Character Rigging and Animation Practice

I recently subscribed to a membership for Digital Tutors and have been following animator Kori Valz's "Rigging and Animating a Simple Character in After Effects" tutorial. Here is the character design that I have been rigging and animating.

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS TUTORIAL IS AVAILABLE ONLY THROUGH A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO DIGITAL TUTORS AND THE ACCOMPANYING FILES I HAVE DOWNLOADED HAVE NOT BEEN SHARED WITH ANYONE ELSE. THIS EXERCISE HAS BEEN PURELY TO HELP ME IN MY ENDEAVOUR TO RIG MY OWN CHARACTERS IN AFTER EFFECTS AND WILL NOT BE USED TO MAKE MONEY - ONLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES.

Monster Character Design 

Character Creation

Remember to create each body part that is going to be animated on separate layers. Also bear in mind each sub asset that will be animated e.g. for the eye, you will have the Body, Iris, Pupil etc. on separate sub layers inside their corresponding master layer

Importing into After Effects

Using the Auto-Crop plug-in from Batch Frame to crop each layer so there is no extra alpha surrounding the layer 

Setting Up a Basic Parenting Structure 

Applying a Bezier Warp to the Body Layer

Applying the Bezier Warp effect and setting up the reference guide for the Nulls using the ruler

Creating the Null map for the body layer

Testing the expression 

Setting up the controls for the body using expressions

Parenting Nulls to their corresponding master Nulls

Setting up the Eyes and Mouth for Rigging

Parent the eyes and mouth pre-comps to the Top Null control so when this is animated, the eyes and mouth move with the body warp. This is so the character is one whole item, not separate assets together.

Duplicate the body layer and move above the Mouth pre-comp, then change the pre-comp to an Alpha Matte layer under the Track Matte options 

Eye Controls