Animating a Logo Reveal with Adobe Illustrator and After Effects

hey welcome to another digidemi.com tutorial my name is josger in today's lesson we'll talk about how to organize an illustrator file so we can then take it into after effects and animate it a logo reveal is one of the most common uses of after effects so let's learn how to do it properly [Music] let's have a look at how we can animate this logo from start to finish by using illustrator and after effects now before we take this from here into after effects we actually need to do some tidying up first most of the times when you create illustrations or illustrations are given to you you realize that everything happens in a single layer so if i go to the layers panel here you see everything is inside the single layer which means if i was to take this document as it is from here into after effects after effects wouldn't be able to understand how these individual elements the icon the text elements in the background are built one by one so in order for after effects to understand how these elements are built we need to go and separate them into individual layers in illustrator first so let's do that here i have this single layer inside the layer i have a group which includes everything of the logo and then the rectangle which is the background now if i want to animate them separately like i said i have to go and create individual layers for these now one thing you'll realize is i can't take these bottom level layers outside of this so these sub layers or groups can't be dragged outside in order for us to be able to drag these outside we need to have another host layer so that would be a top level layer so if i go and create one let's say we call this one background i can now drag this rectangle into that background layer and that works and i can now animate the background layer independently than the rest in after effects of course i want the background layer to be underneath so i'm going to drag this here and i now need to do the same thing for the other elements inside this group here so if i open this up you see i have the single path that's this icon here so let me just go and create another layer and then call this one icon and then drag this path in here that's that one then and now instead of doing the rest of these one by one what i could do you see here i have two groups so that's the bottom word media this is docklands what i could do let's say for example i want to break this up so all of these individual elements will be their own layers well instead of kind of dragging them manually one by one i could select the top level group here and then click on the three lines here and then come down to where it says release two layers sequence and that turns those groups or the sub layers into top level layers which i can now drag out so if i select them i can now drag them out like that and now i have those individual layers there i'll do the same thing for this group which is the word documents here so i'll select that layer go to this menu here and then release two layers sequence now i can take these out like that now i'm left with this empty layer here so i can just go and delete that right now we have the individual layers separated so i'm going to go and rename them let's see which one that is so that's d o c so it's going in that order so that's docklands let me go and rename them to be docklands like that and this is the word media so i'll just go and type in m e d i i so i have all those individual layers labeled as well now and now i can go and save it and switch over to after effects and then import that file as a composition retaining layer sizes and i'll open this up and here i have all those layers now because i didn't kill the bleed in illustrator so this is the bleed area in illustrator as you can see that's being taken into account when it comes to creating the composition in after effects as well so let me just go and resize this composition i'll make this by 1080 so that's full hd and that should then resize this properly there we go the only other problem i have is the order of these layers now i want to be able to swap these around so that the letters that make the word documents will be above the letters that make the word media and there's a really neat trick for that in after effects instead of kind of manually dragging these layers one by one so d goes up then r and then c instead of doing that one by one let me undo that a couple of times you can select the layers in the order you want them to appear for example let's say i want the icon to be the first one and then i hold down the command key and then select d o c k so i'm selecting them in the order i want them to appear in like that then the background and if i now cut these layers by pressing command x or by going to edit cut and then if i paste them command v or edit paste it will remember the order in which i've selected these layers and it will paste them in here in that exact order so here as you can see i have the icon first then d o c k l so it's the same order that i've selected them in because i have multiple d's and multiple a's it puts these numbers next to them which is fine but if that's bothering you you can just select the layer press return and delete those numbers there we go so let's talk about the animation we want to create now now what i want to happen is for this icon to scale up in the center and then once it scales up it will then slide towards left and as that slides towards left these letters will be sliding in opposite direction towards right and they'll be revealed as if they're coming from behind this icon here so first of all let's go and animate the icon so i'll solo it so that's all i'm seeing and i'll press p to reveal its position and also shift s to see scale as well so i'm going to go and lock these in place like that by adding keyframes and then i'll actually push these keyframes out the way let's say to 12 frames so half a second since this composition is 24 frames a second and the reason why i do this is so that i don't lose this final position and scale otherwise if i undo this if i put this here and then animate this here then i wouldn't know how far to the left it should go once the animation is completed so i'm going to undo that and add the keyframes here push the two out the way to 12 frames and for now i'll just be interested in this scale so i want this to start at zero percent and then when it plays this is what's going to happen i'll select the two keyframes and then press f9 to turn these into easy ease keyframes is what that's going to look like and we can now make this a bit more lively by going to the graph here's the speed graph i can select that push this to about here let's say maybe 70 and then this goes to about 70 as well if i now go back and play this is what i have now that's looking not too bad and once this scales up i also want that to go from the center to where it currently is so i'll come out of the graph i'll take this position keyframe i'll actually push this to one second and then here on the 12th frame i want this layer to be in the center of the composition so the quickest way of doing that would be to use the align panel here i can just go ahead and click on this align horizontally button and that goes to the dead center now and of course because i had the keyframes enabled that creates a keyframe here as well so now it scales up and then moves towards left let's turn these keyframes into easy ease keyframes so i'll select them and f9 and then i'll go into the graph here as well and then maybe set these curves to be about 70 percent here so if i come out of the graph now this is what that's going to look like so it scales up and then moves to the left i think we could do with a tiny bit of a pose between the scaling animation and the position animation so maybe i can take these two keyframes off to the right by let's say three frames or so and let's see what that looks like i think that looks better now as this layer is moving towards left like it does now i want these letters to be revealed so first of all what i'll do is to go and animate these letters as well so i'll unsolo this and i'll go to the point when the icon starts moving here i'll then select all the other layers and then press p for position i'll keyframe them but then i want these keyframes to line up with this keyframe here because by the time the icon moves to the left these letters will have moved to the right and now i have to specify where they'll start from well i'm going to get them to start from let's say here so they all start there and then one by one they move in place now of course i want these keyframes to have some ease as well so i'll select them all and i'll press f9 now instead of updating the graph one by one what i could do is to hold down the alt key on the keyboard and then double click on one of these keyframes and that will bring up what's called the keyframe velocity dialog box and that's going to allow us to add the influence and the influence is the graph's curvature in if i come out of this the curvature of this graph is controlled with the influence values here so as i select this pushes towards right this curve here is the influence but you see here only one graph is being affected but i want all of these to be affected so i'll undo this come out of the graph select all these keyframes again alt double click on one of them and i can set this to let's say 70 on the incoming velocity the incoming velocity is the left hand side of the graph and the outgoing velocity is the right hand side of the graph so i set both to be 70 if i now go back into the graph you see all of these keyframes have been updated by the same amounts so if i come out and then play again this is what we have so far so good but what i want to do now is to get the letters at the beginning to be invisible and only get revealed on the right hand side of this icon so as soon as they cross to the right side of the icon here they'll get revealed although there are a couple different ways of doing this i want to show you how to do this with a track so what i'm going to do is to go to a frame where the icon is kind of clear let's say here and i'm going to draw a shape that's quite similar on the right hand side to the icon and then maybe more of a rectangle on the left hand side the reason why is if i go back now is i want that shape so imagine there's going to be a shape that goes like that and then all the way to the left and then down and right and then curves again and then that shape will be used as the mask for these letters that's what i mean by track mattes so let's do that i'm going to come out of this get my shape tool let's say the ellipse tool to start with and i can click and draw a circle holding down the shift key and as i do this if i hold down spacebar i can reposition this as well so i'm trying to get this to be the same size as the green icon behind let's say maybe here especially the right hand side of this is important because that's where the letters are going to be revealed from and then let me zoom in to see what that looks like i can then make the outline invisible by clicking on this button and now that looks like it's covering the shape behind it if not you could just use the arrows on the keyboard to nudge this in place like that and now that that's done i'm going to draw another shape a rectangle to go from here all the way to here and then down and right so i'll get my pen tool maybe click here and then here down right and up so all of those letters are covered now and now what i'm going to do is to use this shape as a track mat for all these individual letters now the quickest way of doing that would be to first go and pre-comp these letters so let me first go and press command a to select everything and then command tilde so i don't see any of the individual elements and then i have to take these letters and pre-comp them so i can treat them as a single element which will then be masked by this shape so i can select that letter d and then all the way down to a with the shift key then i can pre-comb them by pressing command shift c or right click pre-compose and now i'll call this docklands media hit okay and i'll have to put the shape now just above dockland's media and then i'll go to toggle switches and modes at the bottom and now i can go to the track mat of docklands media and it will give me four options well really it's two options it's either alpha matte or luma matte or you can invert them but i'm going to use alpha matte now to start with and i'll show you what this does and then i'll show you why we'll need to change it so what alpha matte does is it looks at where this red element is visible and only there the text becomes visible as well so if i go and turn this alpha mat on you see wherever the shape was that's where you see the text if the text is actually outside the shape like it will be in just a second here you see that's going to be invisible which is not what we want so we want the exact opposite of this so i'll go to alpha matte and then change it to alpha inverted math so initially the text is invisible and only when it leaves this area it becomes visible like this so the shape that we drew is now being used as a mask for this pre-comp but the problem of course is that the icon is moving but the shape isn't well that's a really easy fix let me go to the frame where that icon was inside that circle maybe here and at this point i can now go and link the shape to the icon as a child so if i go to this pick whip here of the shape i can parent it to the icon so that as the icon moves the shape will move with it like this and now you see the text will be revealed as it leaves the shape like that let's play that in real time and see what that looks like let's go right to the beginning now the other problem of course is because we've parented the shape to the icon the shape actually scales down as well because the icon starts at zero percent at the beginning and because the shape is small the text is revealed so if i go to the frame where the shape is in the right place and the text is completely invisible i can then just select this pre-comp of the text and then get it to start at this point the quickest way to do this is to press alt and left square bracket or of course we could just click and manually drag this here as well like that what i've just done is to make the layer invisible before this point so if i go back you see no text is going to be visible until this point and on this frame here the text becomes active but it's still invisible because it's now being masked by this shape so if i go back here's the animation we have now and to jazz this up a little more i can go into this pre-comp and then stagger these layers let's say for example i want the letter a to come in first then i than d and so on so i can actually start staggering them so here's a i'll leave this as it is i'll push the second layer to the right by let's say one frame and then this one by two frames three frames and so on i'm going to stagger these layers like this so they're always one frame apart there are some scripts we can use for this kind of work as well which i won't get into now but if i go back to my main comp and play it now this is what that's going to look like you see there's a bit of a kind of stretching animation here so they don't all move at the same time one more thing i've just realized is that the shape and this green icon don't line up perfectly you see if i zoom in there's a bit of a gap between the letters and the shape well that's an easy fix i can select the shape and then just use the arrows on the keyboard to reposition it like that then zoom back out and then go back and play and this is what we should have now now you can create any kind of variation on this let's say for example if i go back and play this once again you see these will start moving towards right like that but then the letters that make the word doctrines take their time to kind of start moving you see here if i go back almost the entire word media is revealed before the word docklands slides in now i can go back into this pre-comp take the letters from s to d so from s to d and then drag them towards left as well so there's a bit of an overlap between those as well so here's the animation for that and now if i go back to this main composition if i play now the delay is shorter between the words media and documents as they are revealed finally let's go and turn the motion blur on as well go back to switches i'll turn the motion blur on for the icon also for this pre-comp and you see the icon is going to have the motion blur but the pre-comp won't so these letters that make the words doklam's media they won't be blurry that's because inside this pre-comp these individual layers don't have the motion blur switch turned on so i'm going to go in here to switches and then turn these on as well then when i switch back they'll be blurry here as well so let me go back and play this is the animation we have now and that's how you can create a simple yet effective logo reveal by using illustrator and after effects before you go if you want to win a free live and fully interactive course you can enter our weekly prize draw where you can win a 5 day course normally worth over a thousand dollars all you have to do is to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon here and cross your fingers so don't forget to subscribe and i'll see you on the next one you

Channel: Digidemy

Views: 6,768

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Id: CMQyHH9MZcI

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021