Transcripts
1. Intro: Would you like to
know how to make cool typography loops in a
simple way in After Effects? [MUSIC] Hi, my name is Carminys Guzman. I am an animator, illustrator, and a scriptwriter
based in Spain, originally from
Dominican Republic. I am the co-founder
of operary.com, an animation studio
based in Madrid. We have over nine years of
experience producing beautiful animated explaining videos for hundreds of companies worldwide. such as Angel, the Lloyd, Bayer, Persian, and many more. In this course, I will
teach you how to make awesome topography-based
loops in a very simple way. We will start getting
in touch with the After Effects interface and designing our first project. Next, I will show
you how to easily animate your text with
four different projects, and of course, you
will learn how to loop your animations. You can download
the project files, this way you can follow
the instructions in real-time and it will be much easier for you to apply
what you're learning. This course is ideal
for animators, illustrators, graphic
designers, creative artists, and generally, anyone who
wants to learn how to make amazing animations easily and in the shortest time possible. This is an
easy-to-follow course. However, if you have not
used After Effects before, you can save my previous course, animate your illustrations
in record time, using Adobe After Effects first. There is no time to lose. Join now and let's get started.
2. Project: At the end of this course, you will be unleashing
your creativity by creating funny
typography animations. I will show you four
different ways to make it. After finishing a lesson, I will give you
some indications. Please don't skip it. Follow them and practice
to get the best results. I'm looking forward
to seeing your work. Please upload it to the
course project gallery. If you have any
comments or questions, please post them on
the discussions tab. I can't wait to see
what you come up with. Have fun.
3. First Steps: [MUSIC] Before we
start animating, let's get in touch with the
After Effects interface. We will work with the
standard workspace, but you can use the
option you prefer. The first step is to
create a new composition. We go to "Composition",
"New Composition", open a new 1,080 by 1,080
composition at 24 frames. Set six seconds and name it. In this case, the idea is to use these animations
on Instagram. That's why I have
choose a square format of 1,080 by 1,080 pixels. Now, we are going to write the text of the first project. We select the Text
tool and write a text. From this character panel
located on the right, we can easily modify its values. If you can't see this panel, you can activate it from
"Window" and select "Character". With the selected layer, we can figure the topography. We will use the Montserrat
extra bold font for our projects. But you can choose
the one you prefer. Don't worry about
the black screen. It appears because I have
the caps lock activated, I deactivate it
and it disappears. We can modify the font size, the color of the
fill, and the stroke. Set the lead in, the tracking and
thickness of the stroke. That is the same setting as
in any other Adobe program. Next, we're going to
create a background layer. To create a shape layer, be sure not to have
any layer selected. To be sure we go to "Edit"
and click on "Deselect All". Now, make a double click on
the Rectangle tool to create a shape layer with the same
size of the composition. Now, drag the new layer below the text layer and modify
the color to your liking. From here, you can
choose the color you want or write a hexadecimal
code of the color to use. I like the color I had applied, so I'm going to
leave it as it is. now let's take a look at the
After Effects interface. The panel where you
see the elements that we have designed
is the viewport. This panel is where we will see the results of our
designs and animations. From these options here, we can configure the zoom and the image quality with
which we want to work. The higher the quality the
slower the animation renders. We can leave it in feet and auto so it adapts automatically. We can also resize the panels
by clicking and dragging. At the bottom, we can
see the timeline panel. This panel is where
we will spend more time creating
our animations. From here, we can easily modify the transformation
properties of the layer. Press Control Z
several times to go back and leave the text
as we have imported it. We can modify the work
area duration by just clicking and dragging from the
blue ends of the timeline. Also, we can zoom in to
work more comfortably. If we look to the left, we can see the project panel. This is where all
the compositions that we create and all the files that we import will
appear and at the top, we can find the essential tools. Perfect. Now, we
will take a look at the most no keyboard
shortcuts for this course. The shortcut refer to the layer's properties and the tool that we
use most commonly. Let's see how to open the layer properties
with a single click. Press A for the Anchor point, P for the Position, S for the Scale, R for the Rotation, and T for the Opacity. Also, if we hold
down the Shift key, we can open several
properties simultaneously. Now, we are going to
see how to access the main tools with
a touch of a key, press V for the Selection Tool, hold the Space Bar
for the Hand Tool, Z for the Zoom tool, W for the Rotation tool, and Y for the Pan Behind tool. It's about practice. At Projects and
Resources you have a PDF file available to download with the
most helpful shortcuts. By the way, we should never
forget to save our work. So go to "File", "Save", and save the work in the course
project's folder. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
4. Animation 1: [MUSIC] Okay, class. In this lesson we will animate a text created in
the previous lesson. We will set the zoom to fit so that it adapts to the
size of the window. First, make sure to be located at the beginning
of the timeline. We select the text layer and open their
position properly. To animate the position
of the text layer, we need to create
the first keyframe. Do it by clicking
on the stopwatch. If you notice, when creating the first keyframe a rhombus symbol
automatically appears, marking its location
on the timeline. Now advance one second
on the timeline. You can see the time
counter on the left, and move the layer horizontally until we achieve
their desired result. Pressing 0 on the numpad we
can preview the animation. As you can see it is
a basic animation. If we look at the final result, we can see that the text
comes and goes infinitely. To create this effect
quickly and save time, we will create an expression. We can define expressions
as small codes or programming scripts
which allow us to apply specific actions
in after effects. We need to click on
the stopwatch while holding down the Alt key
to apply an expression. Next, we write the loop
out pingpong expression. Let's take a look
at the animation. We already it. The animation comes and goes
throughout the composition. Easy. Now, we need to smooth out the movement
as it is too rough. To smooth the acceleration
and deceleration, we select the keyframes, right-click "Keyframe
Assistant" "Easy Ease." We can also apply it directly using the keyboard shortcut F9. If we preview again, we see that our animation
now looks much more fluid. Great. Now we're
going to duplicate the text layer to make
the animation more fun. Select the text layer and press a key combination
Control D or Command D, in MAC three times. If you select a layer and
press the "Enter" key, you will be able to
rename the layers and have them more organized. I'm going to name them in order. The organization is essential. Next, we will select
all the text layers. To do this select
the first layer, and with the Shift key pressed
select the last layer. Now we press the letter U to reveal the keyframes
of all the layers. We are going to move the
animations every four frames. We will drag the keyframes
from layer 2 to frame 4. Next, we drag the keyframes
from layer 3 to frame 8. Finally, we drag the keyframes
from layer 4 to frame 12. Remember that you can zoom in on the timeline to work
more comfortably. If we take a look, we can see that our animation
is almost finished. Now, it is time
to add more color to the design to make
it more attractive. As we saw in the
previous lesson, we can choose the color
directly or write a hexadecimal code of the
color we want to use. We are going to paste the
hex codes directly so as not to waste a lot of
time editing the colors. Although color has
different symbolic meanings in each culture, some are shared almost
everywhere in the world. For the projects in
this course I want to create a fun and
cheerful color palette, but balanced at the same time. To achieve this, I'm going
to mix warm and cool colors. Warm color is like red, yellow, or orange, convey positive feelings
like joy and happiness, but they are also related to
more active states of mind. On the other hand, blue is more related
to peace and rest. Of course, these meanings vary
depending on the context. In this case, we have
integrated this colors with funny and positive words
and with a nice topography. Guys, we already have it, a dynamic and fun animation
made with minimal effort. Only one detail is missing here. Since all animations occur
at different times on the timeline we
need to go through two more steps to
create a perfect loop. Our animation lasts one second to go and one second to come, which means that it completes a full cycle every two seconds. To fix it, we need to drag
from these blue end and reduce the work area up to
two seconds or four seconds. Then drag the work area onto the moment when all the
animations have started. Now if we preview, we can see the animation
creating a perfect loop. To finish we right click
on the work area and select the option "Trim
Comp to Work Area". Now our composition has to
become four seconds long, and the loop work is
just as we wanted. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
5. Animation 2: Hi class. In this lesson, we will animate the
second project. We are going to create
a new composition. We go to composition,
new composition. Please open a new 1,080 by 1,080 composition
at 24 frames. Name it and set four seconds. Next, we're going
to write a text. It can be whatever you want. Remember that from
this character panel located on the right, we can easily modify its values. Again, we are going to use a Montserrat extra bold font and configure it different
options to your liking. There is not perfect value here, everything will depend
on your tastes. We leave the thickness
of the stroke at four and we're going to
color the field white. Next, we create a
background layer. Remember, we need to
make sure that we don't have any layer selected. For these, we go to a
date then select all. We double-click on the
rectangle tool to create a shape layer with the same
size as a composition. Now, drag the layer below that text layer and modify
the color to your liking. I'm going to paste the
color code directly. As you can see, we have everything ready to
start animating project two. Select a text layer and
open the rotation property. Before we start animating, we need to place
the anchor point in the center of the texts. The anchor point will be the reference points around
which the texts rotates. With the pan behind tool, we place it in the center. Perfect. Please make sure to be located at the beginning
of the timeline. Now, we animate the rotation. Remember to create
the first key frame by clicking on the stopwatch. Now, advance three seconds on the timeline and rotate
the text a whole round. To smooth the acceleration
and deceleration, we select the key frames and press the keyboard
shark with "F9". We preview the animation by pressing "Zero" on the numpad. It's not bad, but we can
definitely improve it. We're going to add a bit of anticipation to make the
animation more dynamic. Position at the beginning of the timeline and
advance to frame eight. Now, we've rotated
texts slightly in the opposite direction to which the animation will occur, simulating to get impulse before performing the
complete rotation. We do the same at the
end of the animation. We scroll to the last key frame and go back about eight frames. We rotate the text
in such a way that the rotation advances a little
beyond a full rotation, so that it finally goes
back to its final position. If we preview again, we can see the animation
we were looking for. Great. Now, we're
going to duplicate our text layer just like we
did in the previous lesson. We select the text
layer and press a key combination Control D or Command D on Mac three times. Rename the layers to have
them more organized. Next, select all the text
layers and press a letter "U" to reveal the key
frames of all the layers. As in the previous lesson, we will move the animations, but this time we are going to
move them every two frames. First, we drag the key frames
from layer 2 to frame 2. Next, we drag the key frames
from layer 3 to frame 4. Finally, we drag the key frames
from layer 4 to frame 6. Let's check that
everything is okay. Perfect. Now, we just have to add more color to the design. We select the text layers and we color them to our liking. I am going to leave the stroke black in all the layers and I am only going to
modify the field color. Now, yes, we can preview
our complete animation. Easy. In the next lesson, we will add a bit
more difficulty animating our
letters separately. See you there. Don't miss it.
6. Designing in Illustrator: Hi there. In this class, we are going to change the
text creation process. To have more control
over our animation, we will create a text from Adobe Illustrator and then
import it into After Effects. Let's begin. From Adobe Illustrator, we create a new
document with a size of 1,080 by 1,080 pixels
and click on Create. With the rectangle tool, we create a background layer
and color it to our liking. We select this stroke and delete it by clicking
on this little symbol here. Next, with the text tool, we write the text. Select it, and from here we can configure
the size and font. I am going to use the
Montserrat Bold font again. With the selection tool, we place a text in the center. With the selected text, we color the field white
and the stroke black. Let's increase the thickness
of the stroke a bit. With the selected text, make right-click on the text, and select the option
Create Outlines. By selecting this option, we convert our text into a vector image and we can ungroup and edit the
text more freely. Next, make a right
and click on Ungroup. Now, if we select the letters, we can select them separately. They are no longer grouped. To finish configuring our texts, we need to separate each
of the letters by layers. We open the Layers Panel
and from the menu, we will make the thumbnails larger to work more comfortably. We go to Layer Panel option
and edit to row size. Next, we create four new layers by clicking on this
symbol four times. We name them by
double-clicking on each layer. We drag the letters within
the respective layers. Finally, we are going to
adjust the text to our liking. I am going to put
the letters together a bit to give it
a different look. Perfect. We already have our texts ready to import
into After Effects. To finish, we only need
to save our files in the same folder in which we have saved our after-effects project. We go to File, Save, and we save the file
in the same folder in which we have saved
the rest of the projects. See you in the next lesson.
7. Animation 3: In this lesson, we will import and
animate the design we created in Adobe Illustrator
letter by letter. Let's start by importing
the Adobe Illustrator file. Go to "File", select "Import File", and select the desired file. When importing a layered file
in the Import As option, we must always select
Composition Retain Layer Sizes. As you can see, a
composition and a folder with layers
have been created. We are going to work
on the composition. With a double-click, we entered a composition. We want the composition
to last six seconds, but when importing the file, a four-seconds long
composition has been created. To solve it, we go
to "Composition", "Composition Settings", and set the duration to six seconds. We select all the layers
and from the outside, drag them to the end. This way, we make sure they are active throughout
the composition. Done. We select all the
letters and with the P key, we open its position property. We make sure we are located at the beginning
of the timeline, and we create the
first key-frame by clicking on the stopwatch. Notice, a key-frame
has been created in the four layers
at the same time. We advance one second and move the position of the four
letters vertically. The next step is to smooth out the movements
we just animated. We select all the key-frames
and with the F9 key, we apply Easy Ease. Let's preview to check that
everything works fine. Perfect. Now think about
what the next step will be. Exactly, we are going to apply the expression loopOut pingpong. Remember we need to click
on the stopwatch while holding down the Alt key
to apply an expression. Next, we write the loopOut
pingpong expression. If we preview again, we can see how the G continues to move back and
forth infinitely, while the rest of
the layers only perform a single movement. To save time, we make
a right-click on the position property and select the option "Copy
Expression Only". Next, we select the rest of the layers that
make up the text, and with Ctrl V or
Command V on Mac, we paste the expression. Now all the layers come
and go infinitely. The process is very similar
to what we have seen so far. The difference is that we are
animating letter by letter instead of directly animating
the entire word. Very well. Next, we're going to move all the animations every four
frames along the timeline. We have also seen this before, we select the second layer and drag the key-frames,
four frames. We select the third layer
and drag them to Frame 8. Finally, we move the key-frames of the letter D to Frame 12. We preview again and voila, we have the first part
of our animation done. If we proceed the same way
as in the previous lessons, we will need to create
12 more layers, crazy. But don't worry,
After Effects has solutions for just
about everything. To simplify the process and
work in a more organized way, we will link the
layers that make up the text within a
separate composition. To do this, we select
the four layers , right-click, "Pre-compose". We give the composition a
name and click on "Okay". If we enter with a double-click, we can see that our text is
inside a new composition. Let's go back to the
main composition. We duplicate the
composition three times. We are going to
name the layers to have everything well organized. Remember, to name the layers we select them and
press the Enter key. The idea now is to move the compositions
along the timeline to start ID frame time. It is very easy. We move the compositions
every four frames. If we preview, we can see our animation is
almost finished, but there is a very
important step missing, adding color. There is only one problem. We are no longer working on text layers and we cannot
change the color directly. The solution, to
apply an effect. We select the Text
Animation 2 layer, go to "Effect", "Color Correction",
and apply tint effect. Next, we go to "Effect
Controls" and change the color of Map
Y2 to our liking. If you cannot see the
color you have applied, scroll a little through the
timeline to see it better, can't see the Effect
Controls panel? Don't worry, you can activate it from Window, Effect Controls. Perfect, we apply the same effect on the
rest of the layers. We select the layer "Effect", "Color Correction", "Tint", and change the color. The same with the last letter. Now we already have it, a fun, simple, and
full-color animation. We still need to go through several more steps to
create a perfect loop. Our animation lasts one second to go and one second to come. In other words, it completes a whole cycle every two seconds. As far as we can drag
from this blue end and reduce the work area to
two seconds or four seconds, and then drag the work area
up to Second 1, for example. The important thing
here is to place the work area where all the
layers have started moving. Now we can see our animation
creating a perfect loop. To finish, we make a
right-click on the work area and select the option
"Trim Comp to Work Area". In the next lesson, we will do a very
simple task to check that you have understood everything you have
learned so far. Don't miss it.
8. Animation 4: During the previous lessons, you have seen almost
everything you need to carry out the project that
you see on the screen. This time we are going to divide the work to make it faster. Here we have a text I already
created in after effects. In Lessons 5 and 6, we have already seen how to create text within
after effects. My advice, give the
pause and get to work. I know you can do it. Fantastic. Now that you
have created the text, I will explain to you how to
make the scale animation. The process is very simple. First, open the scale
property and deactivate the constrain proportions option by clicking on the symbol here. This will allow you to animate the horizontal axis and the vertical axis of the
scale independently. Before starting to animate, we will check that the anchor point is
located on the text-base. Keep in mind that the scale
animation will behave differently depending on where
we place the anchor point. In this case, it is already
located in the base, so we don't need to
modify anything. Now we can start
animating the scale. Make sure you are
at the beginning of the timeline and create a keyframe by clicking
on the stopwatch. Then move forward one second and scale the vertical axis
up to 150 for example. We advance one more second
onto the second tube. We select the first keyframe, copy it with Control C or Command C on Mac
and paste it with Control V or Command V. Let's
soften the movement a bit. To do this, select
all the keyframes and with F9, apply easy ease. If we preview, we can already
see our animated text. Now, as we did in Lesson 6, we will apply a leader
anticipation to the animation to achieve
a more dynamic movement. From the beginning
of the timeline, we advance five frames and
reduce the scale to 85 for example so that it makes a slight impose just
before growing. Perfect. We are located about five frames before
the last keyframe. We select and copy the second keyframe that we have just applied and paste it. Now much better. But it still has room
for improvement. The idea is further to smooth the acceleration
and deceleration of the central keyframe. To do this, we
select a keyframe, right-click Keyframe Velocity, and apply an influence of 80 percent in the incoming
and outcoming velocity. The higher the influence value that we apply on the keyframe, the greater the smoothing of the acceleration and
deceleration is. Now, if we go back to
preview the animation, it is much more expressive
and attractive. My part has come this far. Now you have to duplicate the layers and apply the
colors to your liking. You already know how to do it. We have done this same
process in Lessons 5 and 6. Knowing the theory
is very important, but putting your knowledge into practice is much more important. I'm looking forward
to seeing your work, so please upload it to the
course project gallery. See you in the next lesson.
9. Level Up Your Skills: If you really want to make professional animated extraordinary
videos from scratch, you need to master three skills; script writing, illustration,
and of course animation. From my profile, you can access the animation fundamentals
section where you will find fantastic courses
to improve these skills. Once you have learnt the basics, I recommend you specialize in more specific topics to better
up your animation skills. On Skillshare you will find an extensive collection
of amazing courses. Take advantage of it to continue learning and
improving day by day. I hope to see you in my other courses at
the end of this one.
10. Rendering: [MUSIC] Now that you have the projects ready
it's time to explore them. Keep in mind that the
composition that we currently have open
will be explored. For these, we go to Composition and select "Add to Adobe Media Encoder" Media Encoder helps both export projects
more efficiently. First, we choose the codec. In this case, we will use H 264. It exports the video in MP4, the most used
format for the web. Regarding the
output's resolution, we can choose the Match Source, high or medium bitrate
option to avoid mistakes and export it in the same size we
have worked on the project. Finally, we choose the
location where we will explore the video and
give the file a name. To finish, click on the
"Play Button" here. With these guys,
everything will be ready. Once that process has
finished you can open the video and start sharing
it on your social networks. [MUSIC]
11. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations for
completing this course. I hope you like it, and find it useful
for your career. You can now create amazing topography looks
for your social media, web page, portfolio, or any place you want
to show your talents. I'm so looking forward
to seeing your work. Don't forget to upload it to
the course project gallery. If you enjoyed the course, please leave a review. I will be very grateful. Follow me, and be the first to know about new courses and more. See you soon [MUSIC].
Carminys Guzmán, Motion grapher
