The lightsaber animation takes time to create. You can make this effect two ways but I'm going to be showing the the faster and easier way. I got raw footage of my friend and I having a lightsaber battle with no light up at all.
I imported the video copilot preset to After Effects and made a solid. Then I dragged the preset on to a solid. The preset gives you two points to move.
I moved the two pionts every frame by pressing the page down button. Every time the points are moved it creates a key frame.
There are a lot of key frames in the solid's effects tab. I changed the thickness and color to my liking but you can make whatever you want to. When it's all said and done you get this.
