After Effects Keyframing and Animation

Animate any layer property over time by setting keyframes, and control the feel of movement with easing. Here’s how to do it in After Effects on macOS, step by step — part of the free After Effects beginner curriculum.

Lesson 3 of the After Effects curriculum. Before this: Layers and the Layer Stack. Next up: Effects and Effect Controls.

What you’ll do

• Reveal a property (e.g., press P for Position) and click the stopwatch icon next to it to enable keyframing — the filled stopwatch means keyframing is active
• Move the playhead to a different time, change the property value, and see a second keyframe appear automatically as a diamond icon in the Timeline
• Press Spacebar to preview the animation between keyframes
• Press U to show all keyframed properties on a selected layer — this reveals every animated property at once
• Select keyframes and apply Easy Ease with F9 — notice the diamond icon changes to an hourglass shape, indicating smooth acceleration/deceleration
• Toggle the Graph Editor with Shift+F3 to see the animation curve; understand that the Y axis is the property value and the X axis is time
• Drag Bezier handles in the Graph Editor to manually refine the easing curve
• Move a keyframe earlier by 1 frame with Option+Left Arrow, or 10 frames with Option+Shift+Left Arrow
• Use J and K to jump the playhead to the previous and next keyframe

Do it hands-free with Skilly

Reading steps is one thing; doing them while the menus are in front of you is another. Skilly is a voice-first tutor for macOS: you ask out loud — “where’s the keyframing panel?” — and it answers while moving your cursor to the exact button, watching your actual After Effects window. It’s the same After Effects curriculum these lessons come from, taught live instead of read. Free to start.

Keep going

This is one stage of the full After Effects beginner curriculum. Previous: Layers and the Layer Stack. Continue with Effects and Effect Controls.