How To Create Animated Arrows In After Effects (easiest method - no clickbait!) 

Dude I just want to thank you, I've seen many tutorials on how to animate an arrow and I always thought it was so silly that something so simple was complicated, but your tutorial is short and effective, perfect!

Excellent method. Just found out this works perfectly even if you're converting an illustrator file into shape layers. After effects was even nice enough to automatically separate the arrowhead from the path automatically.

If you're trying to center the anchor point and using a Mac whose keyboard doesn't have a home button: Step 1: Select “Layer” in your top menu. Step 2: Select “Transform” from the dropdown menu. Step 3: Select “Center Anchor Point in Layer Content”

Thank you so much! So glad I discovered you early on learning After effects, I will just go straight to your channel and search from here on in! Simple, clear instructions, good pace. I appreciate you!

Thank you! Yes this is so much easier than other tuts I've seen.

Quick and handy! So much simpler than the other methods here on youtube

This is awesome! Thank you so much for sharing. Very helpful 😊

Thank you very much for this tutorial easy and not confusing.

Absolutely excellent. Thank you!

this is very very useful and super simpler than the expression!! thank you very much!

Thank you so much for this, easy, straight forward, and to the point. Appreciate the help

An elegant solution! Thanks!

lovely, straight to the point. thanks!

Dude, thank you so much for the clear tutorial. People tend to overcomplicate when it comes to After Effects, but you went straight to what mattered. I am going to subscribe to your channel :)

Nice explaination,, I did shadowing your tutorial and could accomplish it.. I had some problem with the arrow going faster than the path... i had to adjust the key frames a bit but it worked nicely.

This is so helpful, thankyou!

OMG I have been doing this the hard way all this time. Thank you!

You're the BEST! THANK YOU!

Nice! The only thing I would say in support of using the pickwhip is if you need to edit the path or trim paths value over time, make tweaks, i.e. a client wants you to move something or a designer sends you updated designs or any number of changes you'll have to make gradually, if it's pickwhipped then you just need to change the values on the line, those changes are reflected on the arrow and you don't have to keep copying and pasting the path every time you need to make a change.

Thank you. Easy ease!

grat one! so simple thank you

My man. This is precisely what I needed and yes, simple!

Has anyone else had the problem of after pasting the line's path the triangle does not match?

great video man thanks

How do I do this if I want the arrow to go in a perfect circle (Like along the ellipse path)?

your tutorials are great, subbed

It's just life saving. So many thanks

Perfect explanation. Subscribed! 👍

My man. on point. loved it

So easy. Thnaks

Hey man!!! thanks for the help. I was searching and I got no of videos but they're all complicated. I subscribed your channel. I hope you will keep it making more easy thanks again. A lot of love from Pakistan

Wow. I just used the null along path/pickwhip method to animate an arrow. This is so much easier. Subbed.

You are Literally the Best! Thank you so much!!! Sophie

Awesome! Thank you, genius! :)

Thank you! So simple.

Amazing tutorial.

Thank you from BR man!!! Very simple!

awesome tutorial, thanks for sharing bro!! Seamless explanation

damn, I had been using so complicated methods in the past, thank you! Now I can also easily turn it into a precomp and use just import in other project :)

Thank you for sharing

Subscribed for this hahaha you should do more of this

Super helpful thanks Mark!

Nice. Might use this method.

Thanks you so much, new sub for sure, you're amazing

Yassssss, thank you my man 🙌

OMG THANK YOU!!

Brilliant! Thanks a lot :D

Underrated. Thank you.

Dude you so awesome !!! i am so appreciated !!! you help me to do some project wich used after effect, thanks you so much!!

300,000 chumps, more like it!! thanks dude!

OMG this is the easiest method with the clearest explanation I came across so far !

thank you man, you helped me a lot with my school project

excellent tutorial

TY nice bro

I hope you get a lot of views. This is so much easier than other tutorials. I had older iMac and just decide to create animated graphic with photoshop and Illustrator. Thanks. AE 2020 version worked too.

You are amazing ❤️🤩

Thank you!

best tutorial ever on this topic 🥳

awesome! Thank you!

oooooo snap! THANK YOU!

Love it

Auch tolle Videos 👍

Sooper and simple

very good thanks

dude I know its been a year but this is life saver for my chinese tutorials

Thank you!!!

ty man

omg so sick

Very awesome trick without expression, I have use your trick in my project thank you

Thanks

Thank you

Thanks, super easy

Brilliant

Thanks for simplifying! Wasted a lot of time before I came across your video.

Any way to have additional keyframes using this method to speed up/slow down the arrowheads? I've got 2 arrows going different completely separate paths and need them to intersect at a common point at the same time, but as it is right now one arrives and passes way earlier than the other.

Thank you so much for this, but can you explain why I can’t make my line smoother, it’s just a path like as if I am using navigator or gps

BOSCH! cheers

great this is just what i was looking for! Wonder how you might go about adding 2 arrowheads one on each end to have a line where each arrowhead moves on x axis on left and right to show a width or widen or measure concept - would you just duplicate and flip? many thanks!

What is the home key on a mac laptop? Not sure how to center the centerpoint on the arrow

hi man, thanks for sharing this useful tutorial. I did as you said in this video and now I have a problem with my project. I have two shape paths, one shape is regular and the other shape is the same but flipped horizontally. when I want to apply this animation to the second shape's path (flipped one) the positions points that come to arrow shape is not flipped as the main shape, I would be thankful if you can help me fix this out.

wow!

Yes, This is much much easier!

Man, i had to change the animation so I came back, re-watched the tutorial and went in again. Did everything but now my path is moving faster than the arrowhead and I have no idea why, considering I did the exact same thing as the last time :(

Thanks for this nice tutorial. However you have to delete, copy and paste from the beginning whenever you want to make any change on your path. The other (add a null tracing path) method does not require to make any change whenever you revise your path. In special cases like preparing templates or cooperative works we may need that a little harder way.

arrow key at 1:44 doesn't seem to work in my AE. it just distorts the edges rather than adding more or less

it's strange that when you copy the path at the first there was no keyframes with that path, but when you paste on Position of arrow, there appears keyframes, can you please explain this??

May i ask.....what processor....GPU card and how much ram your using to do these projects ?

Hello, good tutorial, but if i want a png file to be a arrow head, what should i do?

AWESOME tutorial, I was literally giving up till I found your tutorial, thanks man !

This is great but I'm having trouble making changes afterwards. The only way I can figure out how to move the animated arrow after the fact, is to delete the original path and draw a new one and then copy that path to the position of the triangle. Do you have a better method for relocating the arrow?

not so flexible expression can make it more flexible to reuse again and again and also it can be in one layer to simply copy one layer and paste then change only path .

When I paste the path, the motion is much shorter than that of the original path. The arrow head moves much faster, what did I do wrong?

doesn't seem to work for me for some reason. the arrow head and line doesn't sync. though I have to admit that I am a complete noob in the ways of after effect

How do you animate the path? When I do this method, the line is not animated

why my arrow did not connect to the end of the of the path. Tq

When copying the path and paste it on the arrow head, for some reason the arrowhead and the line don't align. The position and the timing of it just doesn't sync. Any hidden buttons that you pressed?

M8 I feel so stupid. I've followed your instructions to the letter and yet, I cannot make the triangle move. I have copied the path by using command+C and then i got to position and click command+V and absolutely nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

👌🏻👌🏻🙏🏻

Hi, Help me out, I pasted the Path but i did not see any keyframes

So how can I do this in 3d?