Applying Easy Ease to Create Realistic Motion

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to improve your animations in Adobe After Effects using Easy Ease and the Speed Graph. These tools help you control the speed and smoothness of your keyframes, making movement feel more natural and professional. We’ll walk through how to apply Easy Ease, use the Graph Editor, and adjust Bezier handles to fine-tune your timing. By the end, you’ll know how to add polish and flow to your motion design projects with just a few simple steps.

Once you know how to animate with keyframes, the next step is learning how to control that motion. Easy Ease and the Speed Graph help you shape the feel of your animation so it moves more naturally.

What Is Easy Ease?

By default, After Effects moves things at a constant speed between keyframes. This is called linear interpolation. It works, but it can look robotic. Real-world motion doesn’t usually start and stop instantly. It ramps up and slows down.

Easy Ease fixes that. It creates smooth acceleration and deceleration, making your animation feel more natural.

How to Apply Easy Ease

You can apply Easy Ease in three ways:

  1. Right-click a keyframe, then choose Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
  2. Press F9 with one or more keyframes selected.
  3. Click the Easy Ease icon in the Graph Editor (if visible).

You can apply Easy Ease to one or more keyframes on a property. The motion will ease in and out if applied to two or more.

What Changes with Easy Ease?

When you apply Easy Ease, the keyframe icon changes from a diamond to an hourglass shape. The animation no longer moves at a flat, even speed. Instead, it starts slow, speeds up, and then slows down again near the end.

It’s a small change that makes a big difference.

The Speed Graph

The Speed Graph gives you more control than Easy Ease alone. It lets you edit how fast your animation moves between keyframes.

To access it:

  1. Select your animated property in the timeline.
  2. Click the Graph Editor button.
  3. In the graph view, choose Edit Speed Graph from the graph type menu (small icon at the bottom left of the editor).

Now you’ll see a curve representing the animation’s speed over time.

Adjusting Speed with Handles

Each keyframe has handles you can drag to change the shape of the curve:

  • Drag a handle to the right to accelerate the animation more slowly.

  • Drag it to the left to speed it up more quickly.

  • Pulling the handles up or down changes the speed value itself.

You’re shaping the speed, not the position. A steeper curve means faster motion; a flatter curve means slower.

Beware, if you drag a keyframe to the left or right, you are changing the timing of the keyframe on your timeline.

Common Use: Easing Into or Out of Motion

You don’t always want to ease both ends of an animation. Sometimes you just want to ease out of the starting keyframe or into the end. You can do that by:

  1. Right-clicking the keyframe.
  2. Choosing Keyframe Velocity.
  3. Adjusting the influence for incoming or outgoing speed.

This gives you more precision without using the graph editor.

When to Use Easy Ease

Use Easy Ease when:

  • You want motion that feels organic

  • You’re animating UI, text, shapes, or camera moves

  • You want to avoid the mechanical look of linear animation

Use the Graph Editor when:

  • You want complete control over timing and rhythm

  • You need to match a specific speed or feel

  • You’re layering multiple animations and need them to feel cohesive

Wrap-Up

Learning to control timing separates good motion design from just moving things around. Easy Ease is the first step toward that control. The Speed Graph gives you even more power to shape motion exactly how you want it.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at pre-comps and how to group layers and simplify complex animations.