Up Next 2
In this portion of our two-part exercise, we’ll add animated text to our interstitial using the Adobe After Effects 6.0 Text Tool (to read part one, click here).
The Text Tool is probably the biggest improvement to this version of After Effects. Before, we were relegated to using Basic Text, or creating our text in Photoshop. With After Effects 6, we have a great many ways to create text as its own layer, and even better animate the individual characters.[an error occurred while processing this directive]Step 1: Open up the Up Next project from the last exercise, or if you are like me, you rendered out the entire clip to save on RAM. In either case the project or movie should be on the bottom most layer and all of our text will go on top.
Step 2: I’ll begin by having the Up Next title pop up on the screen one letter at a time. Using the Text Tool (Command+T or Control+T) type the words Up Next in the Comp Window. If you have the Auto Open Palettes option checked in the Tools Palette, the Character Palette should open automagically.
The Character Palette should look very familiar to those of you who have worked in Photoshop before. For this exercise, I used the Century Gothic font with the font color being black and the border being the same color as our original dirty yellow circle. To beef up the text, I changed the text width to 125%
Step 3: One problem you may have when working with the Text Tool is switching back and forth to the Selection Tool. To do this quickly, I simply click off the layer in the Timeline and press the V key to go back to the Selection Tool. It would be nice if there were a keyboard combination to do this automatically for you, but for right now I don’t know of it.
With the Selection Tool, position the Up Next text.
Step 4: When you add text to your composition, it creates a text layer in the Timeline. When you twirl down the Layer triangle, you will see a new option available to you. The Text Property allows you to animate the text over time. I have touched on this before in this tutorial, and
In the Switches Column, click on the Animate triangle and select Scale. This will create an animator for that layer. After Effects 6.0 allows you to create multiple animators for your text layer and to keep yourself from becoming too confused, you can highlight the animator name in the Timeline, press the Enter key on your keyboard and enter a unique name (like Scale Animator).
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