The entry point is After Effects expressions. You alt-click a stopwatch and type a little JavaScript directly in the timeline. Most animators have already done this without thinking of it as coding.
wiggle(3, 20)
That's it. That's code. And you already understand what it does.
You don't need to go deep
Knowing a handful of things gets you 80% of the value:
- Variables — a value has a name and a type
- Conditionals —
if/elseto make things respond to other things - Loops — do this thing N times, or for every file in a folder
The rest you look up when you need it.
The practical stuff
Once I learned basic Python, the first thing I wrote set up my whole project folder in one command. Then batch renaming frames. Then a script that reads a CSV and spits out title cards in After Effects. None of it was clever — just enough to stop doing the boring parts by hand.
The mental shift matters too. You start seeing animation as systems rather than one-off solutions. That makes you better at both.