Animated swirls are all the rage in the motion graphics world, and there are some pretty cool things that can be done with them.

Motion designer Harry Frank shows how to breath new life or make a retro look with standard After Effects Lens Flare by using Shape Layers and Trapcode Shine.

Earthquake effects on fullscreen video clips

Ease and Wizz is a set of expressions for After Effects that give you more ways to interpolate between values. This new version lets you apply the expressions to curved motion paths and mask shapes.

If you wanna wiggle something, and have it be loop-able (for motion backgrounds and whatnot) this is the code for you.

Tracking and stabilizing footage plays important role in composition.

In this 3.5 minute video tip John Dickinson shows how you can look through a camera linked to a light.

Creates a bouncing (sine wave) motion between two specified 2-dimensional positions over a
specified period of time (in seconds). Useful for creating bouncing balls.

This example expression instructs a layer to be at the same position as the next higher layer in the Timeline panel, but delayed by a specified amount of time (in this case, 0.5 seconds). You can set similar expressions for the other geometric properties.