Text animation

[Steve Renard]

There are two elements to the animation happening here, but I think both could be taken care of by making the text as a still in Photoshop (with each character on a separate layer), then animating those still elements in AE. The first part, which they used for most of the text, uses the Write On effect in “reveal original” mode. There are plenty of tutorials out there that show you how to do this, including a couple on the Cow, I think.

The other part of the animation is a few characters (the “m” in comcast, the “y” in security, etc.) that have arms moving around or spinning or growing in or whatever. You could tackle this a couple different ways. The first would be to go back to your still of the text and cut those pieces of those characters apart into separate layers before bringing the whole thing into AE. Then you could animate those on their own. The second way to do it would be to use the Puppet Tool on just those characters, and figure out a way to hold the rest of that character still while you animate just that arm in. Guessing again here, but I’d say they used option 1 for the second “hump” of the “m” in comcast, and the Puppet Tool for the “y” in security.

Good luck on it,
Steve

[Craig Hellen]

Hi,
this is a blend of different animation types.
Where the letters reveal themselves its a simple keyframed mask but where parts of the letters rotate as they do so is done between illustrator & after effects.

if you wanna do that:

In illustrator

Type the text in illustrator and go to objject>expand, and choose object

This will leave you with outlines in a group in illustator, seeing as though after effects can only deal with layers and paths you have to build a layer sequence for the text.

Select the group created by the expand you have just done.

There is a little drop down box in the layer palette, in there click “release to layers sequence”

This will put all the letters on different layers, however they will currently be nested in the main layer so jus select them and drag them above that layer in the layer-tree.

So now you have all the characters in separate layers.

On the example you showed us the characters that were split were on the m’s and u’s.
Select the letters you feel best suited and use the knife tool to cut the segments out you wish to animate.

Place the “chopped” path on a new layer and label appropriately.

Once you are happy with the bits you have chopped out, save the file.

In after effects

Import the AI file you have made as a comp with cropped layers.

Now comes the laborious process of keyframing the masks and movement. Depending on the final effect you may need to move the anchor point around for each of the layers you have “chopped” and the position them again (this bit will kill your eyes after a while!)

Mask in the letters in the time scale you are aiming for.

Add in the rotation of the “chopped” bits, combined with some opacity keyframing for these so they blend in nicely.

Possibly add some movement keyframes to the lettering so they mask in and move to align at the same time ( i think i saw some of that in the original video)

Bingo that should just about be it.

Hmm i might make a tutorial on this one.. if i do i will PM you to say where to pick it up. 🙂

Co-Director Podchains Ltd
Video Producer / Motion graphics designer https://bexmedia.net

[Aaron Nowakowski]

Thanks guys for the input. Extremely helpful. I will be sure to send you a link to the final product, if I can pull it off.

Thanks,
Aaron

[Craig Hellen]

made the video tutorial as promised here:
https://vimeo.com/2582317

enjoy

Co-Director Podchains Ltd
Video Producer / Motion graphics designer https://bexmedia.net

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