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How to Create a “Dancing Door” Animation



What you need: 

  • Cool photo of interesting subject preferably architecture!
  • draw over the photo to create a system ( on paper or digitally) 
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe After Effects


Before: 

  1. Choose an architectural piece that you find visually interesting. This will be the base of your animation.
  2. Plan your animation sections before opening Photoshop.
  3. Decide which elements you want to animate and organize them. This prevents chaos when working with many layers.
    I used Procreate to create a color-coded system for the different parts.

Photoshop: 

  1. Open the image in Photoshop and start cutting out the elements you want to animate.
  2. Keep the original image as Layer 0.
    Then follow this workflow for each element:
    Select area → Copy → Delete → Paste the copied element into a new layer.
    Name every layer according to your visual system. This will save you later!(!)
  3. Repeat this process for all the parts you want to animate.
  4. Once finished, you should have three things:
    • The original image
    • All the cutout blocks/shapes
    • The remaining “skeleton” of the image

After Effects: 

  1. Import your Photoshop file into Adobe After Effects as a comp.
  2. Select one of your cutout layers and turn it into a pre-comp.
  3. Within the pre-comp:duplicate that layer twice. Now in your layer panel you have 3 layers. 
    • For horizontal movement: move one duplicate just outside the left edge of the canvas, and the other just outside the right edge.
    • For vertical movement: place one above the canvas and one below.
  5. Press P for Position on your selected layer. 
  6. Click the diamond icon to create your first keyframe at the beginning of the timeline.
  7. Move forward on the timeline by however many frames you want (this determines the animation speed,you can always adjust it later in the main composition through time-stretching).
  8. Then copy–paste the position keyframes from the layer you want your duplicated layers to move toward.Here are the four direction options:

      Left → Right:
      The left layer moves to the center layer’s position, and the center layer moves to the right layer’s position.
      The right layer stays in place.

      Right → Left:
      The right layer moves to the center layer’s position, and the center layer moves to the left layer’s position.
      The left layer stays in place.

      Top → Bottom:
      The top layer moves to the center layer’s position, and the center layer moves to the bottom layer’s position.
      The bottom layer stays in place.

      Bottom → Top:
      The bottom layer moves to the center layer’s position, and the center layer moves to the top layer’s position.
      The top layer stays in place.

  9. Trim the timeline of your pre-comp so that the animation loops cleanly. 
  10. Return to the main composition.
  11. right-click the pre-comp layer, go to Time → Enable Time Remapping.
  12. Alt-click on the stopwatch in your layer panel to open the expression editor.

    Type the expression:
    loop (out) 
  13. Click outside the editor to close it and apply the expression.

    Now you can drag the main composition’s timeline to whatever length you want your final video to be.
  14. Repeat this for all the cutouts.


Additional Tips

      If you have similar-shaped elements, you can save time by copying the same keyframes from earlier comps.Adjust where necesary.

      For an element that needs to move in the opposite direction, use copied keyframes.
      Then right-click those and select Time → Time-Reverse Keyframes.

      You can group or pre-comp related shapes (for example, small buttons or repeating motifs) to stay organized.

      It really helps to keep your visual plan next to you while animating!
       I did this throughout the process to stay consistent with the overall movement system I had in mind.

      Final Adivce: Space this project out over multiple sessions. It’s very repetitive and can be time-consuming, but I like to think of it like cutting and pasting paper just digitally. Once you get the rhythm, it suddenly doesn’t feel as complex, and the process becomes surprisingly enjoyable.

      Check out @errxd.mp4 on Tiktok for some inspiration! That’s how I discovered this concept :) 

      Have fun creating!