Lyrics Video Making
Let’s talk about simple text animations. Text animations are the bread and butter of many motion designers. I’m going to show you 7 different super simple dynamic text animations you could easily bust out.
Before we get into it I want to preface this by saying you should only be watching this if you kind of know your way around after effects. I move pretty quickly and I’m assuming you have a basic working knowledge of After Effects With that said, Let’s get started! I’ve got my text here and each line is on it’s own layer.
I’m going to want to create a track matte for each of these layers to hide behind, so I’m going to create a rectangle below my first line of text here. Make sure the newly created shape is on top of the text layer you want to be hidden behind it. You’ll want to repeat this for the other two lines of text. Next you’ll select alpha inverted matte under track matte and it should automatically turn the visibility of your shape layer to off. Repeat this step for the other two layers. Now we can animate.
I’m going to come in about 8 frames or so and keyframe my position on all of these. I’m going to come back to the start of my timeline and with all the text layers selected I’m going to drag them all behind my track mattes. I’m going to ease my end keyframes. You can do whatever you want but I’m going to do an 80% influence. You can use the graph editor to do this or use the motion script like I do. The last thing to do is to offset the animation. I’m going to drag my second layer over 2 frames and I’ll drag my third layer over 4 frames.
Playing it back you can see this is super simple, but looks fantastic. Moving on to the next one we start again with the same 3 lines of text. This one is even more simple. I’m going to come in about 30 frames or so and create a keyframe on the position for all 3 layers. I’ll back up to the beginning of the timeline and move these layers up ever so slightly. The effect were going for here is subtle. Ease those end keyframe….. Next, you’ll want to come in about 12 frames and create a keyframe on the opacity for all 3 layers. You come back to the start and move that opacity down to zero.
Just like we did with the last one we’re going to offset the animations. Because this one is slower and more subtle we’re going to offset the layers by 4 frames. Look at that! Awesome. Moving on with #3 we start from the same starting point with our 3 lines of text. Now I’ve actually chosen to keep all of my lines on the same text layer for this one. Lucky for us, getting the type on effect that we want is the easiest thing in the world. There’s literally a preset for it in After Effects. Under the effects panel you’ll search for typewriter.
Once it pops up, you’ll drag the effect over to your text. It’ll automatically create start and stop keyframes. All you have to do is figure out your timing. Literally anyone could do that right? Now on to #4: This one is super fun. So we start with our first word in the center of the screen. Make sure when you position your text that your text is centered in the paragraph panel. So just like some of the other one’s were going to animate backwards.
Somewhere around frame 15 or 16 you’ll want to set the start to about 20%. This will give the letters a little bit more of a curve as they’re animating. Honestly guys, I just had to play around a lot with this to get it where I wanted it. Just remember that all of these text animations can be financed and timed out exactly how you want them. That’s it! Let us know in the comments if you learned something today. Make sure to subscribe for future content and we’ll see you next time!