Pimp Your Motion — Top Tricks on Lettering Animation

letterings there are many of them and they are all different they all have a unique style and nature which their animation should reflect you can write letters reveal them with scale you can draw them with brushes drops lines you can swing them stretch them adding speed lines splashes textures but we often see a simple write-on effect that lacks expressiveness and detail this kind of animation doesn't convey the character and uniqueness of lettering and it looks boring so we have prepared top recommendations on how to improve your later on animations and today we're gonna pimp your motion [Music] so first of all is make a cool write-on effect the write-on effect is a basic technique to reveal a letter in lettering animation the process usually looks like this you draw a mask in the shape of a letter [Music] apply the stroke effect [Music] increase the brush size so that its thickness overlaps the ladder completely set the paint style to reveal original image so that the stroke reveals the ladder and animate the end parameter we have created the write-on effect many will stop here but we offer you several techniques that can enhance the reveal first you can enhance it with color [Music] let's pre-compose our composition with a basic reveal [Music] then make two duplicates and move them one frame related to each other next i'm gonna add feel to the lower composition you can already see the color appearing let's repaint the second composition now the color compositions come first and then the original letter appears this creates quite an interesting reveal effect it's not hard to make and it will notably improve your animation here are a few examples of letterings where the letters are revealed in a similar way not bad right [Music] the next technique is the brush reveal we often use the free omino snake plugin for that this plugin allows you to distort and move any composition or picture along path let's see how you can do this in practice we have a basic reveal of the letter u we also have a composition with a brush made using shape modifiers let's create and use solid [Music] now i'm going to apply the free omino snake plugin i'm going to select clear background then select the precompose with a brush next draw a mask along which the brush will move [Music] select it in this drop down list the brush will most likely appear in a small size so to fix this you need to adjust the following parameters [Music] advance is responsible for how the brush moves along the mask so we will animate it [Music] copy the easing from the basic reveal made with a stroke effect apply to advanced animation shift it one frame and subtract the brush from our ladder for this select alpha inverted mat for the basic reveal [Music] let's adjust the mask and here's the result and you can combine these two techniques i'm gonna show you so let's pre-compose the composition with a brush reveal duplicate offset and repaint it here is the result here are some examples when the brush is used to reveal letters another way to hide the reveals is drops you can make them with the help of 3d stroke or thick stroke plugins or with the help of standard taper that appeared in after effects cc 2020 here the reveal is hidden by a drop made with 3d stroke if you disable them you'll see straight edges of the reveal which do not look natural or cool on a new solid i've drawn a new mask along which the drop will move [Music] i have also applied 3d stroke effect to it i have animated it so that it hides the latter's reveal it has turned out great here are some great examples of reveals with drops keep in mind that you should hide the edges of the reveal in every way possible so that the reveal animation looks more natural the second point is work on the overall reveal dynamics so after you decided how to reveal each element separately you need to adjust the lettering reveal timing here are some pieces of advice select the reveal order and rhythm let's take a look at two types of letterings the first one is monoline in this type letters are connected and have the same thickness the second type is we called it the common calligraphy the letters are separated but not always in this case the thickness of each letter varies from thin to thick in both cases it's not a good idea to reveal all the letters simultaneously [Music] it doesn't look natural with a monoline type since all the elements are connected [Music] as for the second lettering type such a reveal looks too simple [Music] let's take a look at the best ways to do it an alternate reveal suits such type of lettering as the letters are connected [Music] just don't make it long and linear it is much cooler when the reveal has a certain rating [Music] in this case the extreme letters reveal is longer and smoother and it is accelerating closer to the middle of the word this creates a more captivating dynamics of the lettering reveal well how to decide on the rhythm you can write the words on paper you will naturally get the writing speed what to emphasize and where should be a pose you shouldn't necessarily draw each letter the main thing is to get the rhythm you need as for the common calligraphy the reveal with offsets is the most suitable option this doesn't mean that you should draw a new letter only when the previous one is completed a small offset between the beginning of the reveal of neighboring letters will work fine here [Music] [Music] like in the previous case the linear reveal sucks here let's make the beginning and the end of the reveal smoother and shift the layers like this similarly to the previous example the extreme letters appear much slower than the rest this is a universal way to quickly set good dynamics for example you can create your own reveal rhythm by emphasizing a certain letter [Music] let's take a look at the case when lettering consists of several words let's reveal the word with one layer as if it is a precompose of a string [Music] so we have three layers let's take a look at the alternate reveal the words are not big in this lettering the alternate reveal looks quite good [Music] let's have a look at an example in which all words have a large number of letters [Music] in this case the animation is very long the sequential letters reveal won't work here so for lettering with bigger words the simultaneous reveal or the reveal with a small offset will do so the animation is revealed faster and looks more dynamic and the viewer has no time to get bored now let's talk about the anticipation and final emphasis a drop flying out or a line can be a great way to prepare the viewer for the reveal of the lettering you can emphasize the ending with the same element as well the main thing in this case is to stay within the action area additional lines or drops shouldn't be cut with a frame animate all the elements in a small area the animation will look better like this here are some great examples of the beginning and the final emphasis all right let's continue we still have work to do to improve our lettering animation shake your letters stretching bounces swinging of the letter or its separate parts all that makes the animation look more lively and vivid here's the lettering that lex expresses [Music] and now we add expressiveness notice how the letters get plated into their places like threads this is the first practical technique that works well with letters written with a line of the same thickness let's take a look at how to achieve such an effect on the example of the letter g we need to access the path points you can do this with a create null from path script [Music] select path of the letter and click points follow nulls now the points are parented to the nulls which we can animate let's animate position of the controller on the bottom loop [Music] we can also add the elastic expression to add some follow-through let's move on and the next suggestion is shake the entire letter let's make such a bounce and a swinging of a ladder in practice we have the right on effect here we've split the ladder into four parts first let's parent three parts to the base and check that the anchor point is at the base of the ladder animate scale and rotation and apply the elastic expression let's move it to the moment when the letter is revealed done now let's offset rotation related to scale to get a jelly effect good you can increase the animation intensiveness so it looks even more expressive let's take a look at how to shake the tails we have already separated the tail with masks let's apply cc band effect now set its start and end points select the static mode in order not to distort the base of the tail and you can bend the tail by changing the band parameter now let's animate it and apply the elastic expression this way you can animate all letters with tails combine these methods and use other deformers and that's almost all but the devil is in the details lines and liquid animation are the most frequently used elements that create the final image and make your lettering bright and memorable lines usually move close to a ladder or a drop with a slight delay their function is to emphasize the movement of an object make them short and animate with sharp pieces try to create them along the outer outline so that they do not intersect with the other objects it is quite easy to create and animate a speed line select pen tool draw it path [Music] set the thickness of the stroke add trim path modifier and animate start and end parameters of trim path if you need a taper the free thick stroke will help you and in the new after effects 2020 taper is available by default in the stroke settings the lines can also be used as trails which also looks cool unlike speed lines trails that move clearly behind the object as if like leaving a trace behind it liquid animation works perfectly well with the main lettering reveal too ideally it is frame by frame trails drawn in adobe animate or photoshop or toon boom above the reveal made in after effects we have a free fundamentals course on frame by frame animation and one of the lessons is dedicated to drawing liquid trails but you can create liquid elements in after effects as well drops can be made with 3d stroke or thick stroke in combination with rough edges effect while adding details you should always remember that they must fit into the design of the lettering for example such a liquid line looks weird with a geometric font more geometric straight lines would look better here as for this case liquid animation isn't the best choice either because this is a brush logo and brushes or setup lines would fit better here so that was almost all general suggestions on how to make your lettering animations look sweeter and if you want to dive deeper into lettering logo and icon animations and learn all the discussed techniques in detail you can sign up for our logo animation course and that's all for now subscribe to our channel in order not to miss new videos write in the comments section below which of the tips you found the most useful and what other things you would like to learn about bye and see you in the next one your emotions you

Channel: Motion Design School

Views: 153,777

Rating: 4.9862318 out of 5

Keywords: text animation, text animation after effects, motion graphics, after effects tutorial, animate lettering, motion tricks, quick tips after effects, tips and tricks after effects, tips and tricks, motion design school, kinetic typography, animated typography tutorial, after effects typography, after effects typography tutorial, after effects animation, typography animation, typography after effects, motion graphics text, logo animation after effects

Id: el_BoErY4H8

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020