Home / Downloads / After Effects: Lower Third
February 15, 2007 by John Dickinson  | 10,360 views | Comments (14)

Lower thirds are graphics which are placed at the lower third of the screen and contain various information, most commonly the name of the person speaking. Here’s an example of one created using Illustrator, After Effects and Particular.  Example movie   Download project

14 Responses to this post
  • Jonas Hummelstrand
    February 15, 2007 at 10:24 am | Reply

    Hey John,

    What’s your opinion on how to remove lower-thirds? I have yet to see a good animation for removing a sign that doesn’t grab the viewer’s attention in a bad way, so I’ve always just faded them away…

  • JD
    February 15, 2007 at 10:43 am | Reply

    Good question Jonas. In this case the graphic was faded off. The danger with removing straps (and revealing them for that matter) is that it can get very tedious for the viewer very quickly especially if there are a lot of them. I think a fade or a well placed cut is all that is needed, but if you were to use an animation then keeping it simple is best. I purposely didn’t do it for this graphic for that very reason. JD

  • Junaid
    March 6, 2007 at 8:55 am | Reply

    hi John!

    i work in tv channel in pakistan … i wanna use this lower third for time tale can i use it!! :)

  • Mr T.
    March 7, 2007 at 12:34 am | Reply

    1: Nice AE project!!!
    2: What are you setting to render it out. To use above video in an aplication as FCP?

  • JD
    March 7, 2007 at 6:15 am | Reply

    Junaid, I appreciate you asking. Use the lower third but please do not use the logo. And how about customizing the graphic slightly? You might learn something new ;)

    Mr T, Thanks. To use this kind of graphic in FCP you would render it with an alpha channel so any codec or sequence that supports alphas is fine.

  • Junaid
    April 28, 2007 at 7:04 am | Reply

    yup !!! of course !! i will customize it and iam using our channel logo!! man u rock
    ur iz awesome iam ur fan!!! :)

  • Dustin Schmidt
    September 16, 2009 at 11:43 am | Reply

    John,

    I’d love to use this for a current project I’m working on (customized of course) and I wanted to ask your permission to do so. Let me know your response.

    Thanks,

    Dustin

    • John Dickinson
      September 16, 2009 at 1:11 pm | Reply

      Certainly Dustin, if you modify it then go ahead. Best, John.

  • Eric
    October 28, 2009 at 12:47 pm | Reply

    Hey John,
    I am an After Effects novice. If I have created a lower third, how do I set up the render so that it can be layered over video? I’ve tried to render it a few ways but it alwasy comes out with a black background.
    Thanks.

    • John Dickinson
      October 28, 2009 at 2:59 pm | Reply

      Hi Eric, you need to render with an Alpha channel. This means choosing an output module in the Render Queue panel that supports alphas. I use Quicktime Animation or Quicktime PNG, as well as TGA or TIFF sequences. When you choose one of these you’ll get the option to save as RGB + Alpha (Millions of Colors +). Let me know if that helps. Good luck, John.

  • goodie
    January 27, 2010 at 9:14 am | Reply

    hey you should consider making this into a tutorial its really cool and i would love to know how to do it.

    • John Dickinson
      January 27, 2010 at 2:27 pm | Reply

      Hi Chris, I’ll keep that in mind. Best wishes, John.

  • pedro s.
    March 13, 2010 at 8:22 pm | Reply

    hello lord dickinson…really great jobs…im from latin america …your work inspire me to make it best than now..im not good in english but don´t need it to let you know that everytime you do anything in your website to help people to learn.. everytime you touch the our sensibility with your sense of artist…you make a great contribution—–you have my respet sir…

    • John Dickinson
      March 14, 2010 at 2:35 pm | Reply

      Hi Pedro, I wish I was a lord, then I wouldn’t have to work so hard on this website ;) Best wishes, John.


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