Crown in Grass Scene

I did a lot of thinking and planning about how exactly I can do this scene in after effects. The main problem I was coming up with was how to merge the crown with the grass and make it look like it was interacting with it rather than just pasted ontop of it. In the end I just decided to have an animated black line at the bottom of the crown to show a little bit of interaction, as well as have a layer from the background be revealed as the crown goes over it, to suggest Beram underneath disrupting the grass. Once I had all the assets drawn and painted, I moved over to after effects and first animated the crown's bob loop:

I keyframed the rotation and position to get this bobbing effect, and used a loop function so that it'd continuously repeat. I'd have to mask off the bottom in the main composition otherwise the mask would rotate with the crown, however I had to place the black line in this composiion otherwise it wouldn't allign. That meant that the black line would also get masked off, so it took me a lot of trial and error to place it in the right position. I'm quite pleased with this though, as I think it gives off the illusion of walking quite well.

Next, I went back to the main composition and masked the crown. I then drew a path with the pen tool and linked it with the crown's position, so that the crown would follow the path. I had to move the keyframes on the timeline around to get the right timing however, and also move the path so that it alligned with the background's dark path. I finished it by keyframing the scale, to make it smaller as it progresses.

Once that was done, I animated a mask for the background dark path, so that it'd be revealed as the crown moves through the grass.

This is the end result:

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. It achieved the right effect, and I managed to complete this scene a lot quicker than if I was to hand animate it. If I had more time, I'd definitely try and improve the way the crown interacts with the grass, and actually animate the grass moving for the crown, however this version is a good compromise.