Kinetic Type in After Effects #001

1. Kinetic Type - Class Trailer: Kinetic type isn't just a trend. It's a gateway to endless creative possibilities, and mastering it can elevate your work to the next level. In this class, I'll teach you how to bring this kinetic type to life. Hi, I'm Marcos, a senior motion graphics designer with over ten years of experience. We'll kick things off by designing our visuals in Adobe Illustrator. Then we'll bring these designs into Adobe After Effects, where I'll show you how to build an expression system that makes animating a breeze. But that's not all. I'll also share incredible techniques and workflow scripts to speed up your process. By the end of the class, you'll know how to create this amazing kinetic type motion graphics and export it as MP four and gif. Join me on this creative journey. I can't wait to see you in the first lesson. 2. Lesson 01 - Document Setup: First thing, let's name our document. I'm going to name mine, kinetic, underscore type, underscore 01. For the document resolution, we will use pixels. For the size, we will use 1080 by 1080 in vertical orientation and just one art board. On the advanced options, we are going to choose RGB on the color mode for the roster effects. We are going to use screen at 72 PPI and the preview mode at default. And with that done, we can press Create. Nice. Before we start our design exercise, let's have a creative exercise. What do I mean by that? We need to choose the word we will use for our kinetic type visual, and that by itself can be a very creative and challenging task. In my case, I will use the word, hey, simple, just three letters to animate. To keep the exercise simple too. You can use the same word as me, or here's a list of words with three, four, and five letters that you can use. Perfect. Now that we have our chosen word. Select our type face. This is my favorite part. Choosing a typeface is 50% of the job on a kinetic type motion visual. I will use my two go San Serif font, helvetic, A. If you feel like looking around and you need inspiration, I recommend these five excellent San Serif fonts. I'll also leave the URL in the class description. They're all free to download and use. Yeah, that's it for the first lesson. I know it started slow, but these first steps are crucial. In the second lesson, we will start with design, and then when we finish, we will prepare our file for after effects. So let's go. 3. Lesson 02 - Design & File Prep for Motion: Hey, it's design time. Hope you are ready, so let's go. I always start my design with a grid. Before we design our text, let's go to the side toolbar and select the rectangle grid tool. It's right inside the line tool if you can see it. Click and hold it to show the other tools. Cool. Now with our grid tool activated in the toolbar, click twice over it to open the tool options. And on the Tol options window, let's make the default size to be the same as our artboard. 1080 by 1080, then let's increase the number of horizontal dividers to 15. We can leave the checkbox, use outside rectangle as frame, and we don't need the grid to be filled, so press k. Now, if you click anywhere in your artboard, the Grid Tool options will pop up again, and this time, we don't need to change anything. Press, and this will create the grid for us. It's probably somewhere on the Illustrator window. So we will need to select it and center align it to our artboard. But that's easy. With our grid selected, let's transform it into guides. The easiest way to transform any vector graphic into a guide is to select it and press control or command five. However, knowing how to make it via the menu bar is essential. So we have our grid selected. Let's go to the top menu and view, guides, and make guides. Here, you can also see the shortcuts for locking, hiding, and releasing the guides. However, if you want to clear the guides, you must return here. Cool, we are all done with the grid and guides. Let's start designing our first element. As you saw in the initial example, our letters will be contained inside a circle, so let's start by designing it. Let's return to the toolbar and select the EPs tool. Now, while holding the shift key and using our grid, let's design a perfect circle that occupies four squares, tall and wide. This is why grids are fantastic. Even for the simplest things, they greatly help us. So now we need to duplicate this circle two more times, making three circles in our visual. So select our freshly made circle, and while holding the ult or option key, drag it to the side, making a new copy. Let's repeat the same thing, and remember to use the grid to position the circles perfectly. Nice. Now it is time to add our letters. So let's select our type tool and write our word. I will write H and change the type face to helvetic a new medium. Then I'll change the color of the text to white so it's visible against the dark circle. Next, I'll move the text over the circle, allowing me to scale it with a reference. When we are happy with the size of our text, let's right click and select create outlines. Now let's right click again over our graphic text. And this time, let's select on group so we can move and position each letter individually in their respective circles, and the center aligns them with the circle so everything is perfect. Now select each letter and its circle. Right click again and select group it. Nice. Now, let's select all the circles and letters. And while holding the option or Alt key, let's drag it down, making a new copy. Use the grid again to help with the positioning, and do it again. So we have nine elements in our art board. Great. Design wise, we are done. Now, we must prepare this file to be imported into after effects and ready for animation. So let's do it. One of the main things is to have our elements separated by layers. For that, let's go to the Layer tab. With our layer selected, let's click on the Burger menu icon and go down to release to layers sequence. Then we need to select the sub layers and drag them out, leaving layer one empty. So we can delete it. Nice. Let's save our document, and that's it. We are ready to go to after effects and import and animate this fantastic visual. So I'll see you in the next. 4. Lesson 03 - Starting Motion & Composition Setup: You must be finally, we are in After Effects, and I understand the feeling. This is the fun part of the class. So let's go to file, import, and select file. Now let's find our file and on the import as settings. Let's choose composition. Retain layer sizes, click, create composition, and click open. Now, we have a composition and a folder with our illustrator file layers. Nice. Let's double click over the composition to open it so we can see our design inside after effects. Since our white artboard isn't behind the graphics, we need to create a new background for our visuals. So let's start by doing that. Move over the layer stack, and right by the little icon, right click with your mouse and select new solid. Let's name this solid. I'm going to call it background, and let's make sure it's comp size, change the color to white and press okay. Now let's move it under all the other layers and lock it. The next thing we need to do is create a null object, so the same process as before, right click, new, null object. Now, let's give a name to this Null two. Let's call it L at me. To keep things very clear. And before we finish this lesson, let's double check our composition settings. Let's do that. On the top menu, go to composition and select composition settings. Let's make the frame rate 30 frames per second and the duration of our animation 10 seconds, and that's it. Just press okay. Nice. In the next lesson, we will write a small expression to make the rotation of our layers follow the position of this null. However, don't worry. It will be simple, and I'll explain and guide you through every line in detail. So yeah, I'll see you there. 5. Lesson 04 - Expression for Motion System: Hey, this is a fantastic lesson. I'll share lots of knowledge about expression with you. However, I understand some people have no interest in programming and are happy copying and pasting code into their projects. It is a valid point, as the expression can be overwhelming sometimes, and most of us are artists, and our brains don't accept programming very well. So, yeah, what I mean by this is that here's the entire code. It's also available in the class description, so you can copy and paste it. I will not have hard feelings if you do that. Just watch the next few seconds. I'll explain where to paste this code, then you can jump into the next lesson. So if you are copying and pasting the code, then select a random layer and press R to open the rotation property. And while holding the ult key, click over the little stopwatch, and this will open the expression editor. And here, you need to paste the code. Pretty much it. Then you can mark a key frame on the rotation property. Select and copy that key frame and paste it into the other layers. And now they all will have the same expression. And if you move the null, you will see that the layers rotation follows the null, just like magic. That's why I love expressions. And now you can jump to the next lesson for the animation and keyframe part. However, if you want to learn how to build an expression like this, stay with me. I believe it's essential to understand a little bit. Even if we can't write an expression from scratch. Understanding how they work can help us edit existing expressions and build a foundation to create our own expression. So let's go deep divers. Let's start as we did before. Select the layer. It can be any of them because they will share the same expression. With a layer selected, click on the RK to open the rotation property, and here we are going to click on the Stopwatch while holding the old key, this will open the expression editor for the rotation property, and this is where we are going to write our code. So let's begin. The first thing we need to do is create a variable representing our null. Let's write. Target layer equals. And using the Pi wip tool, select our look at me null object. Now, we need to find out where the look at me null is located. Let's create a variable called target position to store this information. Let's write. Target position, semicolon. Now, we need to check if the target layer exists, so let's write. I open parenthesis, target layer close parenthesis. Open curly brace, new line target position equals target layer. Period, transform period position, semi colon, and close curly brace. Then for the part, we'll write. Open curly brace, target position equals open bracket zero, zero, close bracket, semicolon, close clybras. A quick explanation about what this if and else are, the if statement checks if a condition is true. It is true, it runs a specific block of code. The statement provides an alternative code block if the if condition is false. In simple terms, it is like asking, is this true, and else, it is like saying, if not, do this instead. I hope this makes sense to you, so let's continue next. We need to get the current layers position, and you must be like position, but isn't this expression applied to the rotation property? Yes, you are right. However, we need to find out where the current layer is in the composition. This is important because we want to calculate the angle between our shape and the target layer. Look at me. To do this, we create a new variable. Let's name it my position, and assign it the position of the current layer. Equals this layer, period transform period position, semi colon. In simple terms, getting the position of the current layer helps us determine its location, so we can calculate the direction in which it needs to look at the target layer. Nice. We are making progress. The next thing we need to do is to calculate the difference in x positions. To determine the direction from the current layer to the target layer, we need to know the horizontal distance between them. Let's write. Delta x equals target position, open bracket, zero, close bracket, minus my position, open bracket, zero, close bracket, semicolon. In simple terms, we need to calculate a difference in x positions to figure out how far we need to move horizontally. Nice. Now, same as before, we need to calculate the difference between the targets y position and the current layers y positions. Let's write. Delta y equals target position, open bracket. One close bracket, minus my position, open bracket, one close bracket, semi colon. Great. Let's keep going. We are almost there. The next thing we need to do is to calculate the angle in radians, so let's write Var angle radians equals math period. Aton two, open parenthesis, Delta y, C, Delta x, close parenthesis, semi colon. In simpler terms, calculating angle radians using math. Aton two allows us to determine the exact angle between our current layer and the target layer. Now that we have our angle calculated. We need to convert two degrees. Let's write. Angle degrees equals radiance two degrees, open parenthesis, angle radiance, close parenthesis, sem cooln. In after effects, we convert the angle from radians to degrees because degrees are the standard unit for rotations. Finally, we return the angle degrees value. Let's write angle degrees semicolon. By returning the angle degrees value, we make it available for use in after effects. And that's it. Our expression is finished. It was probably a bit complex in some parts, but if we think about it, we can use this expression forever. Yeah, it's totally worth it. Anyway, the expression is done now, we need to apply to the other layers. The same thing as before, let's mark a key frame on the rotation property. Select and copy this keyframe and paste it into the other layers to which we want to apply this expression. That's it. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. Remember that I'll leave the expression in the class description and comments explaining each line. With that said, let's move on to the next lesson, where we will start animating our null and creating this excellent kinetic type animation. 6. Lesson 05 - Animation & Keyframing: Welcome to lesson five. We are ready to animate our kinetic type. So let's begin. As I said in the beginning, grids and guides are used for everything. And animation isn't an exception. Now that our system is working and ready to animate, we need to create a small grid setup to help us. So let's do it. Normally, we would make this manually by pushing guidelines from the rulers and trying to align them as best we can with our graphic. Which is more than okay? However, I've done this so many times that I couldn't do it anymore. So I decided to make a script to do it for me, saving me those precious seconds of my life. The script name is the guide maker. And you, as my student, get it for free. You can download it in the class files. First, let's load it into after effects, or you can install it in your scripts UY folder. It's totally up to you. So open the script, and you will have a tiny UY with a button that says to make guides. So if you click this button without selecting any layer, the script will create guides for your composition. Great, right? But imagine you also need guides at the center of your composition. Hold the alt or option key and press at the bottom again. And there you go. Now, the magic for our current exercise is, if we selected all the illustrator layers and press make guides, it creates guides for all of our layers. And the same thing happens if you press Alt. How amazing is that, right? The script will create guides at the center of your layer. But it gets even crazier. Imagine you have two layers, and you need a guideline in the middle of those layers. Select both layers, and while holding the Alt or option key again, press the make guides button, and the script will understand that you need a guide between the two layers. I know how crazy is that. We also need guides between the composition edges and our layers. For that, select all of our layers, and while holding shift, click on the make guides button. It will do it. And one more thing. We don't need it for this exercise, but imagine that you need to make some custom guides. Like you want a bit more control over the number of vertical and horizontal guides. For that, you'll need to hold Alt or Option plus the shift key, and it will open a small pop up window. Here, you can add the number of guides you want to add to your composition. And that's it about this script, it's handy, and it will save you and me a lot of time today and in the future. Let's go. We have all of our guides ready. Now we can use these guides to help us animate our null quickly. Let's start by selecting and positioning the null. Then let's press P to open the position properties, and let's click on the stopwatch to mark a key frame. Then let's move the timeline needle to the first second, and let's move our null again. As you can see, our null snaps to the grid, making this step super easy. Let's keep repeating this process until we finish the 10 seconds. But be sure to finish in the same place as you started. So our animation loop. Nice. Now, if we preview the animation, we can see the shapes rotating. Still, as the null object is invisible, it looks like they are looking at nothing. So we need to add something for them to look at. So let's go to the top toolbar and select the shape tool and let's choose the Elliptol. While holding shift, let's draw a small circle and give it a nice color. Nice. Now, with our circle selected, let's go back to the tool bar. And while holding the ult or option key, let's click twice on the Anchor Point tool, so it centers our anchor point right in the middle of our shape. And still, with our circle shape selected, let's hold the shift key and parent it to the null object. This will ensure that the circle shape inherits the transformations of the null object. This means that any scaling, rotation, or movement applied to the null object will also affect the circle shape, allowing for coordinated and controlled animations or adjustments within our project. And now, if we press preview, there we go. The letters look at a red dot now, which is much better, but our animation is still a little bit monotomous. This is because our key frames are still in linear mode, meaning the animation speed is constant, and there's no acceleration or slowing down. Which are the things that make animations look great, so let's change that. Select the null object, press P to open the position property once more, and select the key frames. Then click on the Little graph editor icon to open it. And here we have our keyframe speed and value represented by these lines. To make sure you are in the speed graph, click over the graph type and Options icon. Double check that you have selected the Speed one. Nice. Now, let's click again on the position property to select the key frames. Let's click on the easy and easy curve icon. Transforming our linear animation to a busier animation. And if you give a little preview, you can see it has changed already. But we will adjust these busiers to give them even more personality. Let's push the busier points, creating a steep curve and have another preview. Perfect. Looking much better. Let's watch it and contemplate it for a few more seconds. This will be it for this lesson. You deserve a break. It's been a long class so far. Go get a nice cup of water and come back for the next lesson. We will add some minor details and experiments. Finally, we will render our kinetic motion and export it as a MP four and give two. Yeah, there are inspiring things to do in the next lesson. I'll see you there. 7. Lesson 06 - Motion Experiments and Final Export: Hey, ya, welcome back to Lesson six. Let's jump right in. So the first thing you notice is the class reference was black with white circles. And right now, we have a white background and black circles. What a disappointment? Right? Well, we are going to change that now. Same way as we created the null and solid. Now let's create an adjustment layer. Nice. Let's ensure the adjustment layer is above our main circle layers. Hence, it only affects them, not a little circle the layers look at. Then still with the adjustment layer selected, let's go to the top menu, go to effects, channel, and select invert, and that's it. Now we have black background and white circles. But imagine you are like Marcos. I want different colors. Sure thing. Let's go back to the effects menu. And this time, let's select color correction and tint. And this will let you choose another color combination instead of black and white. If you want to apply different colors to each element, apply this tint effect to each circled letter and customize the color for each individual. Pretty easy. Anyway, I'm going with the classic black background to keep it simple. So let's do another quick experiment. This time, let's select a little circle that the layers are looking at. Let's go back to effects, time, and select echo, and on the echo time effect settings, let's change the number of echos to 64, and let's divide the echo time by 64. And if we press preview, now the Red circle will have a nice stylish trail. It's a nice look. I believe it. I hope you like it, too. Well, I'll turn it off for now. Just wanted to show you how to make a nice trail. And the last experiment, let's select our composition in the project tab, and let's dragon drop it over the new composition icon, making a new composition with our selected comp. Now let's coincide our new composition and select our layer comp. Then press the S key to open the scale property. Now, on the scale value, let's divide it by three. Then steal with the com player selected, go effect once again, and select stylized and choose CC reptile. And on the CC reputle effect settings, let's increase the right, left, down, and up values until we fill up the composition with our graphics. Then let's select one of the tiling options and give you a quick preview. And yeah, that's it. You can play with the tiling options to see which one you prefer, as they all offer something a bit different. So do an experiment. Now it's time to export our kinetic type. Typically, I export MP four file. Let's start with it. Let's coincide our main kinetic type composition, then go to the top menu and select composition, and select Add to render Q. It will automatically make the output module an H 264, the famous MP. Then let's choose where we want to output, the place where we want to save the video, and then we can press render. And we wait for a few seconds, and there we go. Let's play our kinetic type. Nice, now, let's export it as a gift. Let's go back to the render Q. Select our comp and press command or Control D to duplicate it. This time, instead of pressing render, we will click Q in AME, which stands for Adobe Media Encoder. Now, with media encoder open, on the format options, we are going to choose animated gif. On the format options, we can choose if we want the gift with transparency or not. As we have a background in our kinetic type, we don't need transparency. Nice. Now press the little green play button to start exporting it. And there we go. We have an amazing gift of our kinetic type that we can use online or share easily on Whatsapp and so on. Anyway, this is for this lesson and for the class. I taught you enough. In the next lesson, there will be a small conclusion about the class. I'll see you there. 8. Lesson 07 - Class Conclusion: Hey, first of all, congratulations on completing this course on kinetic type design. You've made it through an extensive and exciting journey from setting up your document in Adobe Illustrator to creating dynamic animations in after effects. Your journey into kinetic type design has just begun. The skills and techniques you've learned here are foundational. With continued practice and experimentation, you'll be able to create even more stunning animations. Thank you for participating in this class. I hope you enjoyed watching and learning from it as much as I did creating it. Keep pushing the boundaries of your creativity and technical skills, and don't forget to share your fantastic work with the world. I'll see you in future classes or online communities. Feel free to reach out with any questions or for further guidance. Cheers, bye bye.