Animation: Linking layers in After Effects

I need to link my layers together so that when I’m animating my character if I move their arm, for example, their hand moves with it. This is called parenting. I’ve already grouped and colour coded my character into various pieces, so that all of his right arm is together, all of the parts that make his face are together and so forth. Now I need to parent these pieces. There are two ways to do this. I can either go to my layers and choose from a menu below the parenting section. Clicking on the tab will bring up a menu like the illustration below.

You then choose which layer you wish to link your layer to. For example with the eyes, mouth and blink I’m going to link them all to the head layer. This way when I move the head all those layers will move with it. The other way to link the layers is by using the little spirals that are to the left of the parenting tabs. If I click on one of them and pull the mouse away a black line can be seen. I can link this layer to another bypulling the line over to it. In the example below I’m linking a shoe to the lower part of my characters leg.

Tomorrow we shall look at preparing the mouth.