is kinda warm up content. We’ll be soon moving towards the big word “Keyframing” and then I’ll explain the use of these switches! Till then you have their names!

Bonus — 4 tools that may be useful in your designer way:

Flowkit — allows designers to create frighteningly fast user flows within Sketch and Figma.
Webflow — all-in-one web design tool that allows users to design, build, and launch responsive websites visually.
Crello — the simplest online image editor. A simple but powerful tool to create awesome designs for any social media format — posts, covers, graphics, and posters using the best software on the web. It’s easy! A lot of animated designs.
Funnelytics — an incredible tool that helps you build the best marketing funnel mapping.

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