Transcription
Text animation is simple, but most people get it totally wrong. In this video, we will explore simple techniques that brands use to create text that is not only beautiful but feels smooth, feels natural, and most of all, easy to read.
To explain all of this, we're going to focus on different concepts that make text easier to read and more engaging. So, if we have a look at this video, we can see that we have many things going on in here. For instance, in here, we are selecting a specific word and animating just that. We have nice animations with color in here, and in the end, we also have this nice typewriter effect that is going on here. So, we are going to see how we can do all of this and also explain specific concepts that will make your text look better and easier to read.
So, let's get started by creating a smooth animation. Let's go to this composition here. Now, one small thing, just to cut out your curiosity, right over here, we can see this nice colorful toolbar that is actually the MoBar toolbar, and it has some handy features that can help us throughout our process. Animation is actually free up to a certain amount of uses, so you can just get it from the description below.
So, let's continue. Let's just create our first text. So, I'm going to grab the text tool and let's type in our text. Now, we can pick this text and simply align it to the center, like this.
Now, we can start by creating a nice smooth animation. So, to animate our text, we are going to use the text animators. So, let's go to text in here, and right next to it, we can click on animate. And in this case, I would like to animate the position, and I would like also to animate. So, I'm going to click on add in here, and I would also like to animate the opacity. So, in this case, it has created an animator one for us. It's always a good idea to rename this. So, I'm very quickly going to change this to "start animation." So, I'm going to actually do the start animation with this animator, and then I am going to animate the words. So, in this case, I'm going to animate it word by word rather than character by character. That's why I typed in the label "words," and then we're going to animate the position and the opacity. That's how I labeled that. And now, for the position, I would like to give that a value of 50 on the x-axis, so it comes in from the right, right over here. And I would like to animate it from 0%. These values would be actually the start values, and then they will go to the default values once we animate this.
So, let's see how we can do that. So, now let's go to the range selector, go to the start, and go over offset, and we're going to click on the stopwatch to create a keyframe. Go forward maybe around 1 second, and make that 100%. Very simple. So, now if we play that, we can see that animation coming in character by character. I would like this to be a word by word. So, to change that, simply go to advanced, and from here, change it based on. Let's change it to words. So, like that, I have the nice where it's coming in. I would like to add some more interest in this. So, I'm going to set the easing of these. So, one quick way to do this is to actually press F9 on your keyboard, and if I press F9, I can see that nice curve right over there, and it will start slowly and end slowly. If you would like some more effect, another quick way to do this is actually to use the MoBar extension. So, if I go to easing in here, I can do something like a quint in and quint out, and that would be like very rapid. So, if I see the graph in here, we can see that's very steep, and that would create this nice animation.
Now, this is quite great already. Now, one thing that I need to do is to actually create the end animation. So, to create the end animation is quite simple. Simply go to the start animation here, duplicate this, Command D on your keyboard, and we're going to rename this to "end animation." And in this case, I would like only to animate the opacity. So, I can open that up, and I can immediately remove the position value from here, so that I only see the opacity. Perfect.
So, now let's go back to the range selector here, and if I open that up, I can see these keyframes that I have done before. And then simply going to toggle that stopwatch to remove all of those keyframes. Change this to the offset to 0%, and we are going to change the start to a 100%, so that we start from the animation that is visible 100% in here. And then at around in here, from 2 seconds to 3 seconds, I would like to hide this. So, I'm going to keyframe the end in here from 100, and we're going to keyframe that from 100 to uh zero. It is as you can see, removing our text like that. And just so we do this in a different way, I'm going to hit F9 on my keyboard, and you can see this animation right over here. And if I would like to make that a little bit more rapid, like we have done before, we can also do this from here. So, we can click on that keyframe and simply pull that, and we can pull that as well, and we can make it steeper like that as well. Great.
Now, the basic part of the animation is done. Now, a thing that I would like to do is actually to keep the text as centered as possible, and this will help the reader to actually read the the text while it is being shown. So, to do that, I can simply go on the text animation here, and I can add another animator. So, I'm going to animate the position. Now, we are going to rename this to "start and animation." And in this case, I would like to animate the whole line. So, I'm going to type in "line," and we are just going to animate the position. We're simply going to click on the stopwatch from here, and let's go where that animation ends in here, and just move a few frames forward and do another keyframe over there. And now, let's go to the first keyframe in here, and I would like to start it from the edge of the screen. So, now let's pick both of these keyframes, press F9, and see how this looks. And one thing that I would like to do is actually to pick the last keyframe in here and pull this graph in here so that it ends slower, like that. Perfect.
And this looks beautiful already. And we can do the same thing for the end in here. But but in this case, I would like to animate it in the opposite direction. So, let's hit on the stopwatch in here, create another keyframe, go to the end keyframe in here, and we can just move it like that. Pick both of those keyframes, hit F9 on your keyboard, and in this case, I'm going to pick that keyframe and make that slower, so that it starts slow and then ends fast. So, let's see how that looks. Wonderful. And that looks beautiful. Perfect.
So, now we have this nice smooth animation with the text coming in and the text coming out. If we take a look at this animation here, we can see that we have the word "simple" that is actually doing a secondary animation at the end. And this is a great concept to explore since it helps you to show this word more and put emphasis on that specific word. But just before, I would like to just humbly ask you if you can simply like and subscribe, or even comment below. This would really help me to reach more people and be able to do more free content like this for you.
To do that, basically, what you need to do is to actually separate this word from the rest of the sentence. Now, we can do that in various ways, but the way I'm going to show you is to do it in a way that if we edit the text later on, we can simply select the word again easily without having to mess up keyframes and so on. In my opinion, this is the best way to do this. So, let's start by creating a new null layer. So, let's go to layer, new, and null object from here, and we are going to rename this to "pick special word." And now I'm going to go to the effect controls and then going to drag and drop a quick slider control from here, and let's rename this to "select special word."
Now, I can go to the text animation here, and from here, we're going to add a new animator. This one is just going to be for the opacity, and that is right over here. I'm going to rename this to "subtract special word." Basically, in this case, we're going to subtract the word that we would like to animate. So, let's go to this null in here. In this case, I'm going to give it a value of two. So, to do that, once we open the range selector, we are going to go and make sure that it is set on "words," so "based on words." And we also need to make sure that the units are set to "index," so "index" would allow us to select the word based on its number. So, if I go to start, now I can hold Alt and click on that stopwatch. This will open the expression for this field. Don't worry, it's going to be super simple. We're going to select that null, and we are going to simply pick this pick whip here, very simply, and simply drag and drop it over "select special word" right over there. Make sure that the null layer is selected before you do this. And in the end, in here, we're going to type in minus one. So, we simply picked it with this one and typed in minus one, and this will basically give it a value of one, since it is using this value to and minus one, so it is one.
Now, I'm going to do the same for the end in here, but I'm not going to add the minus one. So, click Alt, click on the stopwatch, and then pick whip that null. So, make sure that null layer is selected, and then we're going to pick whip the "select special word" from here. Perfect. So, in this case, nothing happens. Don't worry, that is because we haven't set the opacity. So, let's change it to 0%, and now you can see. Now, the word animation is hidden. Perfect.
So, now if we change this to, for instance, one, that would hide the first word. And if we change it to three, that would hide the third word. And four, the fourth word. So, let's bring that back to two, like that. We have separated this sentence from that specific word.
Now, I would like to animate that word. So, to animate it, actually, we need to see it. So, in this case, I need to create another one which only shows that specific word. So, let's duplicate this. So, Command on my keyboard to duplicate, and I'm going to rename this to "special word." Perfect. And I'm going to even give it a different color, just so it is very easy to see.
Now, let's open this up, go to text, and go to the "subtract special word" in here, open that up, and we're going to rename this to "special word hide after." And as you might have guessed, we are basically going to hide anything that is after this word. So, to do that, I'm going to open the range selector. I'm going to go over this start, and I'm simply going to remove the minus one in the end in here, and that would basically now go back to the value that we have set on that null right over there. So, and now for the end, I am simply going to remove this altogether. So, I'll click on the end and remove that. And now we're going to give that end value a very high value, something like a 200. And if I solo this layer now, I can see that any word after the animation here, after the second word, is hidden. Perfect.
So, the first step is done. Now, let's hide the first word in here. And to do that, it's very simple as well. Simply duplicate this "special word hide after" too. Let's rename that to "hide before." And if we open that now, all we need to do is change the end to zero, and go to the start and change this back to minus one. And like that, it is hiding just the first word in here and is showing the middle word. Perfect.
So, like that, we have selected this special word. So, now if we go to, as for example, three, we can select a different word. And for, we can select a different word as. So, now if I unsolo this, I can see this whole thing. And if I solo this layer, I can see that this has the that specific word. And if I solo this layer, I can see that I have this sentence without that specific word. So, now I can easily animate anything on this word without affecting the rest of the sentence. Perfect.
But what if I change the text in here? So, if I change this text, as you can see, this kind of messes everything up, since this sentence doesn't change with this text. To fix that, we can simply tie this source text in here with the source text of this one, so that whenever I change the text in that first one, the other one changes. And to do that, it's very simple. Simply pick this pick whip right over here of this "special word," and make sure to find the source text of the first text layer in here, just like that. And now if we close this, we can see that that has changed with it. So, if I type back in "text animation simple," we can see that both of these are typed exactly the same. Perfect.
So, now let's animate this word. In this case, I would like to animate its font, and I would also like to make it go in italic mode. So, let's see how we can do that. So, I'm going to go to the "special word" in here, and I would like to do this just as soon as it gets in, right over here. So, I'm going to open that up, I'm going to go to the animate function once again, and I'm going to select "skew." And from here, let's simply rename this to "skew." And we can now simply click on this stopwatch from here, and we can move forward a few frames, just like that, and maybe do 20 skew. We can select both of those keyframes and hit F9 on our keyboard to easy ease them, and now we can see this nice animation. Now, if I would like that to be a little bit faster, the animation, we can simply go in here and end it slower, just flattening that curve, and it will start fast and end slow. Perfect. That's very nice.
And now I would like also to change the font, and I would like to change it as this is changing, so somewhere around here. So, to do that, I'm going to go to the source text, give it a keyframe, move just one frame, give it another keyframe, and then we can change the font. I'm going to use this font in here, let's use the semi bold version. And in this case, this font is quite large, so I might need to reduce its size a little bit so that it fits correctly. So, around 93 should be good. And now we can see that this animates from that to this point. So, let's see how that looks. Perfect. And this looks very nice. And like that, we can put emphasis on this word, just like that.
Now, if we take a look at the intro video, we can see that we have these nice animations that we are also going to explore. So, we have this nice gradient animation, and also this typewriter animation. We're going to see how we can do this. And in this part, I would like to explore two concepts, and that is how we can put an emphasis on a word with a gradient, and also how how we can use timing of the animation. So, we can create different timing to actually so show different parts of a sentence at different times. So, let's see how we can do that.
So, first, let's start with the first thing, which is going to be super simple. So, let's type in something else in here. And now I'm going to open both of these. So, let's select the "special word" and this text. Hit U on our keyboard to open all the keyframes. And in this case, I would like to go to the part where I have the word in here in the middle, basically. So, I'm going to select this. I'm going to select this. Just hold Control on your keyboard. I'm going to select that, and I'm going to select that. So, basically, I'm selecting the start animations in here, and I'm simply going to click on the create keyframe in here. So, now I have a keyframe in the middle of this animation here. And one thing that I would like to do is actually, I'm going to change a little bit the offset in here to 50% of both of these, so that only the first part is shown in here. And now I can select all of these middle keyframes. Let's go to the graph editor, and I'm going to press F9. And now we can pull those handles. And what this will do is basically, it will stop the animation. Since it is at the floor in here, it will stop. So, let's play that and see how that looks. Perfect.
So, like that, we can see how the first part comes in before, and the whole sentence now is more legible. Great. So, let's continue to create the gradient word. This is going to be fairly simple. Let's pick this "special word" in here, and we are simply going to go to the effect controls in here and find "gradient ramp." Put it on the gradient word. And in this case, I would like the gradient word to be. So, right now, it's selecting the fourth word in here. I would like that to be the third word. So, three, and that is the word right over there. Now, let's go over gradient ramp, and we can give it some nice colors. So, for instance, we can make that like a nice yellow, and this one, one, like a nice purple. Perfect. And if we pick these little icons in here, we can change how that gradient reacts, like that. And we can see how that animates. But one thing that I would like to add is actually, I would like to bring this gradient on as soon as the whole sentence finishes. So, I would like it to start in white, and then goes into the gradient later on. So, to do that, I'm going to find exactly when the sentence, somewhere around here, and I'm going to go over this stopwatch of "blend with original" and toggle that. Let's start that from 100%. Now, let's hit U on our keyboard to see that keyframe, and let's move on a few frames, somewhere around here, and let's bring that back to zero. So, now let's pick both of those keyframes, and like we always do, F9 on your keyboard to smoothen that animation. And now we can see that nice animation of that word coming in right up there, like that. Great.
So, finally, I would like to see how we can create this nice typewriting effect, and also in the end in here, we can see this nice like jumping effect in stop motion, and we're going to see how we can do just that. So, let's go over the last composition here, and I have this text already written in here, and this is going to be actually the easiest one to do, although it looks quite complex, since we are going to use the MoBar toolbar here once again. This is actually free to use up to a certain amount of usage, so just go ahead and download it from the link in the description.
So, to do the typewriter effect, it's super simple. We're going to put the cursor at this start in here, and we're going to go over to the on the text tools of this MoBar toolbar, and then I'm going to simply click on "typewriter," and that will basically do all of the work for us. And as you can see, we have this nice typewriter animation. And that typewriter animation, if we hit U on our keyboard, is based on these keyframes right over here. So, we can make that slower if we would like, for instance, like that, and that would be typed slower. And a cool thing that we can see in here is actually that like this, the text is being written, and is kept in the center. So, if you remember, we have done this in the start manually, and this toolbar actually does this automatically for us. So, if we would like, we can simply remove the cursor, for instance, and like that, we can see the words being written, and we don't have a cursor in that case, and it's always staying in the center. And we can make this even more fun. So, we can pick both of these keyframes in here, and since we're using the toolbar, I'm going to use the toolbar to create the easing, and I'm going to use "quart in" and "quart out," and that will start basically slow and end slowly. Very nice.
So, this is a nice animation already. Now, we can bring it back in the character. So, let's toggle that in. And since it's of course flashing, we need to find a place where it shows. We can change the blink speed. So, I would like that to blink a little bit more, somewhere around 25 would be good. And now I can also change the shape of that cursor. So, I'm going to increase the scale X, and I'm going to decrease the scale Y to around 30, and increase the scale X even more, like that, and then going to move it in the x-axis, like this. Perfect. And I'm, it's even going to give it a different color. So, let's give it this nice yellow color. Wonderful. And now I can see that animation right over there.
Now, let's see how we can erase this text and write something else. To do that, we can simply move forward a few frames in here. Let's add a new keyframe right over here, and let's move forward a few frames, somewhere around here, and we can simply slide this until we have only the word that we want to keep in here. So, that is in this case, 17. So, that is the animation like that, and it removes it. And we can move forward a few frames, just like that, and from here, now we can change the sentence. So, to change the text, we can simply open the text in here, go over source text, go on the stopwatch, and toggle that. Now, let's move forward one frame, and give it another keyframe, and now we can pick all of this, simply double click on that, and we are going to type in "that feels smooth." Perfect. And in this case, now since we have typed in something else, as you can see, it is hiding part of this. So, we can simply go over the typing animation and make sure that that is shown, like that. And now we can move forward a few frames, once again, and we can bring this back to 100, like that. And if we see how that looks, we can see that it's being written, and then removed, and then types in the next word.
Now, another great effect that we can do is actually to create like a stop motion effect on the text. To do this, it is super simple. Once again, we can go to the text tool while the text is selected, and then the toolbar has this little option named "Wiggly text." So, if we click on that, and it will create this effect for us. In this case, it is using a Y amount of six. If we increase that, we can see how that is like wiggling a lot. So, if we make that like smaller, somewhere around 20, we can give it this nice subtle movement in here, just like that. And we can even start this at a specific place. So, if I hit U on my keyboard, and I would like to actually start it from around here, I can simply hit click on the stopwatch in here of "enable," toggle that off, then move forward just one frame, and enable that, like that. And if I hit U on my keyboard, I can see the keyframe straight over there, and now it's without that, and then start from around here. Perfect. And if we want to start that even smoother, we can start from a zero amount. Toggle the stopwatch on, move forward a few frames, and go to 30 in here, and like that, we have animated this on as the word comes in. Perfect.
So, that's basically it, guys. Go ahead and download this from the link in description below. Now, one final thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to create that cool background that I have in my preview video. So, I'm going to click on the rectangle tool, drag and drop it right over here. So, drag, draw to cover the whole composition here, and now I can go to the fill in here, make sure it is on on radial gradient, press OK, click on this, and now we can put the end part in here and make it a zero opacity. So, now I'm going to pick the pointer tool in here, and like this, I can tell it where I want the gradient to be, basically. So, I'm going to place it somewhere around that. I'm going to place it in the end, like that.
And another thing that I'm going to do, I'm going to add a grid to to this. So, to add a grid, I'm going to use in this case the MoBar extension. Of course, you can add it using the effects and presets as well. So, let's go to shapes from here, and from here, we can simply create "grid overlay," and this will create a grid automatically for us that we can specify the number of rows, so for instance, four in this case, and the number of columns as well. Perfect. And we can also go to appearance from here and change the color of these, and even the opacity to something like a 10%. Perfect. So, now we can put that grid right over our background, right over there.
Now, finally, I would like to add a nice grain effect on the background, and I'm going to do this by using an effect that I have explained earlier in a video how to do. So, I'm going to paste this, and if you would like to know how to actually create this effect, you can have a look at this video right over here, which explains actually in detail how to do grain effects and more.
So, that's it, guys. I hope that you find this very useful, and simply watch this video to learn how to do the grain effects.