You can do a lot inside After Effects. And one of the things I do most often in the program is use it to create really cool text animation effects. In this post, I’ll be sharing 3 text animation techniques that you can use if you are looking to level up your text animations inside After Effects.
The Neon Text Effect
Believe it or not, the neon text effect is pretty easy to accomplish inside After Effects. You can choose to create it yourself, or use a plugin. One of my favorite plugins is Video Copilot’s Saber plugin. This adds a saber glow effect to a layer inside After Effects. And one way you can use this plugin is to add it to a text layer to create a cool neon trace animation.
If you want to see how to accomplish this, check out my video below where I show how to do this step by step. In addition, if you want to see how to create a neon sign from scratch, I will also link that video below.
Hand Written Text Animation
One other pretty cool text effect is the custom hand written text effect. To accomplish this in After Effects, I create a mask around my text and use the Stroke effect to reveal the text layer. To see how to set this up, I’ve linked one of my tutorials below. There are also some bonus tips in this tutorial as I show how to use the Motion Sketch tool to create a custom animation path.
Text Reveal Animation
One of the most popular ways to animate text in After Effects is to use track mattes to reveal the text. Using this in combination with some Graph Editor keyframe finessing, and you’ll end up with a really nice and smooth text animation.
I’ll link one of my videos below where I show you how to set this up. This project below was for an awards graphics package that I designed. I also have some bonus tips in this video as I show you how to add some gold particles as well to the animation.
I hope these 3 techniques have helped you. If you have any questions about After Effects, feel free to leave comments in my YouTube videos. I create monthly live streams where I answer your most asked questions.
Otherwise, thank you so much for reading and have fun animating!