Wave Warp & Bend It

Doing more animation exercises lately and wanted to finally solve how to do cartoon smoke/hair I see often. Turns out it's super simple with just the stock Wave Warp effect. I also wanted to get some trees moving and achieved that with the stock CC Bent It effect. Combine those both together and you've got yourself a nice little scene.

You can really get away with a lot with just stock effects. I had some trouble with the smoke being affected by the "wind" and how I should render that in a simple, cartoonish manner. I ultimately ended up using a subtle Bezier Warp and playing with the keyframes of the Wave Warp to make the smoke feel less billowy and more wispy before settling.

The artwork is by "Vector_Vision" on Adobe Stock - I realized using available assets is a great way to explore ideas and not spend 90% of your time just illustrating the scene to begin with.

I'll be experimenting more with Wave Warp for some more interesting effects...