During the production of my ‘Canary’ film, I tried to use After Effect to create a dynamic effect. I drew the flowers and leaves in Adobe Illustrator I and then imported them into After Effect to create the swaying leaves.
Because I didn’t consider layering in AI, I had to use pins in AE to make the leaves skeletal and wobbly, which was quick and easy to do, but the downside was that you couldn’t look at them closely and there were some rigid movements.
Fortunately, the shot is only a few seconds long and is presented as a background rather than a subject, so the final result is satisfactory.
If you need to create a leaf-swaying animation like this in the future, you should try to avoid too many layers in the drawing process, as this will greatly reduce the speed of your computer and will affect your final film.