After Effects has a very powerful type engine for creating all kinds of dynamic type animations, but what if you want something a little more subtle? In this 10 minute tutorial learn how you can combine After Effects’ Opacity and Type Opacity to create stylish, cinematic type fades. Update: Peripatew Design has created an expression-driven preset that automatically fades the text in and out.

In this Adobe After Effects walkthrough tutorial we look at some key 3D techniques including seamless scene creation, 3 point lighting, shadows and reflections. I also demonstrate how Digital Juice’s Color Rules plug-in can be used to fast track the colorisation of your comps.

Special Deal for Motionworks Readers

Color rules is 69.95 but for a limited time Motionworks readers can get it for just 59.95. Use the code DJCRMC392 on checkout.

Watch Tutorial (mp4)  | Download Project

Recently I needed to create a look where rows of text animated vertically down, fading on in turn as they moved . This could have been achieved in a number of ways using multiple layers and keyframes, but that would have not only added complexity to the composition, it would have made updates and versioning more time consuming. With an understanding of how After Effects’  Type tool works, and a little consideration, I nailed it with one layer and no masks or precomps.

Grab the Animation Preset

After Effects Type tool is amazingly powerful, and when you understand the basics it’s straightforward to create a wide range of  type animation styles. Before you start duplicating layers and adding loads of keyframes or even using expressions, consider how you might be able to achieve the look with a single text layer.

If you find yourself confused by the type tool, check out this tutorial where I demystify Animator Groups, Animator Properties and the Range Selector – the key areas of the tool you need to know in order to master it.

Remember there are also a bunch of type categories in After Effects Animation Presets (Animation > Browse Presets). As with all presets remember to use them as a starting point and add your own flair!

In this example (insert your own movie star name) the original preset had the letters jumping up one after the other. I added a 2 new Animator Groups for Position and set the Range Selectors so one word slid in from the right and one from the left. The z-position was animated using the After Effects’ Position transform property. Presets are also good to deconstruct once you have your head around the basic functionality of the tool.

So if  you’d forgotten or been avoiding the After Effects Type tool, get into it, it’s one of the many powerful tools in the motion designer’s After Effects arsenal.

COMING SOON, MovieType for Cinema 4D is almost here. In this sneak peak I explain what MovieType is and demonstrate a few of the many presets that will ship when MovieType is released soon.   Watch (flv) | Watch (mp4)

Green Zone

Motionworks recently featured a shot from the Green Zone promo here, created by team member Brett. Below is another example where Brett integrated 3D text (created in Cinema 4D) using The Foundry’s CameraTracker plug-in for Adobe After Effects.

This super variation, integrates various satellite shots, playing on a key theme in the film.

Crazy Heart

For Crazy Heart the supplied key art was portrait and cropped at the sides, rendering it useless for a landscape packshot. However, the high contrast colour grade used in the key art was striking, so I replicated in that in Photoshop, using a more suitable, ungraded still.

Ungraded shot

The final packshot includes the graded shot and a stock image of timber sourced from DarkNews. The timber echos the weathered and worn nature of the lead character and compliments the high contrast grade.

Final Packshot (minus date and order details)

A Fast Blur adjustment layer, adds depth-of-field over the right shoulder, and Red Giant Software Key Correct Light Wrap and Edge Blur help integrate the talent. Key Correct is not only for preparing shots for cleaner keys, but also for creating cleaner, more believable composites of pre-matted imagery.  Check out some training, including a Getting Started tutorial by me here. You can get a 10% discount using the code motionworks10.

The timber is also used for the text and background in the super. The font is Clarendon.

World’s Greatest Dad

World’s Greatest Dad was simple and fun. The text was laid out in 3D in After Effects, with a single letter dropping forward, reflecting the “damaged” nature of the son and the less-than-perfect relationship with his father.

I keyframed the rotation and position of the letters manually. Each letter was tweaked slightly to ensure they weren’t identical. A simple Shape Layer gradient for a floor and reflection on the text using Video Copilot Reflect works well to give it depth. The font is Bebas Neue.

Gentlemen Broncos

Gentlemen Broncos could have been a forgettable project but the inclusion of a few expressions really added some personality to the type animation. Gareth and I worked to together using a combination of keyframes and expressions to give the letters a natural, organic feel as they dropped into place. The bounce was created using the Decaying Bounce expression available at Motion Graphics Xchange. The strings are actually the Beam effect, linked via an expression to the Anchor Point of each letter. Check out this short tip on how to use Beam. The font was cut from key art, so please leave a comment if you can identify it.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is a good example of taking a concept from a tutorial, in this case Andrew Kramer’s Animating a Still tutorial, and making it your own. Here team member Gareth used techniques from the tutorial to animate a key art image from the film, giving what might have been a dull flat image, depth and dimension. The font is Helvetica Neue 93 Black Extended.

The super features Video Copilot’s Action Essentials 2 dust and heat displacement created using FX Factory Heat.

Over the coming months I’ll be showcasing graphics created using After Effects, Cinema 4D and a variety of plug-ins, by the team, some original and others influenced by existing spots.

In this excerpt from a recent Adobe E-seminar, we look at the new Align and Distribute to Composition and Orient Characters Independently features in Adobe After Effects CS5.

Watch tips

Watch Tutorial

Alexander of Amateurmedia.net has created a stylish new font named Typograph Pro. Also check some of the great usage examples created within Cinema 4D.

Fontfeed.com has an excellent column “Screenfonts” which discusses the use of fonts in movie posters.

Font Squirrel is a great source of high quality, free fonts.

This seemingly small but important oversight can make even the best work look average. There is plenty of information out there about type and kerning and why it’s important, what I’m wondering is why is this happening? Are designers not being trained properly? Are they under too much pressure to reach deadlines to be able to fine-tune? Is the type being left to the promo producer or editor to add in the edit suite? Is it laziness? What do you think? Are you paying attention to these kinds of details?