Transcripts
1. Introduction: Are you looking to add something more to your typographic work, capture attention on social media, or simply to diversify your skills as a digital creator? Hi, my name is Manonlouart. I am a French graphic designer, motion designer, and illustrator. In this class, I'll be showing you different ways to animate text using After Effects. With simple animation techniques, you can really elevate your composition, your narration, and your typography. The class will be divided into two main chapters. First, in the warm-up, I'll introduce you to the different effects and techniques and apply them in short animation exercises. Then in the project chapter, I'll take you through my entire process to create a looping animation of colorful typographic stickers from sketching out ideas and choosing typefaces to animating them, and exporting your creation. The class is packed full of my favorite effects, animation shortcuts, and tips and my goal is really for you to come out of this class with a solid animation toolkit that you can come back to whenever you need. This class is perfect for creators with a basic knowledge of After Effects. Intermediate motion designers looking to learn some new tricks or even graphic designers who would be looking to quickly add that eye catching visual interest to their creations. If that sounds exciting to you, let's get started.
2. Class Overview: So let me walk you through how the class is organized. As I've mentioned, the class is split into two main chapters, the warm-up and the class project. I've tried to make it as inclusive as possible of all skill levels, so here are my recommendations. If you've never used After Effects or if it's been a while since you last opened it, I would recommend you watch the whole class and especially the following parts, which is going to be a quick refresher on how things work in After Effects. But if you already have the basics covered, feel free to skip it, and go directly to the rest of the warm-up. In the chapter, I'll introduce each of the notions covered in the class with a quick definition and an exercise. If definitions aren't your thing or you already know some of the effects I'm talking about, feel free to go directly to Chapter 12 and get started on the class project. For the materials, you will need something to sketch out your ideas onto, Illustrator to clean up your designs. After Effects to animate, of course, no plug-ins necessary. Media Encoder to export and my After Effects project that you can find in the Resources tab. Some tips for you. You can post any of the following in the projects sections; the warm-up exercises, the class project with your own twist, and most of all your very own project. Please let me know if you're looking for some constructive criticism or if you're just happy to share what you came up with, because either way, I'm happy to see them. In general, don't hesitate to ask questions, I'm here to answer and just have fun. Let's start the warm up and do some animation.
3. WARM UP: Let's open the After Effects projects and go over the different sections together. Here is the After Effects project we'll be working on today. In the project tab, you have these two sub-folders. One is for the project and the other one for the warm-up inside you have two sub-folders. One One for you to work in and the other one is the reference. For example, this is the four exercises completed together, and then you have a composition for each. You can use these as your guide while you're working over here. Now, I'm going to do a quick After Effects overview. If you're already familiar, feel free to skip over to the next part. Let's create a new comp. Go over here and I'm going to name it, test. For the size, I'm going to leave it at 1080 by 1080 because it's the perfect size for Instagram posts, which is where I post most of my work. It's also a pretty small size. The render won't overheat your computer, I'm leaving the frame rate at 24 frames per second. That's the standard for animation. For the duration four seconds is perfect. Let's press, "Okay", and now we can find our composition on the left in the project panel. Over here on the right, I have set up all of these panels. The most important ones for the class are going to be a line, character, and paragraph. If for some reason your workspace doesn't look the same, you can always go to Window and add any missing panel like this. Let's start adding things to our composition starting with a solid. Go to layer new and solid. A solid by definition will always be the size of your composition. Here, it's 1080 by 1080, you can change the color. I'm going to leave it black and they emit background. Press "Okay", and you have your layer. Now, let's go to Layer, new test and because I've never had an original thought in my life. I'm going to type in test. Then with the tab on the right, I can change the size, the color, pretty much everything I want. That's center of the test. Go to a line and click these two. Let's also add a shape layer. Go to Layer, New Shape Layer. Now, I can either use the pen tool or the shape tool to create what I want, let's say I wanted to square. I would use the shape tool and holding Shift. Drag my mouse like this, again, makes sure that it is centered. If I wanted to, I could use the pen tool to create another shape on the same layer like this. Now, if you look down to your layer, you'll see that you have a section for each of the shapes. Let's just delete this one and then press "Enter" to rename the layer however you want. Of course, if you wanted to change the fill or the stroke of your shape, you could go up here and change things like this. I just need one more layer, which is an adjustment layer. You can go up here to find it and press "Enter" to rename it noise. Now, if you go to Effect, you have a lot of options. For now, we're just going to go to Noise and grain and add a noise. Adding the effect has opened a panel over here with some parameters for me to change and adjust for my effects. About adjustment layers, any effects that you add to it will in turn affect every layer placed underneath it. Now, let's talk about animation. Over here, you have your timeline, which is four seconds long as we defined when we first created the composition. If you press the Space bar, it will play your animation. Now, depending on the effects you use, it might not play back in real time, especially if you have a lot of layers and effects. If that happens, you can always go over here and reduce the preview resolution. Now, let's create our first animation. If you go to your texts layer, you can open it here and here, and you'll find these five parameters. There are the basis of most animations in After Effects. You have the opacity, the rotation, the scale, the position, and the anchor point, which is right here. The position scale and rotation all work in relation with the anchor point. Which means that if I change the scale right now, it's going to look like this. But if I go down here and change the anchor points position, then the scale is going to work like that. Now, where the timeline comes into play is that we need After Effects to know what, for example, this layer is going to look like at a given time. Let's say I wanted my text to come in from the outside of the comp at the beginning. From the left, I could hold "Shift", and using the mouse, I could drag it to the left, or I could go down here and use the parameters for the position. Let's just make sure that the time indicator is at 0 seconds on the timeline. Then holding "Shift" to keep the text aligned, drag it to the left. Then if you go down here, you can add a keyframe by pressing the stopwatch. Then go to one second on the timeline, grab your text, hold "Shift" and drag it back to somewhere in the middle. Now, if you look down, you'll see that After Effects has created a new keyframe for you at one second. If you press "Space", you'll get the most basic text animation ever created. But it's still animation and no one can take that away from you. Let's say I want this to be a bit slower, I could just grab this keyframe, bring it to three seconds. Now, my text is coming in very slowly. Also, right now, this animation is perfectly linear, which means that for every frame the text covers the exact same distance. You can check that out for yourself if you want. By pressing "Command" and the "Arrow keys", you can move frame by frame on the timeline. Personally, I I love for this animation to look a little bit more interesting. For that, you can select both of the keyframes and then press "F9" or function 9. Or if you don't like shortcuts, right-click and go to Keyframe Assistant and select Easy Ease. Let's go back to the beginning and press "Space". You see a difference? When you ease the speed of an object in After Effects, it slows down when approaching a keyframe and then accelerates as it's leaving. Let's do all of that again. But this time with the opacity, I'm going to add a first keyframe at zero seconds, zero percent, and then go to one second and make it a hundred percent. Then select all keyframes, press "F9" to ease, and let's press "Space" to preview the animation again. Now, if you want to make more adjustments to the easing, you can select all of your keyframes and then go to the Graph Editor by clicking here. While in here, just make sure you're in the edit speed and not value graph. Let's re-select everything. If I pull on this handle right here, it's going to accentuate the easing at the end of the animation. Let me just reduce my timeline to one second so that we can get a whooping preview, and yeah, I like it. Let's go back to the comp. Now, let's say I wanted my noise effect to only be applied to my text and shape layer. I could copy and paste it to each layer and that would work. But if you're working with a lot of layers, this can quickly become a bit messy. Here's what you can do instead, select both of them and turn them into a pre-composition. Let's do that. Select both of them, right-click and go to Pre-compose. I'm going to name it Test pre-comp. Now, if you go back to the Project tab, you can find it right here. Pre-composition, for example, if you use Photoshop, they're pretty similar to layer groups or smart objects. Back to the effect. I can now copy it from the adjustment layer pasted onto their pre-comp, hide the adjustment layer. Now, it's only applied to the pre-comp. Let's press "Space" to preview, and there you go. What's pretty cool with pre-composition is that you can still adjust things within them. If I double-click on it, it's going to open up and then you can open the layer, change the keyframes, add some more, anything. Let's say I find the text to be too big. I want to change the scale. I'm going to make it 50 percent. Now, if I come back to my main composition, the scale has been changed in there as well. Let's just change it back to 100 percent. Come back to the main composition, make this four seconds long, and press "Paste" to preview, and that's it. I think that's enough for the basics. Of course, I'll keep explaining things as we go. For now, I'm going to go to the Project tab and delete both of these. Let's get started with the exercises.
4. Text Path Animation: I'm going to be very honest with you. After Effects has this thing called Text Animators, and I don't like them very much. They can come in handy if you do a lot of types of E [inaudible] projects like lower thirds, but they're kind of clunky and not very intuitive, so if I can avoid them, I will, except for one thing which is path animations. In the parameters of your text layers, you have a section called path options, which allows you to align your text along a path, just like in Photoshop or Illustrator. You can then create animations using the first and last margin options. Here is what the completed exercise 1 looks like. We're going to start by animating the outer portion right here. Let's open the exercise 1 comp and get started. To create a new text layer I could go up here like I showed you before, or I could use the shortcut, which is Shift Option Command T. Let's type in our sentence. I chose what goes up must come down. I pulled it from a text generator, so feel free to use your own. I'm going to make this black, so this is a color palette I imported into my libraries for the class. For the font, I'm going to use aileron in black. This is an open-source typeface. Again, you can find all of them through the links in the class description. Adjust the size to your liking and bring the text somewhere in the middle. Now, remember our shape and pen tool. Well, they can also be used to create masks on top of layers like this. Then we can just use this as a guide to define our text path. If you open your texts layer, go to Text, Path Options, and select your mask as a path then your text is going to follow it. Let me just undo all of that and let's do it for real this time. I want my text to follow a square. I'm going to go up here, use the rectangle tool, and then go somewhere here, and holding Shift, I'm going to draw my square. Nice. Go to Path Options. Again, select Mask 1, and right now it's upside down. Let's switch the reverse path on. Right now my text is a little close to the edge. I'm going to use the selection tool or press V and click on my square. While holding Shift and Command, I'm going to squeeze it in just a little bit like this. Next, I want my text to repeat, so I'm going to copy and paste it a bunch of times around the square. To make it perfect, I'm going to adjust my mask path so that the end of the text is roughly aligned with the upper right corner of the square. Again, pressing Shift and Command to stay aligned, switch force alignments on. Now you have a perfect square of texts to work with. Next, you have these two parameters that define where your text starts and where it ends, and that's what we're going to animate. For my text to move around the shapes seamlessly when forced alignment is on, I need both of them to move at the same pace. Let's go to zero seconds and add a first keyframe for each of them. Then I'm going to go to the very end of the timeline like this. As you can see, we're going to need a pretty high number for this animation to work. That's type in 1,200 for each. Let's press Space and preview the animation. There you go. Let's finish this exercise and move on to shape player animations.
5. Shape Layer Animation: Let's finish exercise 1 with a shape layer animation. Turning your text into a shape layer allows you to animate each of the letters individually as a factor path, which is great for detail-oriented animations or just fun text distortions. We want to add something in the middle right here, so I'm going to use Shift option Command T to create a new text layer and type in Hey. For the typeface I'm going to go with a nice step serif because they're easier to stretch, so let's use stint. Then I'm going to increase the size so that it fills the square in width. First go to Paragraph and center your text and then align it, then go back to Character and finish adjusting your size. Let's turn it into a shape layer, so right-click, go to Create and Create Shapes from Text. You have your new shape layer right here, and your text layer is hidden away. If you open the layer, you'll see that it has created a new group for the H, E, and Y. I want to animate the path for each letter, so these points right here. Instead of opening all of the menus I can just use the search bar with the layer selected, type in path, and now I can add my key frames. Basically I want my layer to appear from the bottom of the comp and then stretch all the way up; stretch back to its normal size, and disappear at the top. The way the text is right now is going to be my second set of key frames. I just needed to be aligned at the bottom, so let's go to 12 frames. Select each path, and add key frames. Press "V" or use the selection tool, double-click on your path and drag it all the way down. For me on this, the next step in the animation is going to be the text stretched all the way up at one second, but then I wanted to come back to this neutral position but aligned at the top. Let's skip the one second position for now. Just copy the key frames and paste them at one second and 12 frames. Then double-click on the path, and while holding Shift drag it all the way up. Duplicate the key frame you just created at one second, and now we can stretch the text. While holding Shift, drag your mouse across all of the top anchor points of your path. I just forgot these too, so we're still holding Shift. I'm going to click on them, and now if I drag my path only these points are going to move. Still holding Shift, drag them all the way down. You might have to make a few adjustments in between these two sets of key frames. I'm just making sure that the bottom part is aligned, so I'm going to go do that and meet you back when it's done. I think I've got it, so let's go back to the beginning of the timeline and reselect all of the path. Double-click on the shapes and you're basically going to flatten your text to a straight line like this. Quick preview. Nice. Let's do the same at two seconds. Let's play this again. Nice. Select all of your key frames, and press "F9" or function 9 to ease. I'm going to reduce my work area to my key frames only and show you what's bothering me with the animation at the moment. Right now the animation slows down and even stops at 12 frames; and once again in 12 frames and I don't want that. I just want After Effects to know that this is what the animation should look like halfway through zero and one and then one and two. Let's stop the preview and fix that. Hold Shift and select both of them and then click on one of the key frames to turn them back into regular key frames. Right-click and select "Rove Across Time", that will create constant speed when the animation reaches those key frames. Let's preview the animation. Yes, that's what I want. Do you see the difference? Let's go to the Graph Editor and adjust the easing. Select all of the key frames at the bottom. The ones at the top are the Rove Across Time key frames. Adjust the easing to your liking and let's play it back. Nice. Let's go back to the timeline. I want the letters to move more gradually, so I'm going to select the key frames for the E and the Y. Go to two seconds on the timeline and move the selection of key frames. While holding Shift, deselect the E key frames. Move again by two frames, and do the same with the Y key frames. Let's suggest the work area to our key frames and press "Space" to preview. Nice. I want to duplicate the layers, so press "Command D". Then I'm going to move it on the timeline so that it comes in right after the first one, so somewhere around here. Maybe just one more frame. Perfect. Just one more thing. I didn't do a perfect job at flattening my line up there at the end, so you can still see it when the text is gone. One quick fix if you're having the same issue is to go at the end of your animation and press "Shift Command D" to divide your layer and then you can just delete the second part. There you have it. Apart from the desk texture and we'll come back to that, exercise 1 is now done. Let's move on to exercise 2 and the trim path animation.
6. Trim Paths: Let's move on to exercise 2, and in this one we are going to create a writing animation using Trim Path. Trim path is an effect found in shape layers that allows you to make precise adjustments to path, which is perfect to create writing animations. For reference, this is what we're going to be working out, so let's get started in the exercise 2 composition. Once again, this animation is going to happen on a shape layer. But first, let's create a reference text layer. Press "Shift" Option Command T, and type in, hey. Let's make it white, and then I'm going to be using a cursive font. Again, the fonts are available in the resources. I'm going to go with league script. Let's adjust the size a bit, and then align the text. Next, let's create a new shape layer by going to the drop-down menu, and we're going to be using the pen tool to recreate each of the letters like this, so let's press "Z' to zoom in and get a better view, you can also press" H" to use the hand tool and navigate your comp. Let's roughly center it and grab the pen tool again. I'll quickly do the H and come back when it's done. If you open the layer, you'll see that it has created a new group, so press "Enter' and rename it H, and of course, don't forget to rename the layer as well. Now I'm going to create the e and y and for that, just make sure that you always come back to contents so that it creates a new group for each of the letters. I'll go do that and come back when it's done. Now we can hide the reference layer and I'm going to change the color to white and the stroke to 20 pixels. If you have any last-minute adjustments to make to your path, now is the time. I see a few problems like this and this, so I'll go do that real quick. I'm happy with my path. Let's create the effect, go to your H group and add a trim path. Now, open it and you will see that you have two options, so this one defines where your path starts and the other one you guessed it where it ends. There's also the offset but we just want to animate the path as if it was being traced on, so we only do end parameter. Go to zero, place a first keyframe at zero percent, and then go to one second and make it a 100 percent. Then select both keyframes and press "Function 9" to ease. Now to finish the animation, it's super simple. Just copy your effects, go to the beginning of the timeline and move by four frames using the arrow keys. Select your second group, and paste the effect. Now you have the same animation, same keyframes right here. Let's do that one more time, move by four frames, and then go to your last group and paste the effect. Let's preview, and Here is the writing animation. Now I'm going to show you how to elevate that animation really fast. We will make two copies of your layer by pressing "Command D" twice, and then we're going to space them out in time, so in our timeline by four frames each. Then we're going to reduce the stroke for the two first layers, so let's make it three pixels. For the second one right here, we're going to add a fill in the color of the background. Then open your layer, go to contents and add an offset path. Then you can of course, open it and change the amount of offset. This setting happens to work perfectly for me because my offset is 10 and my stroke is 20. But if it doesn't work for you, of course, you can change it. But anyways, we're done. This is it. I just love this effect because it's so customizable, you can change the number of copies, the offset, the size of the stroke, so I just hope you have fun with it. Let's move on to the next exercise and the echo effect.
7. Echo: Moving on to Exercise 3, we're going to first work with the Echo effect. The Echo effect generates a stack of frames from different times in your animation to create what's called streaking or a motion trail. For reference, this is what Exercise 3 looks like. We're going to start by animating these two words right here, and then we'll move on to the middle part, so let's get started. Again, let's create a new text layer by pressing "Shift Option Command T". I'm going to type in hello and then change the font back to Aileron in black. Let's also bring the size down a bit, maybe 75 pixels, and change the color to black. Press "V" to use the Selection tool and then bring your layer down to the left. Nice. We're going to animate the position, so press "P", and then go to zero seconds and add a first keyframe. Then move to 12 frames and using the Selection tool again, so V, bring your layer all the way up. This has created a second keyframe right here and now you can select both of them and press "F9" to ease. This is what we have so far. Now duplicate the layer, press "Command D" and press "P" again to bring out the position. I want this layer to go the other way around, so just exchange the two position keyframes. Now let's bring it to the other side so make sure your time indicator is placed on either one of your keyframes, select both of them. Let me just switch this on so we can see our position path, then using the Selection tool hold "Shift" and drag your text to the other side. Press space to preview. You know what, I think it's a bit too fast, so let's make it one second long instead. Let's preview again. Much better. Select both layers and press "P" to hide the position, and then press "Command D" to create two copies for the Echo effect. Bring both of them underneath, and I'm just going to make them blue to stay organized, then press "Enter" to rename them. I'm just going to add echo at the end of the names. Then select both of them and we're going to change the fill to a stroke. Then add a new fill in the color of the background. Let's add the Echo effect. Select one of the layers, and then go to Effect, Time, and Echo. Now, if I move in my timeline, this is what it looks like and that's because the number of echoes is set to one. Let's change that to 40 for now. Now let's fix that white mess. Go to Echo Operator and set it to Composite in Front. Nice. This right here defines the time in between each of the copies, and right now it feels a bit too spaced out, so let's reduce it a bit, maybe 0.01. Nice. I want the effect to create copies until the hello has reached the top of the composition. I'm going to increase the number of echoes until I find that sweet spot. So 100 it is. Copy the effect, paste it to the second layer, and we're done. Back to the reference, we're going to use the Echo effect one last time and that's to create the different copies of the text in the middle shape right here. As you may have noticed, this part is actually a precomp and that's because we are going to be adding the effect to several layers grouped together. Let's get back to Exercise 3 then open the project panel and making sure you're in the Exercise 3 folder, press "Command N" to create a new precomp and we're going to name it polar coordinates precomp. Now I need this one to be a rectangle and that's because of how the effect works, but I'll explain more on that later on. For now, let's just make it 1920 by 1080, frame rate, 24 frames per second, four seconds long, and press "Okay". Let's switch off the toggle transparency and create a new text layer, so press "Shift Command Option T", and let's type in our favorite phrase once again. Nice. Then make it black and remove the stroke. Now I want the text to fill the whole comp, so let's increase the size. That looks nice. Let's switch back the toggle transparency. That was a mistake, my bad. Make sure the text is centered. We're going to animate the position, so make it come from the top of the comp and then disappear at the bottom. Press "V" to use the Selection tool and while holding.
8. Polar Coordinates: Let's finish exercise 3. This one is a pretty old effect, but it can create restriking typographic animations. It's also really easy to use. Polar coordinates is an effect that takes a rectangular image and warps it into a circle or the opposite, depending on your settings. Let's get back to exercise 3. Then we're going to go to the Project Panel and drag in our polar coordinates pre-comp. The reason we made this one a rectangle is because of how the effect works. Let's add it on. Go to "Effect," "Distort," and "Polar Coordinates." You can change the percentage of the distortion right here and the type of conversion in here. We need the second type of conversion. Then let's make the percentage 100 percent. It's taking up a bit too much space at the moment. Press "S" and we're going to make the scale 80 percent. Much better, let's load a preview. Looks nice. I think I'm going to add a little rotation to the mix so let's press "R" and go to "Zero seconds," add a first keyframe, and then go to "4 seconds." Let's type in "180." Let's load the preview again. There you go. Let's move on to exercise 4 and CC Twister.
9. CC Twister: Let's exercise in the warm-up section and we're going to use CC twister. CC twister is an old and pretty much forgotten transition effect that allows you to bend and twist the layer in all sorts of fun ways and I think it has a lot of potential for text animations. So here is the last exercise we're going to be working on. We're going to animate the text first using the CC twister effect and then we'll take care of that animated texture in the next chapter using the fractal noise effect. So let's get started. Once again, let's create a new text layer. So press "Shift Option Command T" and type in hello. Let's stay with the same font and I just want a fill in white. Let's make it a bit bigger. Maybe 375. Don't forget to center your text. But this doesn't look centered. Why is it not centered? I guess it is. Just going to move it up a bit like this. Press "Command D" and make a copy and then bring it underneath. Change its fill to the background color and then add a white stroke and just hide that layer because we don't need it for now and then reselect your first hello, go to Effect, transition, and CC Twister. So let me show you what the effect looks like with the default parameters. First thing I'm noticing is the shading right here. I don't want that, so let's just switch it up, and above that you have the backside option. Right now is just sat on itself. Remember we created a second layer, so select it and look at that. The animation is happening around that point right here and I just want to make sure it's centered. So let me do that and the twisting axis is set at minus 120. Let's change that to 90 degrees. Let's see whether it looks like now. Nice. Now let's create the animations. So make sure you're at 0 seconds in your timeline and then press the stopwatch for the completion. To access your keyframed animation, Press "U". Then go to 1 second and make it 100 percent. Finally, go to two seconds and change it back to 0 percent. Now you can select all keyframes and press Function line to ease. Let's preview, and it's done. Let's move on to the animated texture.
10. Fractal Noise: Staying in exercise 4, let's add some texture to the text. The Fractal Noise effect, generates some grayscale noise, and that can be used to create patterns, textures, displacement maps, Here we're going to use it to create some black dust. We're almost done with the exercises. I'm excited. Hope you are too. We're going to be applying the effect to a new layer, so press ''Command Y'' to create a solid. Let's name it black dust, and the color doesn't matter so press ''Okay''. Then let's go to Effect, Noise & Grain, and Fractal Noise. This effect has a lot of options. You can change the type of fractal, the type of noise, the contrast, the brightness, but let's just re-center on what matters to us right now. I want my fractal type to be basic. Already the case. Then for the noise type, I want linear, then I need a very strong contrast. I usually go for around 1,700. Then to reduce the black areas let's bring the brightness to around 500, so that we only get tiny specks of black. If you want more, feel free to do so. I just want this effect to be subtle. Then let's go to Transform and bring the scale down to 15, just so we can have a bit more going on on screen. Last, bring the complexity down to three. Nice. Now, I want to apply the effect to the white side of the text only, so this right here, and for that we're going to use a track matte. It's the same principle as a mask in Photoshop, except that here we'll use a copy of our layer as the target area. Select the hello layer and make a copy by pressing ''Command D'', place it above the black dust layer, then click on your solid, go to Track Matte, and select Alpha Matte. Then let's change the plain mode, I want it to be set to Multiply so that only the black dots show up, and we can keep our nice off white. Our only issue here is that the dust is also showing on the other side, and that's because in our text layer the backside is still set to hello 2. Let's just remove that. Nice. Let's preview. Awesome. You're done. Let's move on to animating it using expressions.
11. Expressions: Let's finish this exercise by adding some expressions, one to animate the texture, and one to the text animation. An expression is a piece of code that you can apply to your layers to influence their properties. For example, here I've used an expression to tell the layer to change its scale two times per second by 10 percent. Last chapter of the warmup. We're going to use an expression to randomize the texture. To animate that, we're going to use a very simple time expression. Let's go back to the layer the "Evolution Options" and the "Random Seed". Let me just show you what it does. Very simply changing that number is just going to change how the noise looks like. Let me just cancel that. To open the expression panel, you're going to hold "Option" and click on the stopwatch, and then type in time times 10. Now you also have the expression section down here. What this expression basically means is that it's going to change the random seed number 10 times per second and of course this number will be random. Let's load a preview. Here you go. You have your animated texture. I know that some people don't really like expressions because it's code and code can be scary. But I really hope you will continue to use them after this class because it's such a gain of time, especially for things like this. Sorry for the back and forth. But remember Exercise 1, I said that we needed to add some texture. Let's do that. Now I'll copy the layer and paste it in the Exercise 1 comp. We won't be needing an Alpha matte for this one, it's going to go on top of everything like this. It's a bit strong at the moment. I'm going to bring the opacity down to maybe 60 percent. Again, it's T to bring up the opacity and yeah, that's it, it looks nice like this. Let's go back to Exercise 4. I just need to tell you about one last expression and then we'll be done. It's a loop expression and we're going to be using it a lot in the class project. Right now my text animation is only two seconds long. There is nothing happening after that. If I wanted it to be double that length, I could, of course, select all of the layers and press U and select all of the key frames and copy and paste them in. But let's say you're working on a big project with tons and tons of layers, that's just not going to cut it. Let's use an expression instead. Let's go to the completion hold "Option" and click on the stopwatch. I'm going to use a LoopOut expression. This expression is going to tell After Effects to just repeat these three keyframes forever after two seconds. Go back to completion, right-click and select "Copy Expression Only." That's going to allow us to paste the expression onto other layers. If your second layer had a different animation you could still paste it on. Let's say you had a lot of layers, you could just select all of the properties, press" Control V," and now everything loops perfectly. To recap, here is what you learned how to make so far, which means that now we can move on to the class project.
12. THE PROJECT: I've been seeing this trend with stickers going around for a while now and I really want to draw from that for this project because I think it's going to allow us to segment the work into smaller and more manageable pieces and hopefully stay organized. Each of your stickers will be animated using 1, 2, 3 of the techniques we went over during the warm up. I'm going to guide you along my project. If you want to create your own design, here are some pointers. It should be in a square format, ready for animation, so 1080 by 1080 and 72 DPI. At least one short phrase of around 6-12 words sectioned into different stickers, a limited color palette, so I would recommend around 3-4, and then black and white, 2-4 typefaces and try to vary the style. Maybe you could have a serif or sans-serif cursive display font, whatever you want. Finally, for your design, try to have simple shapes and compositions that can easily be recreated in after effects. I think that it. Let's go over to the next part in which I'll show you how I created my own.
13. Sketching things out: I've picked out a phrase which I think is pretty fitting for the class. It's, "Don't be afraid to try, we all start from somewhere." In addition to that, I plan to have some extra words of encouragement around like, you got this, just do it, be kind to yourself. I also made a very quick mood board. I spent maybe 15 minutes on that, so don't spend too long on it. But I think it's important to have some references for colors, shapes, typefaces, everything, so here it is if you want to have a look. Now we're sketching things out, I'm doing that in Procreate. You can do it digitally or traditionally, doesn't matter. As you may have noticed, I have horrible handwriting and I could not draw a straight line if my life depended on it. But you know what? It's okay because this part is for me and my brain alone. Well, it usually is. Now I'm writing down what I think the effect is going to be for each of the sticker and also type of typeface I want to use. Then I tested out a few color palettes and decided to go with the last one, and applied the colors to my full-size version, refined a few things, and I think we're good to go. Now we're in Illustrator. I've created this file, I've imported my sketch over here, and I've created my color palettes underneath. I've also created a few different art boards just to be able to test some things out. They are all 1080 by 1080 squares, just like what we need in After Effects. I've also made sure that my color space is in RGB and not CMYK. Just a general rule for animation, the color space will always be RGB. I think that's everything. I'm going to go create the stickers and choose my typefaces. I'm going to speed through it just because I don't want it to take up too much time from the class because after all, this is an animation class. Yeah. I'll meet you back when it's done. I'm back and this is what I came up with. Let's go over the typefaces I used. These two are Rodfat, for these two, I used Floyd, these two are Lucky, and this is League Script. Now for the animation, I think I'm going to do a path animation for, don't be afraid, with the eye opening and closing. This is going to alternate between just and do it with a CC Twister. This is going to be a trim path. This one is going to rotate using polar coordinates. For this one, I think I'm going to combine CC Twister with a shape layer animation. This one is also going to be a shape layer animation. This one is going to be a path animation, just a very simple rotation. This one is going to be an echo animation. Before we export this for After Effects, one thing I would recommend doing for the color palette is to take the time to create a folder for it in the libraries. I'm going to click on this icon, create a folder, name it Skillshare, and I'm going to add each of my colors to it so that I can access them easily once I'm in After Effects. Now that it's done, I can export this one number 4. Just again make sure that it is 1080 by 1080 and 72 dpi. When exporting, rename it something like reference and we'll be ready to go. Let's go to File, Export, and Export As. Check that little box, and for the Range, it's number 4. Here I have my Skillshare folder. I have one for the Illustrator files, one for the After Effects project, and one for the exports. Let's just go back to the Illustrator one. You can export as PNG or JPEG, doesn't really matter. I'm just going to add reference at the end of the name and click "Export." All of this looks good, so click "OK," and now we can start doing some animation. I'm excited. Let's go.
14. Setting up the Project: We have our game plan for the class project. Let's set up the workflow. We're back to the After Effects project. As you can see, same as for the warm-up, in the Project folder, you have two categories. One is the reference and the other one is for you to work on your own project. If you want, you can check out the reference animation in here, and this is what we're going to be working on. In the project panel, you also have folders and compositions for each of the stickers. For example, if I click here, it will take me to a different composition just for that sticker. One note about the project I'm using on screen right now, if I go to your project, there is nothing there. No main composition, no compositions for each of the stickers, but the one you'll be using, so the one from the resources section will already have everything setup for you because to be honest, setting up projects is just a long and quite tedious process, and I just want you to have fun and learn how to animate typography. I'm still going to record myself going through that process because I think you could learn a thing or two about how to set up projects and create shapes in After Effects. To get started, I'm going to import my reference, so I'm going to go to Assets in my Project tab, then go to File, Import and File, then select the PNG and make sure it's in the Assets folder. Next I'm going to create my main composition, which is going to be 1080 by 1080, so a square. Once I've recreated of my stickers, I'll use the reference as a guide in the main composition to place them. For the size of the compositions, for each of the stickers, honestly I'm going to be guessing based around the size of the main comp. For example of a composition for you don't be afraid, would probably be around 500 pixels. Just to be on the safe side I would actually recommend making them a bit bigger than what think they actually are, just because it's easier that way you can always size them down once you import them into the main comp, so for example, here, they're only 60 percent of their actual size. I think that's everything. So I'm going to go do all of that and come back when I'm done. I'm done, I'm back. I'm going to import both the compositions for my stickers and import them into my main composition. Make sure to keep the reference at the top and switch the opacity to 70 percent. Again, it's us to bring up the opacity and then we're going to reposition and resize all of the stickers following that guide. Now we can get into animation, and the first one we're going to animate is be kind to yourself.
15. Animating with Text Paths: We're going to start nice and easy with a simple path animation on Be Kind To Yourself. As I've said, we're going to start with the Be Kind To Yourself sticker, let's get into that precomposition. As you can see, we already have the back. We're going to create a new text layer. Press "Shift Option Command T". For the typeface, we're using Floyd. I'm going to type in, "be kind to yourself" in the black color. Make sure that it is centered and maybe reduce the size of it, let's say 30. Next we're going to create a mask for the text to follow along too. Let's go to the Shape Tool. I'm going to use an ellipse, and starting in the middle of the comp, I'm going to press "Shift and Command" and create a circle. Then set your mask to "None", go to Text, Path Options, Path, and select your "Mask 1", then switch the Reverse Path on. Then we're going to move the first margin so that the text is aligned at the top. Maybe I could have made the text a bit bigger, let's say 33. We're going to set our first keyframe at two seconds. The reason for that is that we want the text to come up from the left, stay up for a bit, and then come down on the right. At two seconds, it's going to be up. Then we can go to zero seconds and change the first margin so that the text is at the very bottom of the mask. Then we can do the same at four seconds, but just bring the text down the other way this time. We have our base animation. I just want the text to be hidden when it's at the bottom so I'm going to create a second mask for that. I'm going to use a rectangle and just drag it across the text. Like this, then you can just set it to Subtract, press "Space" to preview, and you have your text. Don't forget to select all of your keyframes and press "Function 9" to ease, preview again. The issue here is that the text completely stops at the top, and I don't want that. I'm going to go into the Graph Editor, make sure you have your keyframes selected, and also that you're in the Edit Speed Graph and not the Edit Value Graph. Now, if I try to move this point up so that it doesn't stop completely, you'll see that they are actually not connected to each other, the two sides, so you're going to select both of them, right-click, and go to Keyframe Velocity and check the "Continuous" box. Now that they're connected, we're going to be able to bring them up to ease the speed so that they slow down but don't completely stop. Now you can click on the point, holding Shift bring it up, and then you're going to pull on the handles on both sides so that we can get a nice easing on the speed. I'm also going to reduce the easing on the first and last keyframes. I would just recommend to preview a bunch of times and adjust things around until you're happy with it. I think I found something I'm happy with. Let's stop the preview and go back to the comp. We're done with the text. Now for the flower in the middle, we're going to need a shape layer, let's create one. We won't need a stroke, but we will need a fill in white. Let's start with an ellipse. Hold Option and then Shift and create your shape. Also, make sure that it is centered, I'm just going to adjust the size a bit, maybe a bit smaller, so 60. Then to create the petals, we're actually going to use a star shape that we're going to modify. So go to the Shape Tool and create a star. Perfect. I'm just going to put the star under the ellipse and also rename my layer, almost forgot, I'm going to name it flower. Select the star shape and you're going to change the fill to purple like this, and then we're going to open it and modify it. First, for the points, I'm going to make it eight and then for the inner radius, something a bit bigger, maybe 11; and then for the outer one, I'm going to make it 100. For the petals to appear, we need to adjust the outer roundness. Let's just do that until it looks good like here. We have our flower, I just want to animate it a bit. We're going to select the layer, press "R", and then go to the very beginning of the timeline and add a first keyframe. For this rotation animation to loop perfectly, I need my number of degrees to be a multiple of 45, because 360 degrees divided by 8, 8 being the number of petals, is 45. Just so happens that I don't want it to be too fast, so I'm just going to make it 45 degrees. Let's preview our first sticker. There you go. It's nothing too fancy, too hard, but I think it's a nice start to the project. It's a secondary sticker, I don't want to draw too much attention away from the main ones. Now we can move on to Don't Be Afraid. Moving on to Don't Be Afraid, we're going to use the path animation for this one as well, and we're going to start with the eyes. Let's create a new shape layer, and we're going to use the Pen Tool to create the eyelid. Go in the center, add a first point somewhere around here another one on the other side, and then just make sure that is centered, we name it "eye". I'm going to add a third point in the middle like this, and then using the Convert Vertex Tool, I'm going to click on it to make it curved. Now it has these two handles to adjust the curves. I want the eye to start closed, then open somewhere around here, stay open for a bit, and then close back again. Let's go to Contents, and then Shape 1, Path 1, and add a first keyframe on the Path. Copy and paste that first keyframe at four seconds. Then we're going to go somewhere around here, maybe 18 frames, using the Selection Tool, press "V", you're going to click on that point and bring it up, and then you can copy and paste that keyframe to two seconds and 18 frames. Select all keyframes, press "F9" to ease, and now we can press "Space" to preview. I apologize, this is sped up, but it's just really boring. I just adjusted the shape and easing of the eye until it looked perfect to me. Now we're going to create the bottom part of the eye, it's going to be a mirror copy. So for that we just need to make sure that the anchor point for shape 1 in our layer is centered. Press Y, and if it's not centered, do it. Select your shape 1, and you're going to duplicate it by pressing Command T, then open it, go to Transform, and we're going to rotate it by 180 degrees. Press Space to preview. Cool. Nice. If you failed at properly centering your anchor point like I just did, you'll get this annoying tiny line. To fix that, just select your shape 2, and using the arrow keys, bring it up until it's gone. Cool. Perfect. On second thought, I think I want the eye to actually stay closed a bit longer because right now it just starts again right away. Maybe I'll just bring these keyframes over here. Press U, and you're going to select both of them and bring them to three seconds and 12 frames. Let's preview again. Much better. Now we're just getting that tiny line at the end. To fix it, just trim your layer to three seconds and 12 frames, and now it should look perfect. Cool. Now onto the pupil, we're going to need another shape layer for this. Go to Layer, New Shape Layer, and we're going to rename it, Pupil. Let's change the fill to black, and we're going to use the ellipse tool. Go to the center of your comp, and holding Command and Shift, create your circle. Right now it's above the eye layer, which means that when the eye closes, the pupil stays visible. I don't want that, so we're just going to duplicate the eye layer. Press Command D, place it above the pupil layer, rename it, Eye Alpha, by pressing "Enter". Then on the pupil layer you're going to go to Track Matte, and set it to Alpha matte, and now if you press Space, it will look perfect. Now we're going to animate the pupil. We're going to start with the scale. Select your layer and press S, and let's add a first keyframe at zero second. Let's make it 50 percent, then go to 18 frames, make it 100 percent again, copy and paste that keyframe and bring it to two seconds and 18 frames. Finally 50 percent again when the eye closes at three seconds and 12 frames. Select everything and ease the keyframes by pressing Function 9. Then go into the graph editor and try your best to match the easing with the one of the eye opening and closing. Now let's animate the position. Press P, and let's go to one second. I want it to be centered when the eye opens and then go left, right, and back in the center before it closes. Let's add our first keyframe here, and then we can go a bit later, so may be one second and eight frames. It's going to go left. I can use my arrow keys or I could drag it to the left. Then same thing on the other side. Let's go to maybe two seconds and four frames and drag it to the right. If you want to do that, you can press V to use the selection tool. Then back in the center when the eye closes. Let's go to two seconds and 18 frames. You can just copy and paste your first keyframe there and then select everything and press Function 9 to ease. Let's see what we have so far. Let's go into the graph editor and accentuate the easing a bit. Make sure you're in the Edit Speed Graph. Select the position and then uncheck the Show Animated Properties, so that we only see the position. Though I just want my movements to be more snappy, so I'm going to accentuate it a bit. I'm just going to add a wiggle expression just to make the eye movement a little bit more natural. Hold Option, and click the stopwatch, and I'm going to type in wiggle(0.5,10). So 0.5 is the frequency, and 10 is the amplitude. It's going to move randomly 0.5 times per second by 10 pixels. Let's press Space and preview. It's pretty subtle, but cool. I like it. Perfect. Now we're going to add some stars shining in the eye right here, and we're going to add them to the same layer. I'm going to use the star shape tool right here. Let's just open the layer and go to Contents. I'm going to add a first star right here like this, and change the fill to the white. Then if we go to the group and open the path, we're going to change the points to four. Let's change the inner radius to 15, and the outer one to 30. Then I'm just going to change the inner roundness. Well, until it looks good. Let's say 150. Now we're going to animate the scale of this star. Just make sure you're in the transform polystar, and not the transform of the layer, and then go to Scale. Let's add a first key-frame somewhere around here, maybe one second and four frames. Let's make it 100 percent. Then go back to one second and make it zero percent. Copy and paste that zero percent keyframe and go to one second and 12 frames and paste it. This time we're only going to ease the middle keyframe so that it grows very fast, stays up as much as possible, and then comes down. It should look like this. Nice. Now we're just going to make a bunch of copies of this, spread them around on the eye and also in the timeline. You can press Command D to do that. Then you can press U to bring up all of the size properties, and I'm just going to change some of them. Maybe let's make this one 70 percent, and this one as well, and maybe this one can be 50 percent. Just so they don't all look the same. Now I'm just going to go spread them on the timeline and on the eye and I'll come back when it's done. We have our eye animation complete. It's finally time to come back to text animation. Let's close this layer, and we're going to add a new text layer on top of everything. Press Shift Option Command T, and type in caps "DON'T BE AFRAID". I'm going to change the typeface to Rodfat. Go to Paragraph, and just make sure that it is centered, and don't forget to align it. I'm going to change this size to 70 pixels. Basically you want it to be about the same size as the eye. Next, right-click on your layer, go to Mask, and New Mask. Open the layer, go to Mask again, and set it to None. Now we're actually going to change the mask path so that it matches the path of the eyelids. Add a keyframe, then go down to your eye layer and just reopen it. Shape 2 is the bottom one. We want the top eyelid. Go to Shape 1, click on the path and copy your keyframes, go back to the mask, paste them, and now your mask path should follow the eyelid. Which means that now you can go to your text path options and select your mask, and magic. Just place your text layer a bit higher so that it sits on top of the eye, and you're done. If you're like me, you're probably going to want to re-center everything because that's going to bother you. The only issue is that if you select everything and bring them down using the arrow keys, it's going to disrupt the position animation of the pupil right here. To avoid that, you just want to select your position animation on the pupil and place your time indicator on one of the keyframes. That's important. Now, and only now, can you move everything down using the arrow keys or the selection tool. Let's see how it looks. I'm pretty happy with it. Cool. We have our first two stickers down. To finish, we're going to do my favorite thing, which is to be lazy but efficient. We're going to reuse the stars that we just made and put them on the heart sticker just so that it has some visual interest, but we don't have to think about animating it at all. Copy your pupil layer and jump into your heart composition, paste it in. Then you're going to open it and remove the ellipse and also remove the position animation. Just click on the stopwatch, re-align it to the center, and also remove the scale animation. Now you can just press U and redistribute your keyframes and place your stars however you want on the heart. Here's what I came up with. I'm pretty happy with it. Let's just go back to the main comp and load a preview. We have three stickers done, now we can move on to animating with shape layers.
16. Animating with Shape Layers: We've animated three. Let's move on to the summer sticker and do a shape layer animation. Let's press: "Shift", "Option", "Command T", to create a new text layer. I'm going to type in some. Make sure it is right in black. I'm going to increase the size just a little bit. Yeah, like this, recenter it somewhere on the sticker on the top right, then I'm going to duplicate it by pressing "Command D." Bring the second one underneath and change the text to where. Then just rearrange everything. Now we're going to do a very simple shape animation on the O of some right here. You're going to right-click on your layer, go to Create, and Create Shapes from Texts. If you remember from the warm up, if you open the layer, you'll have groups for each of the letters, and for some of them like the O, you'll have two sub-groups; one for the outer path and one for the inner path. To create the animation, I'm going to go to Search bar and type in path. Then I'm going to add a keyframe on all of them at zero seconds. By the way, if we zoom in a little, you'll see that the O already has these two very, very convenient anchor points that are going to allow us to stretch it sideways from the middle. If your typeface doesn't have that, you might want to add them in using the pen tool, but for us is good to go. I'm going to go to 12 frames, and I'm going to drag my mouse and de-select all the points that are on the right of the center of the O. You might want to zoom in, see if you missed any points. Then with the rest of your section, you're going to double-click and drag it to the left while holding "Shift". Try your best to align it to the W that's underneath. Now you have all these keyframes that have been generated for you at 12 frames. To get the unstretched O back, you're going go to one second on the timeline and copy and paste your first keyframes there. Like this. Then double-click on one of the path and you're going to drag everything back to the left. Again, try to realign it properly with the W. You might have to do some back and forth between these two sets of keyframes just to make sure that the S doesn't seem to move too much and adjust things if necessary. Next, I want it to stay still for a while. I'm going to go to one second later, so two seconds, and just copy and paste my set of keyframes their. Then we're making our way back, so select the keyframes from 12 frames and paste them at two seconds and 12 frames. Then the ones from zero seconds copy them and paste them at three. We have our base animation. You're going to select everything and press "Function 9" or "F9" to ease. Now we can play it back. Cool. Very quickly, I'm going to go into the graph editor and accentuate the easing a bit, so yeah. I think I've got something I'm happy with. We have our text animation and now let's add the planet on the side of some. For that, we're going to need a new shape layer. We're going to need an ellipse in purple. Make sure you're in the center of the comp and press "Command" and "Shift" and create your ellipse. Please do make sure that it is aligned because we're going to need it to be later on once it's in a pre-comp, then I'm going to adjust this size. I just want to make sure that it fits next to the text. So maybe bring it down a bit to 130. Yeah. I almost forgot to rename the layer again. Remember in the warm-up we used the fractal noise effect to create some animated texture. We're going to use a variation here to animate the surface of the planet. Let's create a new solid by pressing "Command Y". I'm going to name it planet, texture and the color doesn't matter. Next, go to Effect, Noise & Grain, and add a fractal noise. For this settings we want it to be basic and spline. For the contrast, I want it to be almost pure black and white, so let's make it 10,000 for the brightness. I want it to be more black than white, so let's make it something like minus 500. For the complexity, let's make it one. So just very simple shapes like this. Then we're going to go to Transform and bring the scale down to, let's say 25. Let's animate it. For it to be a perfect loop, you need to go to the Evolution Options and check the Cycle Evolution box. Then go to zero second and add a first keyframe. Next, press "U" to bring up the animated property and go to the very end. I'm going to make this a two-cycle evolution. Let's press 'Space" and preview the animation. Yeah. Now we only want it to show up on the surface of the planet. For that, we're going to use an Alpha Matte. So duplicate the planet layer, bring the copy above the texture and rename it planet mask. Finally, you're going to set the Track Matte on the texture to Alpha Matte. I only want the white areas to show up on my planet. I'm going to go to the blending modes. It's the same as in Photoshop and Illustrator and I'm going to set it to lighten. Also, bring the opacity down a bit, so press "T" and I'm going to make it 50 percent. Let's see how it looks. Yeah, that's nice. What you can do if you want is actually move your solid around just until you find a region of interest, I guess, just like an area that you think looks nice. Maybe here would be nice. Yeah. I like it. Remember when I asked you to make sure this was centered, it's because we're going to pre-compose it with its texture, and the pre-composition is going to have an anchor point in the center right here. We're going to animate the scale, so I just want to make sure that it scales properly around a point in the center. Let's make the pre-comp, select the three layers and right-click, go to Pre-compose. I'm going to name it planet precomp. Then go to the Project tab and just make sure it's where it's supposed to be in the somewhere group. Let's go to the beginning of the timeline and I'm going to bring the planet to the left of some right here. We're going to start by animating the scale, so press S. We're going to add a first keyframe at 100 percent right here. Next, if you go to 12 frames, some has reached this side so we need the planet to be at zero percent size, so let's do that. Then actually let's press U on the some shape layer so that we can have the keyframes as a reference. I want it to be backup at three seconds, so let's copy and paste the zero percent keyframe and bring it back at 100 percent at three seconds. You know what? I think I want it to appear on the right side as well right here. I'm going to put down some scale keyframes for this and I'll fix the position later on. Let's add a 100 percent keyframe here and then we'll move it to the right, and another one here. Now let's fix the position so that all of this starts to make sense and you don't hate me. I'm just going to open this so that we can have both parameters at the same time. I'm going to go to zero seconds and add a first keyframe here. Then from 12 frames, it should be on the right side, here. Holding "Shift", click and drag it to the other side like this and drag that keyframe to 12 frames. Then from here, it should be back at its original position, so copy and paste that first keyframe. If I show you the animation right now, it's a mess, I know. Please trust the process. I just haven't told After Effects yet that there shouldn't be any animation happening between the position keyframes. But if I right-click on a keyframe and select Toggle Hold Keyframe, that means that there won't be any interpolation from After Effects parts between the position keyframes. It's just going to hold that position until the next keyframe happens and then switch instantly. Now it's starting to look like something. Now we need to fix the easing and the speed for the scale keyframes to match the text, so let's do that. Press "Function 9" or "F9" to ease and let's see how it looks. Better, but not perfect yet. I want the planet to become before the S arrives at 12 frames. I'm going to copy and paste this keyframe to a bit before, maybe at six frames. Paste it in, and let's see. Yes, perfect. Let's do the same for the other ones. Here, we want the planet to come in just a bit later, so we're going to bring the second keyframe to six frames later. Now let's see if this works. Yeah, perfect. I'm just going to go do the same for the second set of keyframes. Cool, I like it. Just one thing, I think there is some downtime after one and three seconds, so maybe I could just extend the animation a bit for the planet's growing right here, just so that it takes a bit more time and it doesn't look like it's staying still. I'm going to move these two keyframes to, let's say, six frames later. Let's see. Yes, nice. Let's just go in the graph editor and adjust the speeds a bit. Lets do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Let's preview. Yeah, I think we're done. Cool. Now we can move on to the from sticker. This one is actually going to be combined with a CC Twister animation, but we're going to do the first part with a shape layer animation. Once again, let's create a new text layer. Press "Shift", "Option", "Command", "T", and you're going to type in from in all caps. Let's change the color to white, and let's change the typeface to Lucky, and make sure it is centered and also aligned. Then using the Selection tool, press V, you're going to bring it down. Adjust the size so that it fits the sticker, 200 maybe, and realign it. We're going to create shapes from the text again. Right-click on the layer, go to Create and Create Shapesfrom Text. Once again, you have all of the groups for your letters. I'm going to go to the search bar and type in path. Next, I'm just going to close the groups for the outer part of the R and O because I'm not going to use them for the animation and I want them out of the way. I'm going to go to zero seconds, and select all of my path, and add a first keyframe. Next, I want the circles to go up, so I'm going to go to 12 frames. Then using the Selection tool, press V, I'm going to drag my mouse across all of them. This will probably also select some points from the R and O, but the outer path, so just make sure to de-select them from the panel down here. This should work. Now you can double-click on one of the path. Holding "Shift", you're going to bring everything up to, let's say, around here. Now you can go grab all of your keyframes from zero seconds and paste them in at one second. Oops, forgot this one. Now we have this back and forth up and down movement. I actually wanted to create some waves, so we're going to have to move some keyframes around. The issue is that for the M, there is only one path for both of the circles, so we need to fix that to make a good wave. To do that, I'm going to create a rectangle inside the M groups. First I'm going to remove the path from the search bar and reopen my layer, go inside the M group. Then I'm going to go grab the Shape tool and create a rectangle that cuts the M in the middle, like this. Oops, didn't work. Let me just bring it back to the M group and put it right underneath the M. Then click back on the M group, and go to Add, and add a merge path. Then you can set it to intersect. Now we have 1/2 of the M. Just press "Command" "D", make a copy to make the other one. Now you can just set the merge path of one of them to subtract, and you're good to go. Let's go back to the layer and press "U", and now we have all these keyframes to work with. First, we want to make sure that the animation covers the full four seconds. Usually, I would use a loop expression, but unfortunately, it doesn't work on path animation, so we're just going to have to copy and paste a bunch of keyframes. Once you've reached the end of the comp, just make sure to bring your layer in and add a few more copies because we're going to redistribute the keyframes in time, so we just need to have some wiggle room. Let's add one more set like this and bring back the layer in. Now you can select all of the path right here and that will select all of the keyframes, even the ones that are outside of the timeline. Then press "F9" to ease. All that's left to do now is to space out the animation for each letter by two frames and then we'll be done. I'm just going to go do that. Now for the grand reveal. Nice. My bad, I forgot that these keyframes, these right here, there isn't anything before them, so that's why it looks weird at the beginning. But if we move everything so that this keyframe is the first one that we see, it should be fixed. Yes, perfect. Now we can move on to the next chapter in which we're going to finish this animation using CC Twister.
17. Animating with CC Twister: We're getting closer to the end. We're going to use CC Twister. We're back with our from sticker so we're just going to add a CC Twister effect 2D animation to finish it. Make sure your layer is selected and go to Effect, transition, and CC Twister. First, you're going to remove the shading unless you want it, I'm no one to judge and then bring this point. The twisting animation is going to happen around it so bring it to the middle of the layer. Next, you're going to change the axis to 90 degrees and make sure you're at zero second and add a first key-frame. Then go right before one second so 23 frame and change the completion to 100 percent. Press U to bring out your key-frames and I'm going to copy and paste this right after the 100 percent like this. It's just going to switch back to its original state right away without any animation. Then I'm going to give it a little time to pause. I'm going to paste it again at two seconds, so nothing is going to happen in between these two key-frames. Then very quickly I'm going to press Option and click on the stopwatch and I'm going to add a loop-out expression just so that this animation repeats right away after two seconds. Now, let's preview real quick. Okay, not bad. Just one tiny adjustment. I think I could improve the timing between the path animation and the CC Twister animation, especially at the beginning there. I think I'm going to select everything in the path and bring them in so that this key-frame is no longer the first one but instead, this is going to be the first one, so let's see if this works. Yes, better. All right, cool. Now we can animate the secondary elements and we'll be done with this sticker. Let's start with the big star in the middle. For this, we're going to need a new shape layer. Let's use the star tool and also make the fill the gold color and then center yourself, press Shift and command and create your star. Don't forget to name the layer. I'm going to name it big star, then open it and we're going to change the number of points to 16. Inner radius, let's make it 50 outer one 100, and then we're going to bring the layer up inside the window, so click on it and you can press Command to stay aligned. We're going to make it float up and down. For this, we're going to animate the position, so press P and we're going to go to zero seconds. Add a first key-frame. You can bring it up just a little bit, then go to one second and you're going to bring it down not by too much. Then copy and paste your first key-frame at two seconds and then you're going to hold Option, click the stopwatch and add a loop-out expression. Finally, select all of the key-frames and press F9 to ease. Let's preview what we have. Nice. You know what? I think it could also grow the radius while it's going up and down, so let's do that. Let's open the Polystar, go to the inner radius and add a key-frame at zero and then let's go to one second. I'm going to make it 30. All right. Copy and paste the first key-frame at two, press Option, and click on the stopwatch. We're going to add a loop-out expression in here too, and then select all key-frames, press F9 to ease, and let's preview once again. Yeah. Nice. You know what? I think I'm going to add some rotation to the mix as well because why not. Let's press R and add a first key-frame at zero and this time we're going to go to the very end of the comp. Remember this star has 16 points, so 45 degrees is going to save our life once again. Now we can preview one last time, I think. Yeah. Cool. I like it. You know what? I think I'm going to reuse the stars I created. Don't be afraid because they're done and I want to move on with this, so let's do it. Let's stop the preview. We're going to go to the heart sticker. I forgot to rename this layer, actually, so let's do that. Let's name it stars and copy it, go back to from and paste it in. Press U to bring up the key-frames and once again, I'm just going to change their position on the timeline and their position on the composition. I'm going to go do that and come back when it's done. All right, so this is what I came up with. You may have noticed that I added a few more copies of the stars just because there were some down-times here and there and I wanted to fill in the blanks. I think we're done and we're going to move on to just do it sticker. For this one we're going to use CC Twister as well on the text to do something similar to a slit-scan effect. It's a pretty trendy effect at the moment and it's usually done using a time displacement effect; but we're working CC Twister because to be honest, time displacement effects tend to overheat computers and we don't all have a gaming PC. I just want to keep this as accessible as possible. Let's create a first text layer. Press Shift Option Command T and type in just and I'm going to make this black. Also, bring the size down so that the text fits the stickers. I don't know. Maybe 130? Yeah. That looks about right. Then make a copy and hide the first one and then change the text to do it. I want both of them to be the same width, so I'm just going to bring the opacity of this one down a bit and then change its size until it looks the same. Then I actually also want them to have the same height. I'm going to do the unspeakable and stretch type because I do believe that rules are meant to be broken plus none of my unit teachers are going to be watching this. Also, I'm sure that if it's on-screen for less than a second, no one will ever know, so let's do this. I'm going to use this perimeter and stretch it until it fits. There. Perfect. Now you can close this and also make sure that your layers are aligned. Okay. I'm going to hide the do it layer for now and select the just layer and apply the CC Twister effect. All right, so now you can remove the shading and place the point at the center top, so not the center, center this time, if that makes sense, and change the axis to 90 degrees. Let's put down a first key-frame at zero second, then go to one second, press U to bring up the key-frame, and make it 100 percent. Then select both of them and press F9 to ease. Then we're going to put down two more key-frames at one second right here. So one for the axis and one for the center, then go to one frame later. Press Command and use the right arrow key and you're going to change the axis to minus 90 degrees and bring the center right here to the bottom part of your texts, still in the center. Let's press U, so now we have these key-frames right here. If you try to preview the animation, the first part right here, you'll see that the text goes up but then it comes down which I don't want. That's because the backside is set to itself, so if we set it to none, it's just going to disappear after twisting away. Then because we switched the center and the axis, if I copy and paste my key-frame to two seconds, when it comes back, it's going to come back from the bottom. Make sense? Okay. Now if I play it back, it looks like this. All right, progress. Now we're going to loop everything, so copy and paste these key-frames to two seconds and these to zero seconds. Now we have this nice cohesive two-second bit. This time let's use a loop in and out expression. It's loop in plus loop out minus value and honestly, I don't know how to explain it. I just know that it works. That's my approach to expressions so let's roll with it. Okay. Next, you're going to right-click on your parameter and select Copy Expression Only and you're going to paste it to the two other parameters. Now if we preview the animation, it should be perfect. Nice. All right, so we're halfway done. The rest is going to be super easy. You're just going to select your CC Twister effects and don't forget to also select the key parameters and just paste it onto your do it layer like so. Press U and you're going to bring your whole animation to one second later so that's why we needed a loop in and out expression. Don't forget to remove the shading and set the backside to none. Now let's load another preview. Yeah, we're getting somewhere. All right. Nice. I'm just going to make one tiny change and again, that's all about your personal preferences. I'm just a little bothered by the fact that there is so much space in between the two layers when they're twisting. I'm thinking if I reduce the percentage of the completion rate here so that they have less way to go, so to say, maybe they would be closer together. I hope that makes sense. I don't really know how to explain it but I think it's going to work so let's try it. Let's try 90 percent. Because they disappear way before 100 percent completion, I think we can allow ourselves to do that. Let's try it. Yeah, I think that works. I hope my explanation made any sense to you whatsoever, but let's just remember that it worked, okay? Yeah, I like it like that. I think we're done with CC Twister and now we can move on to animating the rainbow and for that, we're going to use trim path.
18. Animating with Trim Paths: We're going to finish animating, "JUST DO IT" using Trim Path, and then we'll move on to another one. Now we're going to create a nice little rainbow to go on top of the text. Then we're going to animate it using Trim Path. Let's create a new shape layer. We're going to make a circle, no fill but a stroke. Let's make it red. Let's say red. Go to the center and hold "Command" and "Shift", and create your circle. Try to make it about the size of the text, bring the size of the stroke up a bit. Let's say, 20. Then you're just going to go in and adjust the size of the path until it fits the text perfectly, so to say. You might have to do some adjustment for the alignment. Don't forget to bring it up a bit so that it fits and is aligned with the top of this sticker, like this. Then you're going to make a copy. Press "Command D". For this one, let's change the color to the gold. Then you're going to bring the size of the path down basically until it sits right underneath of the first one. One more time, for this one that's made of color purple, and bring the size down too, until it fits right underneath. Nice. Now we're going to add a Trim Path to the first circle. Make sure you have it selected and go to "Add", "Trim Path". Let's open it. What I'm thinking is the rainbow is going to come in at the same time as "DO IT", and then it's going to stay up for a bit, and disappear when the "JUST" comes in, then it will stay hidden for a few frames, and then loop. So let's start by animating the rainbow coming in. For that, we're going to animate the end parameter. Let's bring it to zero. As you can see right now, the starting point is at the top right here, which means that we're going to have to offset the Trim Path to minus 90 degrees so that the start is actually on the left. I'm going to do that and add my zero percent key-frame. Then I'm going to go to a few frames later, so let's say, four. I'm going to copy and paste that first key-frame just so that it stays hidden for a bit, then we're going to go to right after "DO IT" has finished coming in. That would be 20 frames and we only want it to go halfway like this. Let's make it 50 percent. Then I can copy and paste it to two seconds. Then we can add a loop expression, and that will start again, but first, let's actually animate the start so that the rainbow can also disappear. So first key frame at zero, at zero percent, and it's going to stay the same until a bit after the rainbow has finished appearing. So let's say, one second and four frames, so let's add another one there, still at zero percent. Then I wanted to finish disappearing, just so that the timing makes sense, at four frames before two seconds, so here. Let's make it 50 percent and then copy and paste it to two seconds. Now we have our base animation. Everything is two seconds long, so it's going to be able to loop perfectly. Let's have a quick preview to see what we have. Yeah, all right. Now let's ease everything, so press "F9" or "Function 9" to ease, and then we're going to add a loop in and out expression to the both of them, like this. Then you're going to right-click, "Copy Expression Only", and paste it to the end. Let's have another preview. Yeah. Nice, right? Now, all we have to do is just copy that Trim Path animation to the two other stripes. So let's do that. I'm going to copy the Trim Path and paste it onto the two other ellipses, and there you go. I just want to offset the effects a bit, so I'm just going to go in, select the key-frames for the two other stripes, and I'm just going to offset each by two frames like this. Let's see how it looks. Nice. You know what? On second thought, I think I would like my shape of the rainbow to remain present even when the stripes aren't showing, so maybe something static in the color of the background in the main comp, so I'm going to do that. I almost forgot your name my layer, please don't do that. I know one motion designer who's silently judging me. I'm going to make a copy and bring it underneath and rename it "rainbow back", and then I'm going to press "View" and then I'm just going to remove the key-frames for all of these, and also remove the expressions. To do that, you can hold "Option" and click on the stopwatch, and it will remove it for you. Then we set the ends at 50 percent and starts at zero percent. So we have our rainbow back, it's not going to move. Let's change the color to this one, but just a little bit darker, like this. Nice, and let's close this, and press "Space". Yeah. Cool just for the sake of it, I'm going to go back to "_MAIN" and load a preview just so that we can see what we've done so far, and also, maybe congratulate ourselves a bit on the work we've done. We only have three stickers left. We have "you got this", "we all start", and "to try". We're going to move onto "to try" because it's also going to be animated using Trim Path. You know the drill press "Shift Option Command T" to create a new text layer, and you're going to type in "to try", don't forget to remove the all caps, and also, the vertical stretch that we did earlier. Then we're going to change the color to white and the typeface to League Script. Maybe bring the size up a bit, let's say 165. All right. Make sure it's centered, and bring it to about the middle of the sticker. Cool. If you remember the warm-up, this is just going to be my guide, and I'm going to use it to recreate some shapes using the pen tool. I'm going to need a new shape layer for that, and don't forget to rename it. I'm going to use a different stroke color just so that I can see what I'm doing and zoom in a bit. Just a couple of notes before I start making it. Don't forget to rename the groups for each of those shapes as you go. Also, if you have some doubles like the t's, you can create it once and then duplicate it and drag it to the side. I'm going to speed through that, and come back when it's done. I think I've got something I'm happy with. I first traced all of the letters and then I adjusted the stroke size up here to 12 pixels, then readjust it off the path to fit that stroke size better. For example, I removed the loop on the T's because it didn't translate well to a bigger stroke size, so yeah, I think we're ready to start animating it. Make sure you have your T_1 group selected and you're going to add a trim path, then open it and we're going to key frame the end, so first key frame at 0 percent at 0 seconds and then let's go to, let's say 18 frames and it's going to be back at 100 percent there. You can also hide or delete the text layer we don't need it anymore, so let's ease these two key frames, press "F9" or "Function nine", and it looks like this. Now you're just going to copy that trim path and paste it on to the rest of your letters. Nice, and now we have our base animation. Time to make it a little bit more interesting, so we're going to move some key frames around to create the writing effects, so press "U", and first we're going to space them out by two frames each, so you can select all of them except the first one move on your timeline using command and the arrow keys, move the whole group, then de-select the second one, and so on until you've done all of them. Let's have another preview. Nice. I feel like the bars on the T's could maybe come in a bit later than the rest of the group, so I'm just going to select the key frames for both of these and just delay them by four more frames and yeah, that's better, let's watch it again one more time. I'm going to make this quick and easy, so let's first change this stroke to the white color and then make a copy of the layer and change the color of the stroke to purple this time, then move it on the timeline by two frames and make another copy, move it again by two frames, change the color, but this time to black, and then another copy again, two frames on the timeline again, and change the color to the gold, another copy one last time, two frames and change the color to white. Let's see what we have. Cool. I think what I'm going to do is actually keep the first layer static, without any animation, so I'm going to go in and remove the trim path for all of the letters just so that we have some base, and I think it will be more legible that way. Now we have our base, let's see. You know what? What if I made this one red instead? I like it better. What if I added an offset path to the purple one? Just like we did in the warm-up, I think that would be nice, so let's see. I'm going to go to contents, so not a particular group and add an offset path. Now we need the fill to be purple and the stroke to be white and then I'm going to change the stroke size to maybe two and then go into the offset and change the amount until it fits, and in this case it's five. Let's preview. Let's zoom out and I want to see it again. Now you're just going to take these four layers and press "Command D" to duplicate them, bring them up, and you're going to move them to two seconds right here. Now we have our first second animation, it's done, it's complete, the only thing is that we're getting some aliasing or glitching of the edges around the text because of the different layers, and we could try to fix it. But if we zoom out, it's not really going to be visible, let me show you what I mean in the main comp. As you can see in this size, it's not really visible. If you wanted to fix it, you could trim down each layer once it's already covered by the next one. But to be honest, I'm good with it, so let's move on. The only thing that's bothering me a bit is that I wish this text was a bit more Italic slanted. I apologize in advance, I'm going to disrespect typography again. I'm just going to select all of my layers and making sure I'm in the right place in the project tab, I'm going to pre-compose all of them together and rename the pre-comp to try pre-comp and apply a quick effect. I'm going to go to effects, distort and CC slant. I don't want anything too extreme. Let's set this slant to maybe 25, bring the height down a bit, maybe 95 and I'm just going to set the floor to the center of the pre-comp. I'm not going to over-explain this effect, it's just a quick fix because I couldn't find an Italic script typeface that I liked enough for this class and I just wanted to make sure that they were all open source for you to use because I want this to be accessible, please just use a typeface that you like, and don't torture it like I just did. We only have two stickers left to go, I'm super excited. You've got this one and we're going to use the echo effect.
19. Animating with Echo: Alright, we are getting closer to the end, we are going to use the echo effect. You got this. We're back. I hope you're not tired yet of me saying this, but let's create a new text layer. Press Shift option Command T. I'm going to use Floyd in white and I'm going to type in. "You got this." This could definitely be a bit bigger so I'm going to switch to auto and make this 80 pixels. Also, make sure that it is left aligned and bring it back to the middle of your sticker. Also, I'm going to leave some room underneath because I'll be adding an arrow there later on. Also, this is bothering me. Delete between the G and T, so I'm just going to fix it because it looks like it's not the same between the three lines. Yeah, that's better. To create the arrow, we're going to need a new shape layer. Don't forget to rename it. Then I'm going to use the pen tool to create my first line. No fill but a stroke, let's say of three. I'm going to make the first point and then hold Shift to make sure that the second one is aligned. Know know what? Maybe it deserves to be a bit bigger, so I'm going to grab the pen tool again, zoom in, and yeah better. To make the second part of the arrow, I'm actually going to use an ellipse. Make sure you're still in the same layer in the contents and create your circle. Then you can open your path and zoom in. I'm sorry, I have a thing with uneven numbers, and I'm trying to get better with it, but yeah, it is what it is. Right now, this path is an ellipse path, which means that it's not customizable. You can't change the anchor points. But if we right-click on it and convert it to a base path, now we can add new anchor points and modify everything. I want to delete everything except this part right here. I need this path to be an open path. I'm going to use the selection tool, right-click on the path and go to mask and shape path, and closed. Now it's opened and I can remove the points using the delete vertex tool. I'm going to do that. Nice. Now I can Select it and bring it up here. Then I'm going to make a copy and open this one. Go to transform and unlink the two parameters for the scale and make this one minus 100. We're just mirroring it basically. Let's see. Maybe I can bring them both just a little bit too the right. Yeah. We have our base for this one. I'm thinking of some rotation and some scale animation. That's going to create some nice echo lines. To do that, we're actually going to go to the back layer and duplicate it, bring it underneath, and rename it back eco. I'm going to add a two-point white stroke to this one. Okay. Since we're going to animate the rotation and scale for everything, I'm going to pre-compose all of this. It will just make our life easier. You're just going to right-click and select pre-compose. Also, make sure you're in the right place. I'm going to name this one. "You've got this." Precomp press, ''Okay'', and now watch this. We're going to parent this layer to this one like this. What are parenting layers? If you tell layer A, that layer B is now its parent in a third effect, then A is going to copy and remove the mix. Whether you animate the position, the scale, the rotation of B, A is going to do the same. Now that the layers are parented, I'm going to start doing some animation. The timeline is going to be split into two different parts because I want it to do two different things. We're going to start with the scale because I want it to scale down around 1 second and also rotate, then come back to its original state. Stay there for a bit and do the same, but on the other side. Let's start with the scale. Press S and add the first keyframe at zero seconds, and you can then copy and paste it to two seconds. Let's give it some time to stay there. I'm going to give it six frames. Let's go to one second and 18 frames and paste it again. Then somewhere halfway between the two first keyframes. Let's say 22 frames, let's make it 30 percent. Now you can copy everything and paste the keyframes at two seconds so that the whole timeline is covered. Let's see what we have. Alright. Nice, now we can do the rotation. Let's go back to the beginning of the timeline. Press R to bring up the rotation add a keyframe and then press U to see the scale for reference. Same thing. We're going to paste this keyframe here and here, and also at the end here and here. Then we can go back to 22 frames. I'm going to have it rotate by 40 degrees. Yeah. Then here it can rotate at minus 40 degrees. Let's see how it looks. Let's press Space. Just to circle back on parenting layers, as you can see, this layer right here is doing the exact same thing as the pre-comp, which is what we want, so yeah. Now we can select everything and press F9 or Function 9 to ease. I'm going to go into the graph editor and select everything, just making sure that this is the edit speed graph. Then I'm going to accentuate the easing just a little bit on both sides, and let's have a preview. Yeah, that's nice. Now we can add the effect to the back layer. Let's go to effect, time, and echo. Nothing has changed yet because the number of echoes is set to one. Let's change that to 40. It's yellow because it's set to add. Let's change that to composites in front. Much better already. Let's see. It already looks pretty nice. My only issue is that it starts disappearing at the end right there. That could be fixed by adding more echoes, but I think I can also fix it by changing the echo time. The time in between each of the copies, because I also don't want it to look like it's moving too much and finding the sweet spot with the echo time can do that. For this, you just got to try preview and repeat. I'm going to go do that and come back when I've found it. Okay, I'm back. I've set it to minus 0.044 if that makes sense. I like this because it doesn't look like it's moving as much. You also get to keep the original square form, which is what I wanted. I know this wasn't technically a direct dimension of typography, but I really like this and I think you can definitely apply it to a letter or a word. Let's go back to main because I like to see everything together. Yeah, it's pretty nice, right? We only have this one here to do, and we are going to use polar coordinates for this one, and then you'll know everything you need to know.
20. Animating with Polar Coordinates: This is the last one. I hope you're excited because I'm working to use polar coordinates to animate this one. For this one, we could try to use a path animation like we did for the kind to yourself. I don't want to spend too much time trying to curve the arrows properly. We're just going to cheat our way out of it and use polar coordinates instead. Make sure you're in the right folder and create a new comp. This one needs to be a rectangle, so let's make it 1,800 by 1,000, four seconds long, and I'm going to rename it, we all start precomp, press "Okay", and I swear this is the time press "Shift Option Command T" to create a new text layer and type in, we all start. Let's make it a bit bigger, maybe. Yeah, this should work. I want the text to be not too big, but fill the whole width of the comp and also have enough space in between the words to fit the arrows in it. I'm just going to press "Space" a bunch of times in between each of the words and also before, we. Now you're going to grab the Selection tool and bring the anchor points of your layer to the left side of the comp like this. Now I need to remove some spaces like this. Now I can go back to the precomp before you got this and grab the arrow layer, copy it, come back and paste it in. It's a bit small, but I'm going to zoom in and using the hand tool, I'm going to navigate the comp and press "Y" to use the anchor point tool and re-center it on the arrow so that it can be sized-up around that point. Let's zoom out and press "S" and let's see. I think 135 should do it. Yeah. Then aligning it with we, and making some copies by pressing "Command D" and putting them in between the two other words. We have our base. Let's go back to, "We all start" and import the precomp and then I'm going to go to Effect and Distort and add a polar coordinates. We want rect to polar, and let's make it 100 percent. The text is definitely too far out right now. Let's go back to the precomp and move everything. Remember when we printed the ligers in the last chapter, we're going to do that again. Select "All of the arrows" and parent them to the text layer. Now we can move everything together. The warping with this effect happens around the point at the top of the comp. We need to bring the text up so that it gets closer to the center of the circle. Last thing, write now the text is facing inwards and I actually want it to be the other way. I'm going to go back into precomp and I'm going to re-center that anchor point for the text layer right here so that we can mirror everything. Bring it to the center, doesn't have to be exactly perfect. Actually, mainly I could have aligned my arrows better because they don't want to be aligned. Yeah, that's better like this. Sorry about that. Press "S" for scale and make the scale negative. Once you've realigned everything, it should look like this. Now we can animate the rotation. Press "R" and go to zero. We want people to read the text that's at the top. First it's going to be we, then, all, and then, start. First keyframe for we, I'm going to bring it to the top, but a little bit to the left because there is a sticker blocking the way there, so I just want to make sure that it is legible. The rotation is going to make three stops and then come back to its original position. That's going to be four keyframes that I have to spread equally on this timeline and I could do some math to figure it out. I'm just going to space them out by one second each and then I'll show you how to stretch them out to fit because we hate math. Now for the last keyframe, I can't actually copy and paste the first one because with rotation you have degrees, but you also have cycles. As we're rotating counterclockwise, I need the last one to be equal to the first one that with minus 1 cycle. Like this. Now we should have a perfect loop. Now just stretch your keyframes, you're just going to select all of them and pressing "Option", click on the last one, just drag it where you need it to be and there you go. Magic and no math involved. We have the base for our animation. I'm going to select the key and press "F9 or Function 9" to ease and then actually get into the graph editor and accentuate the easing a bit, because I want the animation to really mark this stops on each of the words. I like it. We're done with the text animation and we're just going to add one more thing in the center. It's going to be a sun animation and we're going to use polar coordinates once again to animate it. To do that, we're going to need a new comp. Just make sure you're in the right folder and create a new composition. I'm going to name this one Sun precomp, same size as before and same length. Press "Okay". Let's add a new shape layer and name it base. I'm going to use the shape tool and a fill in gold. Just make sure you're centered and create your square. Then I'm going to go in and change the size so that it fits the comp in width and is half of the size in height. So 1,800 by 500, then press "V" and while holding Shift and Command, drag your shape to the top so that it snaps to the upper edge. We have the base of the Sun and this is going to warp into a circle. Now we need the rays. I'm going to create a new shape layer and rename it rays. This time we are going to use the pen tool to create a triangle. First create a line, then hold Shift to make the last one and that's going to make it equidistant to the first two points. Then pull this one down and you want it to reach about the bottom of the comp like this, then double-click on the shape and make sure it's anchor point is centered. Press "Y" and move it if needed. We're talking about the anchor point for this shape, not the shape layer. Then I'm just going to make it a bit thinner like this. Now let's make some copies. First you're going to bring your ray to the side while holding Shift to stay aligned and you want it to be flush against the side of the comp, but just make sure it's not overlapping it either. Like this. Now there's this really cool thing in shape layers that allows you to make copies of your shapes. We're going to add a repeater and I don't think I need to explain how this works. You can choose the number of copies, I'm going to make it 10. Then in transform repeater, you can basically change everything about how your copies are laid out. The position, the scale, the rotation, we're just going to focus on the position here. I want my 10 copies to fill the comp in width. Let's see, maybe just one more pixel. Yeah, like this. Now that I'm sure that they're evenly spaced out because both of these are touching the sides. I'm actually going to go back to my shape and make it even thinner and it's just a preference so you don't have to do it. Let's go back to, we all start, and to get a better view of what we're doing and it's important to precomp and add in the effect. So rect to polar 100 percent. Let's also scale it down to something more reasonable, so let's say 25 percent. Yeah. Now we have our Sun and I just want to quickly animate the rays and for that, we're going to use the wave warp effect. I've covered it pretty extensively in my previous class. But basically, it's an effect that generates some waves on the surface of your layer. Let's go to "Effect" and add a "Wave Warp" to the rays. Right now the direction is set to 90 degrees, so the waves are going to go this way. I want it to be vertical, so I'm going to change it to 180. Then I'm going to change the width. I want something a bit bigger, so let's make it 182. Let's see what we have. Yeah, nice. I'm just going to change the speed 2.5 and if you want to experiment with the speed and want it to loop, I would recommend making sure that it does work. I know 0.5 and once again work for four seconds, but if you have a different length, just make sure. Let's go look at what the Sun looks like and, we all start. That's nice. I just want my rays to be even thinner, I'm sorry, this is the last time I promise. Yeah, that's better. There it is. It's complete. It's done, which means that we've officially finished animating the whole project. Congrats, let's go load a full rest preview in the main comp so that we can celebrate what we've accomplished with this project. Here they are, I'm super happy with the stickers. I hope you are too. Now all that's left to do is to add the finishing touches and export and then you'll be done with the class.
21. Final Touches: So our animation is looking great. It's done, it's complete. I'm just going to show you a few effects I always add to mine, just to give it a little bit more character. You could definitely export your animation from here, no problem. I think I'm just going to add a few things. First, I'm going to add some white dust using the technique that we used in the warm up. For that, press "Command Y" to create a new solid, name it white dust. The size is correct, and the color doesn't matter so press "Okay." Then let's go to Effect, Noise and Grain, and Fractal Noise. Fractal Type, Basic Noise Type, Linear. For their contrast, I'm going to make it 1,000. For the brightness, let's make it minus 450. Then go to Transform and I'm going to make this scale 20. This is going to be pretty subtle, right? This is tiny, but I like it and I think it adds character. You could also play around with the complexity, but I'm good with this. Then you're going to go to the Evolution Option and hold Option and click on the "Stopwatch" to add an expression to the Random Seed. Then type in time times 6. Let's see what it looks like. Yeah, nice. Now we can close this and set the Blend Mode to Add, and this is pretty strong. Let's change the opacity and make it 50 percent. Let's preview. Nice. If you want a stronger effect, feel free to play around with the brightness to add some more dust. Next, I'm going to apply my usual mix of effects that I always apply to my animations, and I've saved them in here in the presets. If you have never used presets before, they're really useful when you do a lot of animation. If I wanted to create a new one, all I would have to do is select my effect or multiple ones, and just go to Animation and save it. It will also save the Keyframe Animations, which is super useful. If I want to use it again, I can just go here and apply it to a new layer. About these effects, I am not going to over-explain everything because this isn't the topic of the class, but feel free to explore and dig in on your own time. First, let's create a new adjustment layer, so press option "Command Y". I'm going to name it Grain and add in my presets right here. In here we have two-grain effects with different parameters for the intensity, size, softness, and everything. Also, they have two different blend modes. This one is set to Film, this one to Multiply, and that allows me to balance the grains on the lighter tones like this and on the darker ones. If you want to dig in more, feel free to do that. I'm going to add another adjustment layer, so press option "Command Y", and I'm going to name this one hand drawn look. This effect, I actually explained in-depth in my previous class, which is Animator Illustrations in After Effects. If you want to know the specifics, I would recommend watching Chapter 10 of that class. It's three minutes long and we'll fill you in on everything you need to know. Let's add it in. This one has two Turbulent Displace effects. It's an effect that's going to roughen the edges of shapes, and so that, it changes randomly. In the Evolution options, I've added a time expression on the Random Seed. I have two different ones because the amount and the size are different and their complexity too. I think that's it. Then we have a Posterize Time effect set at 12 frames per second. I always animate at 24 frames per second, but for some exports, I like to set it to 12 afterwards because it just makes it feel more like traditional animation. Since the last class, I actually added an Unsharp Mask that you can find in Blur and Sharpen. This one is here because I noticed that the Turbulent Displace effect tended to make things a little blurry, so the Unsharp Mask just helps to bring back those crisp edges. Then it's up to you, if you want to personalize your animation further, you could definitely add some Drop Shadows to the stickers. You can go to Layer and Layer Style and add a Drop Shadow and make it really sharp. You could also add some animated paper texture effects. I know that Ben Marriott actually has an awesome YouTube tutorial about it if you want to check it out. I'm going to stop here. I'm actually going to mask half of the effects for you to see the difference and load a preview. There it is. You have decide side and without the effects. It's pretty much up to you what you decide to do. Now that I've showed you a few ways to add some character to your design, I think I'm just going to remove the masks and show you how to export, and then we'll be done.
22. Exporting & Conclusion: All right, so let's export the animation. Once again, I'm really happy with this animation. I hope you are too. This part is going to be really short, I'm just going to show you how to export. For that, we're going to use Adobe Media Encoder. If you've downloaded After Effects, you should have it too. I'm going to stop the preview and go to composition and add to Adobe Media Encoder render queue. You should have this window open up. To export for the web or social media I would recommend using H.264 in the drop-down menu over here. It's an export format that's going to give you an MP4 file, which is perfect for the web and usually also on the smaller end for the size. In terms of export settings, I would recommend opening this menu by clicking the "H.264" and then going into the video tab and changing the bitrate encoding to CBR if you can make the target bitrates around 20, but do check on your estimated file size. If you have a limit, then press "Okay". Then here you can choose where to export your file. I'm going to go into my Skillshare folder and then in the export, rename it, press "Save", and then click the green arrow, and you're done. There it is. I'm really happy with what we created using the different effects and techniques. I hope you enjoy the class. I hope you had fun. Here are a few animations I created recently using the same effects and techniques. Hopefully that can give you some inspiration to create your own. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, if you're stuck on something, please write me in the discussion tab. You can include screenshots of your problem and I'll be happy to help you out. All right, so thank you so much for taking my class. I can't wait to see your projects. Bye.
Manon Louart, Motion Designer and Illustrator
