MLP Animation Analysis: Da Magics 

Really enjoy your videos and the way you dissect things. I don't even know anything about this pony stuff, but that just shows the universal appeal of what you're doing. I would suggest a collaboration sometime, but I have no idea what that might be. Keep up the good work.

"IT'S THE UNICORNS! THEY'RE DOING IT WITH THEIR-AWESOME-MAGIG!" I died laughing!

I have no idea what you saying but awesome

You know, seeing all of the little tidbits, details and things that could be overlooked without closer inspection, it's really made me appreciate just how much time and effort is put into the animations of the show. It's also made me less of an impatient ass when the show needs to have two to four weeks for a new episode. :)

"Now you build your own reusable magic effects." Yeah, if I was a demigod like you.

After 11 years, still helpful for my little project. Thanks dude, really appreciate the knowledge!

April 25 is apparently unicorn appreciation day. Get ready for the next year.... *_*

The magic effect in After Effects is procedural. It'll follow whatever's put in the Input comp.

Basically, with the "Swap Symbol" command I can easily replace one symbol with another and keep the same position, rotation, etc... That way I can replace a copy of the beads with sparkles and the animations automatically line up.

Right Click - Magic Effects Source

I don't animate, but it's VERY EVIDENT how this can be more than just useful for someone that does. Keep it up, Gbeaudette; we're counting on you!

The one thing that I REALLY appreciate about these videos is primarily of the helpful suggestions that we see throughout, but I also really enjoy his way of expression and voice. Im currently in a speech class and the way he projects his voice is also key to what makes these analysis helpful. His voice isnt just a plain monotone that is telling us what to do, but it has feeling as if he is actually showing us the route to success. All in all I just wanted to say your voice projection is pro.

You've done an excellent job with this :) I love the technical attention you've given to what most people would consider a trivial thing. Also, the competent usage of After Effects is much appreciated (I'm inspired to leave my precomps with clean controls for later). Thanks!

“Covert to cymbal” Me: cries in Flipaclip

After Effects and Flash slot really well together. Since After Effects can import SWF files, there's a few things I'm looking to show in the future I can't do otherwise. As for learning AE, I suggest watching a lot of videos on sites like Video Copilot. There's a lot more good, free AE videos out there than Flash ones.

Waking up in the morning, going to work, and seeing this when I log into RU-vid.. I love days like these. Thank you.

Thank you so much for continuing this series. Happy unicorn appreciation day!

Does he work for hasbro?

I love how you pick out snippets from the show as transitions of sorts in your videos. Makes me smile.

You sir, are a great man. Not only do you provide us with the knowledge to do this ourselves, you actually provide the files to make it work out of the box! Every one of your videos I watch makes me want to properly learn Flash more.

Great video. The sparkles at the end were a nice touch to finish it off. All the show clips you used to illustrate what you were saying were amusing. "Their (AWESOME) magic" was hilarious, and Fluttershy's reaction to us venturing out of Flash.

A fan animation from your hands would prove interesting as we've seen you've obviously got what it takes to do so. Well, regardless of what you decide to use this talent for, thanks for these Analysis vids!

Symbols are basically just boxes that hold artwork. So once I animated the beads (or really the boxes they're in) I can just make a copy and change the artwork so that it keeps the same animation.

I have absolutely no experience with animation, and you made it quick and easy to figure out. You would make a great teacher for this IMO.

These tutorials will come in handy once animation classes start for me next year.

The days are so much better when we get to meticulously analyze MLP. :D

This is about the same as taking a few pictures of a Chrysler Imperial and building your own from scratch based on the pictures. Pretty amazing stuff.

Huzzah the learning has been doubled! and Happy Unicorn Appreciation Day! Great job on this tutorial, dude. I'm gearing up for my 2D animation class for next semester and I'm psyched I found your channel, I'll probably use it a lot...

This isn't just a great guide for animation, I also used it as a guide for the magic effects in this still image I drew in flash. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Thanks!

damn .. i dont know anything about animation, but what you just did in this 9min video made it sound like accomplishment. You are incredibly good!

And another awesome video from you. I have absolutly no skills in falsh, nor do I know much about the techy stuff of it all, but you always manage to make it understandable for people like me. Kudos, and happy Unicorn Appreciation Day!

You make it sound so simple(!) But seriously, I think people with a better understanding of Flash and After Effects than me would find this very useful.

If you go into the color settings in the property panel, you can use the either the tint or advanced settings to change the color.

Even though I have no particular interest in animating things, I find your tuts interesting enough to just watch. Subscribed!

Thanks a bunch for this, bro. This is really going to help my project look that much better. Props to you, and expect credit whenever I happen to use it.

OH MY GOSH! Okay, first of all, I like your videos but the cause of me writing this comment is that song at the end! I LOVE THAT SONG! ugggh!! so nostalgic in a way and makes me feel the solidarity of friends...

I can't express how awesome you are. You deserve your own appreciation day

As impressed as I am by your ability to recreate effects from the show, I have to say that what surprised me the most is the capabilities of modern animation and effect editing software. It's no wonder why more and more animation are done on Flash after seeing your video demonstrations.

Happy Master Race appreciation day I suppose, haha. Great video! I really like how well-explained everything is.

Thanks for finally delving into After Effects. I've been loving these breakdowns of yours. Also, now I've got a new book to add to my "must read" list.

All these animation analysis videos are helping me lip sync ponies and move them around!

This will come in handy. Only I am more likely to just hand draw each frame of the aura XD Thank you

Omg if "unicorn appreciation day" was made on the day you uploaded this, then it's the same day as my mom's birthday! :D

Go for it. That's what the files are there for.

I may be able to re-save things in Flash 8, If so I'll update things in the next day to two.

Thank you so much for taking the time to make such videos. I'm not even much into animation, and I find this very educational and interesting to watch.

I have no idea what he's talking about... but I love this all the same.

Simply select the effects, either in the effects control panel or in the layer itself, and just copy like you would anything else. Then just select the layer you want to paste to and paste it like normal.

Damnit... Just when that song had finally gotten out of my head. YOU. WHAT.HAVE.YOU.DONE.

Your last ones were really cute, but this is just...intense........AWESOME!!!

i have no idea what you are talking about.. but i still feel like i learn something BRILLIANT!

I could be pretty sure those wideos was nade yesterday not ELEVEN (11) YEARS AGO😢 love your job ❤

I'm in an animation class.... and you have taught me more that my teacher ever has... thank you XD

Good job on using "love is in bloom" for the ending

There's a pack on deviant with that,m i think it's called the MLP Animator's kit 1.2 or something, that has stock walking animations of all ponies. You can also check his smile trot, but most of the running/walking animations are included in the flash pack i mentioned.

I am definitely not a graphics design nerd, I only understood about 10% of what was said. This is something that needs to be remedied. ...as soon as I get my engineering degree or can get an adobe suite to run smoothly in linux. Renassaincemanhood, here I come!

It's stuff like this that makes me wonder what kind of job you have? This and your other animation based videos are amazing!

Is your favored pony twilight

Now I have a legit reason to explain to my parents why I watch MLP;FiM...thank you master...

I don't understand really anything in this video but I still love to watch them anyways :P Keep up the good work and smartness!

It occurs to me that I never said what version I did those files in. If you're pre-CS3 you won't be able to use them.

I have neither Flash nor After Effects. I still watch your videos religiously.

Ok i just found out these are 10 - 12 years ago???

I use the line tool and bend things into shape. That way I can keep the number of points to a minimum.

You make everything look so easy O_O

Unicorn Appreciation Day, need to remember that for next year. Also dued, you have so muhc talent, keep p the great work!

Haha thanks, man your really helping build my knowledge with Flash. I really want to start animating like this with puppets.

At 8:40 -ish right before it cuts to the next shot. The magic effect on Twillight's mic goes away for a few frames. Also, I learned somethin' new from the AE stuff you showed. Thanks~ Keep up these videos, they're great. The most interesting one imo was the FMA one you did about composition. You should have a video showing multiple composition shots from any show. I'm really interested in that anyways.

It's weird, everyone seems to give the impression that Flash is harder to learn than After Effects, but I self taught myself how to use Flash relatively easily. After Effects, on the other hand, is something I have no experience with even though I have access to it, and it seems like something that I'll take a while to understand. (When I finally bother to get over the the initial seemingly overwhelming aspect to it, that is.) Loving the videos, by the way~

eventhough i dont understand a thing, i still think this is awesome

I see I'm not the only one who understands none of this but enjoys it anyway.

With these videos, I have know idea what's going on, and I don't know half of the words he uses, but I like seeing the results!

It's a lot of different actions compared to After Effects, but if you play around with the selection settings you should be able create a properly sized fill and use a filter to distort it.

This one was a lot more technical than your earlier videos, but it was still very interesting.

You covered a LOT of bases, but you covered them well.

you look like a fairly rational and educated person so we will all believe in your theory

I love your voice! That might be the reason Im listening to this at 2 in the morning to lul me to sleep. But I love MLP too!!! -3

Very technical today, I have no clue what you were saying, but it is awesome.

That's a simple solution to this whole animating magic problem

This channel is brilliant, thank you so much for making these videos!

Now I understand why they used to just do sparkles for the magic In season one. They probably didn’t know how to do the after effects stuff yet or didn’t wanna

8 as in before CS3, but I did just check it in CC and CS6 and it works fine there too.

Unlike Flash animation, After Effects has a massive amount of free tutorials out there. Just go to places like Video Copilot or Tutsplus and watch a bunch and you'll start picking up how it works.

This was very insightful and inspiring. :) BTW, Happy Portuguese Independence and Unicorn Appreciation Day!

Not unless you want to export the effect as an image sequence with an alpha channel and import it back in, but then it won't be vector anymore. You lose a few options if you don't output to video at some point.

It always seemed to me that magic effects was one of those things that always seem off in all the fanmade films. I can see why XD

Repost in case my reply didn't link up: I'd double check the Phase setting for the Wave Warp effect on both layers and see if they're different. That seems like the most likely problem.

And thus a new holiday was born.

Wow, that's a lot of work. I've just been making my magic effect using a stroke in AE, but yours looks significantly better

I never know what Flash books to recommend because most of the decent ones are 10-12 years old. If you're looking for After Effects books I'd recommend "Creating Motion graphics with After Effects" by Trish & Chris Meyer and "The After Effects Illusionist" by Chad Perkins.

These videos are great! I want to become an animator and these videos are a huge help! You got yourself a subscriber!

I'd double check the Phase setting for the Wave Warp effect on both layers and see if they're different. That seems like the most likely problem.

agreed, i'm guessing he has some background in teaching at some point. love these videos

you are awesome! you taught me so much of animation tips and tricks

A made up unicorn appreciation day? I like it! And a good video too. Keep up the good work.

my brain hurts now!.........that went in one ear and out the other, but you sir are awesome!

Me and my fellow bronys now officially celebrate April 25th as "Unicorn Appreciation Day":D

You'll need a utility like WinRar to unzip it.

"We need to venture out of Flash and into After Effects" Shit's about to get real.

Shoot, missed unicorn appreciation yesterday. I"ll celebrate next year!