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Adobe After Effects

This is a blog post to collect effects which can be used for a character.

Basic usages

  • When you alt-click a stopwatch icon on the left of Transform property like Position, then it shows Expression for it to change an animation using an expression.

Anime style speed line

Written in 2026-06-28.

This is based on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73T5zAZtCpc: Not this video because it used a file I wasn't able to download.

The steps to create lines

  1. Create a background. Here add a gradient colored background
    1. Add new layer Solid from New > Solid
    2. Add Gradient Ramp effect. For eaxmple, On the layer, go to Effects > Effects & Presets, search "Ramp" and add it
    3. Set Start Color and End Color, like end color gets darker.
    4. Set Ramp Shape to Radial Ramp
      1. Click and drag the Start of Ramp (the center) and End of Ramp (the outer radius)
    5. Optional? Set Ramp Scatter to like 200 to make it nicer looks
  2. Create a center light
    1. Add new Solid Layer and add a Fill effect
    2. Change the Color yellow
    3. Set Transform > Rotation on 45 degrees
    4. Set Transform > Scale to make it cover an entire screen
    5. Set a mask
      1. Select Rectangle Tool on a tool bar and create a Mask on the layer with the part of the central light
      2. Set Mask Feather. For example, 250. It makes a rectangle blur
      3. Set Mask Expansion to make the light wider or narrower.
  3. Create the base shadow line layer
    1. Duplicate the center light layer and rename it "Line Shadows 01"
    2. Remove the Fill effect
    3. Add a Fractal Noise effect
    4. Set the Property of the fractal noise effect
      1. Set Contrast to, for example, 2500, to remove blur
      2. Set Brightness to, like 300, to separate white and black are clear
      3. Go to Transform and update the scale to look noises become noises with lines instead of rounded shapes
        1. Disable Uniform Scaling
        2. Increase scale width and decrease scale height
      4. Animate the layer using Transform > Offset Turbulence
        1. Create keyframe on the first layer for Offset Turbulance
        2. Create keyframe on the last layer for Offset Turbulance, and set different values from the first key frame.
      5. Alt-click Sub Settings > Evolution and set time * X in Expression. This is to increase the speed of a line
    5. Change the color of the lines
      1. Set "Blending Mode" to Multiply. I needed to click "Toggle Switches / Modes" on the bottom bar to show the Mode on each layer.
      2. To make the color lighter,
        1. Add an effect CC toner
        2. Change the Tones to Duotone
        3. Set Shadows to the color darker than the background
  4. Add more variations of the shadow lines. Add as many layer as you want.
    1. Duplicate the above "Line Shadows 01" layer into new layer
    2. Update some properties to make them look different from the 01 layer. For example,
      1. Update Contrast, Brightness, or Scale
      2. Alt click Sub Settings > Evolution and set the expression like time - 200
  5. Create highlights. Add as many layer as you want.
    1. Duplicate some shadows layer of existing highlights layers, and rename those layers to "Line Hightlights 01"
    2. Set Blending Modes of the new layer "Screen"
      1. Or set "Add" in a few layers depending on how they look
    3. Update "CC Toner" effect
      1. Set "Highlights" to the black
      2. Set "Shadows" to the brighter color
    4. Add some variations
      1. Update Fractal Noise > Brightness
      2. Update Fractal Noise > Transform > Offset Turbulance
      3. Update Fractal Noise > Transform > Rotation
    5. Add more variations by adding Glow effect. And update
      1. Glow Threshold
      2. Glow Radius
      3. Glow Intensity
  6. Create corner shadows
    1. Duplicate the center light layer and rename it to a "corner shadows" layer
    2. Update the Mode of "Mask 1" to Subtract from Add
    3. Set the Fill > Color black
    4. Set the Transform > Opacity not to make too dark

Anime style speed line but the left top corner emits lights look like

  1. Create a background in the same way
  2. Create the base shadow layer. On top of the same step as above
    1. Add Corner Pin effect on the Line Shadows layer
    2. Drag the positions of each edge of the corner pin to move lines from one edge to another edge
  3. Add soft Light
    1. Add new Solid layer
    2. Add new mask with rounded shape
    3. Set Mask Feather and Mask Expansion
    4. Set Blending Modes to Add
    5. Add Fill effect and set the color
  4. Add main light
    1. Add new Solid layer
    2. Set Blending Modes to Screen
    3. Add new mask with light emitting layer
    4. Animate Mask Path by creating multiple key frames with multiple shapes
    5. Add CC radial Radial Fast Blur effect