What It Does
Joysticks ‘n Sliders builds pose-based rigs for character animation. You define five key poses (origin, right, left, up, down), and the plugin creates a joystick controller that interpolates between them. Instead of keyframing every property manually, you animate a single controller that blends your preset poses.
The plugin includes both joystick and slider controls. Joysticks work well for 2D directional control like head turns or facial expressions. Sliders offer more granular control with unlimited pose options, useful for hands, eyes, or full-body character poses.
Key Features
Joystick Interpolation. Create a visual controller on the stage that blends between your five defined poses. The EaseBias control lets you adjust interpolation curves without touching keyframes.
Switch Templates. Automate layer swapping based on joystick position. If you need different mouth shapes for different camera angles, Switch Templates handle the swaps as you move the controller.
Unlimited Sliders. Build rigs with as many slider controls as needed. Each slider can have unlimited poses, and you can combine multiple sliders to control different parts of a rig simultaneously.
Path Shape Rigging. The Path Flipper optimizes rigging for shape layer paths, making mask and vector animation more responsive. Version 1.7 improved path shape expression performance significantly.
Parent/Child Composition Support. Move controllers between parent and child compositions to organize complex rigs. Version 1.7 added support for separated dimensions when moving joysticks to parent comps.
BodyMovin’ Export. Export your rigged animations to HTML5 through BodyMovin’ for web delivery.
Who It’s For
Character animators rigging faces, hands, or full characters in After Effects. Also useful for motion graphics work requiring smooth interpolation between multiple states. Pairs well with puppet pins, DUIK, Limber, BAO Bones, and similar rigging tools.
Pricing
This plugin uses pay-what-you-want pricing. The suggested price is $39.95 for a single-user license or $57.93 for a floating server license, but you can choose your own amount.
A 7-day trial is available with two restrictions: limited to four sliders per Slider Null and no ability to move controllers to parent compositions.