Fueled by Curiosity — Driven by Creativity — Guided by Compassion
Did you play with a Spirograph when you were a kid? One Christmas a few years ago, in a burst of nostalgia, my wife bought a Spirograph kit for our kids (or herself, if we’re being honest). When I remembered the satisfying way my pen would travel with the rotating gears, creating graceful arcs and loops, I thought to myself, "Oooh, it would be a fun challenge to animate drawings like this in After Effects!"
After figuring out the basic parenting and expressions that would follow one point on the inner circle and trace the corresponding line, I went a step further and set up multiple points and a rainbow of colored lines to follow them. I created a set of expression controls that allow me to adjust the diameters of the inner and outer circles, as well as the spread between the drawing dots. Here’s a sample animation that shows the results of three different combinations of those settings.