title: After Effects Expressions - controling comps from main comp using an "Expressions Layer"
body: <p><strong>THE GOAL I WANT TO ACHEIVE:</strong></p>
  
  <p>Control AE timelines using ONE EXPRESSION LAYER (<em>much like using Actionscript</em>) to trigger frequently used comps such as blinking, walking, flying etc... for cartoon animation. </p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/MeSla.png" alt="Beau Bird - The Character I want to blink."></p>
  
  <p>I want animate a the blinking of a cartoon character. (and other actions, explained below) Rather than "re posting" the comp or key frames movements every time I want a blink or a particular action, I want to create a script where I can trigger the Blink comp to play. Is this possible? (Sidenote: A random blink through entire movie would be nice) but I still want to know how to do this for the reasons below.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Ideally:</strong> I would like to create an "<strong>Expressions layer</strong>" in the <strong>main comp</strong> to <strong>TRIGGER</strong> other comps to play. At certain points I would like to add triggers to call frequently used comps that contain actions like.. Blinking, Walking, Flying, Look Left and Right etc...</p>
  
  <p><strong>IT WOULD BE AMAZING IF</strong> somehow we could trigger other comps to begin, repeat, stop, maybe reverse, and do this all from <strong><em>one Main Comp using an expression layer</em></strong>. </p>
  
  <p><strong>WHY DO IT THIS WAY?</strong>
  Why not just paste a comp in the spot you want it to play every time you want such action? Well in after effects if you wanted a "blink comp" to play 40 times in two minutes you would have to create 40 layers, or pate the key frames on that comp 40 times. Wouldn't it be awesome to trigger or call it from one one layer when you wanted it from <strong>one expressions layer</strong>? </p>
  
  <p>We do something like this in Flash using Actionscript all the time. It would be awesome if there was a method out there to achieve this effect. This would be an OUTSTANDING tutorial and I believe it would be very popular if someone did it. It could be used for a MULTITUDE of amazing effects and could save a ton of time for everyone. Heck, help me figure this out and perhaps I will make a tutorial. </p>
  
  <p>Thank you all ye "overflowing Stackers" who contribute! :) </p>