Beginner Animated Lower Thirds for Twitch

1. Meet Stephanie!: Hello, my name is Stephanie and I will be teaching you how to make animated Lower Thirds like this in After Effects. Do you want to engage with your audience and maybe remind them to follow your stream or a catch you on your other socials. This is the course for you. Not only do I illustrate children's books and make greeting cards eyes, I have also done work in video editing and aftereffects. Throughout this class, you will learn about selecting a typeface that is visually pleasing to the eye, creating a logo, and learning some quick shortcuts in After Effects along the way. This class is for beginner to intermediate who are familiar with video editing. Maybe you're new to After Effects. This is a great place as an introduction just to getting around the software. This class is great for those who want to encourage their viewers to follow, subscribe and catch them on their other socials. You can also use these skills to make small titles and your video on-demand through twitch. But in this class you'll be able to create Lower Thirds that you can reuse over and over. 2. Intro to the Course: Hi there. I'm so glad you joined me on this course. I have so much to show you, but don't worry, I will break down each key element in different lessons. You'll get an introduction on lower thirds and why they're helpful. I will also discuss typefaces, logos, color palette selection, building a lower third and after effects and even uploading onto the OBS stream deck. Be patient with yourself. After effects can be an intimidating where. And I feel that with learning a new software, it is best to keep it as simple as possible. If you have any questions or new discoveries, please share it in the discussion. Yeah, I, I almost forgot. Share, share, share your progress and your projects. Screenshots are quick and fast. Quick and fast and easy way to upload your progress and progressions. In the project description, I've included links to resources that will be used throughout the course. Bookmark those webpages you may discover, you can use them for other projects and designs. So we're gonna get started with our first lesson about Lower Thirds. Matzke started. 3. About Lower Thirds: So what is a lower third? A lower third is a combination of texts and graphical elements in the lower area of the screen. To give the audience more information, it doesn't necessarily have to occupy the lower third of the screen, but that's where it gets its name. Your lower thirds give your audience information that they aren't getting from anywhere else in a visual way, usually through a combination of text and graphics. They are tricky to balance. They must look good, be easy to read, and complement the visuals, giving more context, whatever is being shown on the screen. Some good to use on screen fonts to consider would be Arial for Torah, Helvetica. The list is pretty extensive. These fonts are considered as sans serif fonts. The lists on the fonts are very popular to use because of the increased a readability and ease of use. On top of that, many of them are already default. We loaded onto your computer. For the Love of cheese and crackers. Do not, I repeat, do not use Comic Sans. I personally know that it looks like a heron FADH and it's cute and whimsical, but there are so many better ones that are out there. You can find them and download them for free. Helpful lower third uses a font that ties in with your brand. The context is short and straight to the point. With too much texts, the viewer could misinterpret vital information. Color selection. Chances are you're aren't established dreamer and you may already have a color palette selected if you're new to streaming and don't have some colors in mind, there are some easy places that you can check out to get a color palette that's easy on the eyes and aesthetically pleasing. Color Hunt is a free to use website where users create and share color palettes. I will put a link to this website in the project. Notice a few things to keep in mind. Do not use over-saturated colors. Keep in mind that even though the color combinations may look great together, they don't always translate very well on the screen. Red and green, yellow or yellow text on a blue screen. Really don't want your viewers eyes to melt. Your lower third could be aligned on the left, center, or right side of the screen. In some cases, you can also use the left side of the screen. Some streamers tend to do this to showcase their chat. Let's discuss more about our lower thirds and placing them in optimum position in the next lesson. 4. Logo Design In Illustrator: In this lesson, we're going to design your logo for your lower third and Adobe Illustrator. In Adobe Illustrator, we're going to import your logo graphic. Go to File, place. Find your file and place it without linking it onto the artboard. To resize your image, hold down the Shift key and drag your mouse. That way your image will not be distorted when resizing it. Next, we're going to make a circle. Choose some color that you might like. I chose to go with the color shade of discord purple. It's called Blurb. Hold down the Shift key to make a perfect circle. And we're going to right-click and move this image to the back. Re-size your logos here specifications. Around my circle, I'm going to add a stroke. And you can increase or decrease the thickness of your stroke. Now I'm going to select everything and just shrink it down some to make sure that my entire logo and shape is in alignment. I'm going to go to the Align tab. By selecting these align objects. You can align it to the airport Artist's selection. In this case, I went to align it to the art board and align everything center from vertical or horizontal. And I'm going to resize the size of my art board because I don't need all this negative space. And now I'm going to export my image by going to File Export As and select as a PNG. And don't forget to name your logo. I'm also going to use the art board, so it stays within the size of the artboard. 1 exploiting, make sure that you change it to the background, pretty set of transparent. So that way you don't get a white background when you're bringing it into After Effects. And we're done. In the next lesson, we're going to set up our space and aftereffects. 5. All About Title Safety: So let's talk about title safety. Title safe Action, Safe Margins, safe area, safeties, whatever you call them, they matter. Some people forget about them and surprisingly, a number amount of people don't even know about them. However, when it comes to streaming or making video projects such as documentaries, interviews, or broadcasting a field that is important to have your text and other notices within the title safe area. So displayed on my screen or the guidelines of where the action safe in the title safe area is located. Depending on your aspect ratio. If your texts goes over the title safe area, and that's not the style you're going for, then there's a likely chance that your text will get cut off. Facts. And video editing programs such as Premier, iMovie aftereffects and studio Vegas. They do show an overlay of these guidelines. So when you're editing, everything is safe as far as the action and the title. And when I say action, I'm talking about like this. Motion is motion, motion, motion that's happening within the screen. You don't want your action mainland over here because then no one can, then no one can see you. Now that we have discussed about color, font and lower third positioning, let's get started on actually designing our Lower Third. 6. Workspace Set Up: In this lesson, we're going to navigate After Effects and set up our workspace. Right now I have a pre-made composition, so we're going to start this right from the beginning. This is what the screen you'll see when you open up After Effects, you're going to create a new project. At the top of the screen, you're going to find a tab that says window and workspace. These are the different types of workspaces that Adobe has preset when creating your space. So this is the default setting. And up top there's going to be some keys that we're also going to be utilizing, not all of them to some of them. And then down here is where your layers are going to be located, and this is where all your files will be on display. So in my workspace, I'm going to set it up to Essential Graphics. Essential graphics will display more tabs and objects that you can do. The wonderful thing about these tabs, you can just drag by the hamburger, the word, and put them in whatever column do you desire. So I'm going to show you how I like to set up my workspace. As I drag things, you can see a little purple overlay happening as where it's going to push itself to be located. You can put them on the bottom or on the side, or just have them all together like a stack. I like to keep my visual so I can see exactly where everything is. But this is your own personal preference. Now I'm going to make a new composition. But if these settings, I have them set by 1920 by 1080. Now on the bottom you can see that there's a new composition setup. Right here. I'm toggling the alpha lock. And then you can also toggle the title Save As we discussed in a previous lesson. And you can see where the title safe and the action safe bars are. And over here is where your files will be displayed. So take some time to familiarize yourself with the area and how you want to set up your workspace. In the next lesson, we're going to start building our Lower Third and After Effects. Okay. 7. Building the Lower Third: In this lesson, we're going to start building our Lower Third. This is what the final project is going to look like. So take your time with this, be patient. And just if you have any questions, go back over the videos or send me a message in Skillshare. So let's get started. And don't worry, After Effects looks a little intimidating, but you can do this. So we're going to set up ourselves a new composition. I'm going to name my composition. So that can remember to go back to it whenever I need to. And I'm keeping it in HD format for the 2009 frame rate. So here my workspace we're going to create, go to the Layer tab and choose New, and then go to a new solid. I'm doing it this way so that I can see what we're kinda workspace I'm working in. And right here I just toggle to so the full size of my screen. So I set it to. And once again, you can toggle on the tidal action safe grid lines. So for now I'm going to keep the title safe on because this lower third will have text n. So next I'm going to import my graphic. So you've got to file import or Command I or Control I. If you're on PC. And you'll see that you'll have the logo graphic on the left-hand side of the screen. So I'm going to drag that into my layers panel and bring that to the front. As you can see, it's really, really big. So we're going to press the down arrow and we're going to resize the scale of it. And it will just bring it down to a size I feel is more appropriate for the space. Next I'm going to add another layer, is going to be a shape layer. We're going to end Part B. We're going to create a rectangle to have the textbook on top of it. And then I'm printing that rectangle right below the graphic. Then we're going to press Add, go to the Add tab and insert a rectangle. And you'll see another line item jot down for a rectangle path. And I'm also going to add a fill to it to give it a different color. So you can see the little boxes of where the rectangle ideally is. And you see that it's red. So at the top I'm going to change that color from red to a darker and darker blue marble. You can use the eye dropper to choose a color if it's on a graphic. And we'll just drop that down to make it a little bit darker. Now I'm going to resize the length and the width of my rectangle. And that rectangle path. You press that down that little arrow handle. And you can adjust the size of it by either pulling left and right to adjust the length and the width. And I'm just going to bring that into a position that I find is acceptable. And I'm also going to adjust the corners to make it a little bit rounder. Some centered around this to max to give it a softer appeal. And now I'm going to place my item, my objects where I want them to be, as far as where I want the text to be and where the graphic she show up. And the next thing I'm going to make is a text layer, going back to layer new text that shows a sans-serif font to make it easier for the viewer to read. Try to stay away from rarely decorative fonts, especially on screen because the viewer might miss out on important information. So I'm making this lower third for coppa. This is for her discord channel. Right here in the text panel. I like to arrange my paragraph to be centered. You can arrange a center left or right. I keep it centered. And I'm going to have it in all caps. And my all caps are going to be a small case caps, a set of AAC apps, and you can do a subspace PCA. Now I'm going to resize it, replaced my text whereby I wanted to be. And I'm going to adjust the text height, the size of it has to make a little bit bigger. So play around with how you want it to align in a text, the kerning, spacing. But keeping your text on one line is quite ideal. Perfect. Now I have exactly where I want it to be. Congratulations, you just built the lower third. In the next lesson, we're going to start animating our Lower Third. 8. Animate the Lower Third: Our Lower Third is built. Now let's animate it. We're going to animate our lower thirds using something that they call keyframes. So a keyframe defined by Adobe is used to set parameters for motion effects, audio, and many other properties, usually changing them over time. A keyframe marks the point where you specify a value. A layer 4 layer properties such as a spatial position, opacity, or audio volume. Values between keyframes are interpolated. When you use the keyframes to create change over time, you'll typically use at least two key frames. One for the state at the beginning and one for the new state at the end of the change. I will show an example of where to go and how to add and remove keyframes. So under each content of layer, you're always going to see stopwatches of some sort. And those are for specifying what point in time that the shape or how something's going to move her and me. So in this quick demonstration by clicking the Animate button and adjusting the opacity is, is commanding. The layer is letting aftereffects know like Hey, we want to animate this layer. And when you click the stopwatch, you'll see a diamond pop-up. That diamond is an indicator of a key-frame. So in that specific point in time, that's where, that's how I want or how you want your object to look, to add another key frame on the left-hand side, click another diamond, and now you'll see that there are two keyframes visible. Now. Right now all the keyframes are set to an opacity of 100. So there is no change for by changing one of the key frames. And when it goes to the next keyframe, it puts it into full view. So it starts at 0 and it builds to 100. Take your time with playing around with these keyframes. Because if you think about it, a keyframe is like a key point in time. That key moment is where you want or how you want something to look. If you ever feel the need that some of these, most of these keyframes are not working for you. You can always click the stopwatch and that will clear all the keyframes on that specific part of the timeline. I'm going to rename my rectangle layer, my Shape Layer 2, slider bar. Because I want, That's going to be a mental note for me. Knowing that I want my bar to slide into the frame. I wanted to add some effects to some of my layers just to give it a more polished look. So in the Effects and Presets, type in Set Matte and drag that on top of your layer of the text. What Set Matte is going to do is going to allow us to keep our texts where it is. But when the rectangle is behind our texts than the texts will be visible. If the rectangle is not on the screen, then it won't be, but then the text will not be visible. You'll see how, you'll see when this all comes together. Next, I'm going to add a drop shadow just to give a little depth to my slider bar in my icon. And I'm going to add those both my sidebar and icon, or a logo. And play with the drop shadow settings for each layer. So the distance of the drop shadow is going to determine how far the shape pixel one bys will be from the main graphic. And the softness is just going to soften the edges so they look softer. Feel free to play around with that to your specifications. Now we added some of our special effects to our layers. Let's go ahead and start animating our lower third. So clicking that little carrot, but I start animating enemy button and choose the opacity of the text. I cow, we discussed earlier is now actually going to work with the opacity. And then here I'm going to set myself up some keyframes to move forward ten frames, you can press command shift up or on PC shift up. And I'm also going to animate the slider bar. Like I mentioned earlier. Whenever I'm working after effects, I like to keep my abuse clean because sometimes I'll get confused. So I'll minimize things that I don't want to see that I'm not working on. So the slider bars can be animated by changing the position of where it's located, by clicking the stopwatch for dying to start with adding a keyframe. Right now where it's currently located is the state where if the keyframe is. So right now there's no change. By pressing that diamond, we're going to add another keyframe. And now you see that there are two more keyframes. And you can also see the text slightly being animated. As you can see, I'm pulling the slider bar from one position. So at the start of that first keyframe is where it's going to be off screen. And by the time it get the timeline gets to the second keyframe, it will be fully onscreen. So I want my sidebar to come and I'll bit smoother. So I'm going to go to the Graph Editor shown here. Right now you can see it from point a to B, how that animation is going to go. So I'm going to click the easy ease button. So just give it a nice gentle slope. And I'll do the same thing for the other endpoint. When you pull the handles, it'll just make the arc not as straight. It just gives it a gentle curve. And you press the Graph Editor button to get out of the graph editor. And now you can see on the timeline how the keyframe Shane shapes into an hour glass. So it's smooth there. Next I'm going to change the size of the icon because I wanted to pop in. Click the little carrot icon next to transform, we'll see More options that you can modify. Going to the beginning of the start of my timeline, I'm going to adjust the scale by clicking on the scale stopwatch. Since it's the beginning of the segment. I wanted it to be not visible, so one has to be small. But first I want to set up my three keyframes. So non-existent, pretty big. And then it's gonna go back down to a smaller size. And next to on the size for your scene numbers. And it looks like a link. So. The image is going to stay within its constraints without being distorted. Unless you click that link, it'll distort the image, but we're going to keep it links so everything stays uniform and universal. Going back and said the graph editor, we're gonna do some nice, easy ease is, so it's not so jag it. Hide all my points. Click, Easy, Ease. Now here's the really cool part about the, about these handles. You can pull that, adjust these handles in various positions and I'll change the outcome of how it's easily east end. And now you can see how insight Up boop, boop, boop is the best way I can describe it. But take your time and play with play around with the handles and see how you want your icon pop in. Do you want it to be like a big pop? Or maybe it's just a quick pop. As I'm doing this, let me change my mind multiple times and that's okay. Just do what you feel works best for you. Now by pulling the handle downward, you can see at the end of the timeline that is has a little, has a extra bit of a bounce to it. Now let's take a moment and step back and see where all our key frames are and how our project is going to look from the beginning. Now we're going to animate the exit of your keyframe. So go for several frames about where I'm doing it right about here. You can highlight your keyframes, Control or Command C, and then Control or Command V to paste your friend, to paste your keyframes towards the end of your timeline. And do that for each element. So you have the highlight line by line. Now highlight the back-end of all of your keyframes. Right-click and go to keyframe assistant and time-reverse keyframes. So you'll see it pull in. And then I'll pull out. Now, he saw the logo and how it did that. We're animation effects. We don't want that. So as I tried to correct this, I decided I'm going to go into my graph editor. And now I can see where that walking as action is happening. So on the red line you can see how it's going to attract kind of goofy like. So I'm going to pull the handles so that they're straight and remove the Easy Ease option. So now it stays in motion. Well, not in motion, but it's stay still. And maybe I might play with and handles a little bit TIF, I can get a little bit more or less bounced and I want now take some time to clean up how you want everything to look and clean up your keyframes. From the startup, my keyframe, I can see that there's a little bit of the slider bar kinda hanging out, and I don't want that to be there. So by selecting my key frame, I just pull it out of the, out of the frame. And as a final touch, I'm going to click Motion Blur and select Motion Blur on each of my layers. When everything is animated in, motion blur gives a distorted effect just to make the animation appear that it's moving smoothly. And once again, I'm going to check all my keyframes and make sure everything is where I want it to be. So at the moment my animation is very long. So what I'm gonna do is adjust the duration by pulling the size of the ruler. By pulling the blue tab in, zooming out on my timeline, I can see where it begins and end. So just pull that in a little closer because we don't want our animation to be 37. This is only a five or 6 second loop. So when we try it out, yeah, my shin is only about six or so seconds long. And in the preview it'll just keep looping and looping. Congratulations to those less than was a little bit long, but you just animated your lower third and After Effects. In the next lesson, we're going to export our Lower Third and get it ready for OBS. 9. Exporting the Lower Third: Alright, you just animate built and animate earth, earths. And now let's export it. Doesn't that look wonderful on take a moment to appreciate the hard work that you've done. We're almost at the end of the tunnel. So first all this blue space area is your composition that will be transparent. Turn off that blue layer. So when you're exploiting that doesn't show. Remember how the final product with a look, that's the goal we're going for. So back in this composition, toggle on and off the transparency grid under your main composition, the brain white checkerboard as you're transparent spots. Turning this grid often on won't affect the final render. It just allows you to see a preview of the final product. Anything that's not filled in is considered transparent. Next, we're going to go to File save just in case. And now we're going to export and add it to the render queue. Now the bottom panel has changed. In this bottom panel, click on the Render Settings here where you can see the quality of your render when it's fully done and the timespan and happened, the frame rate. We're going to change the output of this to discard logo dot MOV. But first, before we export, we're going to change some things in there. Setting. Change your format to quick time. That's the one I highly recommend. And your video output will go to RGB plus Alpha. That Alpha is going to make sure that the background, everything else that's not filled in, we'll be transparent. Now just to double-check, we're going to change where we're going to save our mood, our export movie file, and then hit Save. The last thing you do, press the Render button. Depending on how much power you have in your computer. Your render speed time may vary. But once it's done, you'll hear a dang and your lower third has finally been exported. That at the hard part is done. Let's do one last step and upload to OBS stream deck. 10. Uploading to OBS Stream Deck: In this lesson, I'm going to have my friend coppa, show you how she uploads or lower thirds to the OBS stream deck. Take it away. So first, you want to add a source. So they'll see you all the different sources that are listed. You want to add a new source. You want to click on media source. Now you see the different options it has for what type of media you can import. You'll click on Add Source. And if you already have the source name, you just click on whatever the existing sources. I already have a name, but for most other people who they're going to be adding a new source for the first time. So just below that, add new source instead. So click on that. You'll name your Source. Click on Add Source. You want to browse your file. I have it right here at the top, lower third MOV file. You'll open that. Hit done. Well done, well done. 11. Final Thoughts: I know it was a bit of a challenge because you hung in there and animated a lower third. Not everyone's lower third is going to look the same. And that's pretty much fine. You'll pop animation, maybe a little bit more bouncy, or you, or you haven't used a logo of your own, regardless. Regardless, regardless, you did an amazing job and I'm so proud of you for hanging in there. If you feel that Africa exit the program, you want to begin to explore more courses with that focus on Skillshare. Remember, your lower third is not only to be used for streaming, but you can also use it for projects. I have some brushes for you. Did you enjoyed this lesson and heavier checked out my other courses. Let me know what you think by giving it a rating and leaving a comment. Clil, are you curious about this? Some of the other work that I've done, you can find me here on Instagram. You see what I did there already using the lower thirds that we just made. Thank you for your time in taking this course. I will be keeping an eye out for the lower thirds that you create.