Articles

Share design tokens across projects with JSX files

How to use tokens, such as brand colors and fonts, across multiple After Effects projects by storing them in a JSX file.

workflow

November 17, 2021

Tim Haywood

How to attach layers to the end of a path

How to attach a layer to the end of a path, with trim paths and automatic rotation. Useful for attaching arrowheads to lines and more.

tutorial

May 17, 2021

Tim Haywood

How to use text style expressions

Everything you need to know to use the new text style expressions in After Effects.

expressions

May 13, 2021

Tim Haywood

Why we wrap our expressions in IIFEs

How and why we use Immediately Invoked Function Expressions (IIFEs) to make it clear what value is returned from our expressions.

javascripttip

February 15, 2021

Tim Haywood

What happens during expression pre-processing

After Effects pre-processes any expressions before running them. In this article you'll learn what it does during this process, why it does it, and how it might effect the way you write expressions.

internals

September 25, 2020

Tim Haywood

How to write expressions in external (jsx) files

How to write After Effects expressions in external JSX files, and the advantages of doing so.

workflow

August 23, 2020

Tim Haywood

How to write After Effects expressions in TypeScript

How we write expression libraries files using TypeScript, RollupJS, and rollup-plugin-ae-jsx, adding auto completion and type checking when writing After Effects Expressions in VS Code.

workflowtypescript

August 13, 2020

Tim Haywood

How to create and scale rectangles with expressions (intro to eBox)

How to create rectangles using After Effects expressions, and scale them from any anchor point, using the eBox library.

tools

August 7, 2020

Tim Haywood

Dealing with text descenders in After Effects templates

How get the height of a text layer without descenders in your After Effects templates, using expressions.

templates

July 31, 2020

Tim Haywood

How to use the JavaScript expression engine

How use the newer JavaScript expression engine in After Effects, rather than the ExtendScript engine.

javascript

July 24, 2020

Tim Haywood

How to animate with expressions (intro to eKeys)

How to animate using expressions, with full control over the easing, using the importable After Effects animation engine eKeys.

tools

July 16, 2019

Tim Haywood