9 easy animations in Adobe After Effects
If you want to learn how to animate words in an easy way in Adobe After Effects, here are 9 examples of how you can do it.
9 easy animations in Adobe After Effects
First of all, these are just 9 random examples, but you can do this with any word, and the easiest way to come up with animation ideas is to simply use verbs and then let the word itself be the idea for what animation to do.
For example, if the word is “bounce”, let it bounce.
If the word is “slide”, let it slide in.
If the word is “fast”, make the animation fast.
Another tip is to use CAPITAL letters so all characters are the same height.
Now, for the word “Hide”, I first create a mask around the word, select “Add” in the dropdown, add a “Position”-property to the text, then I make the “Y-value” change over time using keyframes (so it moves down and out from the mask).
(Tip: Make sure to add the Position property above text so it applies before the mask. If I use the Position property inside “Transform”, it will apply the movement to both the text and the mask.)
For the word “Show”, I do the same thing except that the starting position is outside the mask, and the word moves up and into the mask.
For the word “Join”, I create three shapes that I place on top of the word, in the same color as the word, and then add a mask to each shape and animate the mask path to reveal the shapes from left to right (so it “joins” the letters with each other).
For the word “Grow”, I move the “Anchor Point” to the bottom left corner of the word and change the “Scale” property (with keyframes) so it grows up and to the right.
For the word “Wait”, I want to make it look like it’s blinking by showing one character at a time (kinda like it’s loading), so I do this by creating the mask over the word and then changing the mask path (with keyframes) with the same time gap between each keyframe.
Then, to stop it from animating, I select all the keyframes, right-click (on one them), and select “Toggle Hold Keyframe”. (This will hold the value of the keyframe until the next keyframe. Otherwise, it will animate and in this case, fade in and out.)
For the word “Zoom”, I move the “Anchor Point” to the middle of the word, and animate the size of the word using two keyframes in the “Scale” property (so it zooms in).
For the word “Slide”, I simply change the X-value in the “Position” property so it slides to the right. Simple as that.
For the word “Share”, I create a mask over the top half of the word and select “Add” in the dropdown next to it. Then I copy that layer (including the mask) change it to “Subtract” next to Mask in that second layer. This way I have two layers showing half of the word (one showing the top and one showing the bottom).
Then I go back to the first layer and animate that, using the “Position” property under “Transform” to affect both the mask and the text (so the top half of the text moves away from the other half of the text).
Finally, for the word “Turn”, I click the little box under “3D Layer” to activate even more properties (for example, three ways of rotating the layer, instead of just one). Then I change the “Y Rotation” from 0 to 180 so it turns halfway around.
(Tip: To change it in the other direction, change the second value from “180” to “-180”.)
Comment if you want more videos like this, and tell me if you want anything explained in more detail. Have a nice day!
🎞 Watch the tutorial here!
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for hundreds of short tutorials just like this one.
Thanks for reading!
Click the image below to check out my digital products 👇
