Let’s Create some animated text in Adobe After Effects!

After Effects is universally accepted as the best software for motion graphics, and absolutely excels at animating text, though for the After Effects beginner its interface and multiple panels and settings can seem a little daunting.

Fear not, help is at hand!

With these handy, step-by-step After Effect tutorials you’ll learn how to add unique animation to your text in a matter of minutes!

These short video tutorials are especially for beginners and utilize only the built-in After effects tools – explaining each process in detail. They cover glitch effects, wiggling text and hand drawn text techniques.

Recorded in AE CC2018 these methods will work in all previous (or later) versions of After Effects.

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How to Create Glitchy Text in After Effects | Video Tutorial

Learn how to create glitch text animation in minutes! This short video tutorial for After Effects shows how to add glitch effects to your text (or logo) quickly and easily.

The glitchy effect has been popular ever since the digital age began, with the fear of computer errors, viruses and cyber hacking these strange distortion effects have become a common occurrence in technology related videos.

You may have seen glitch tutorials before but we’ve made (what we think) is one of the easiest methods!

We show how to use the Fractal Noise effect to automate a random, digital, animated texture and use this to distort our text using the Displacement Map effect. By using Adjustment Layers, which only affect elements underneath, you can easily control where you want to add glitches as well as the amount of distortion.

This video tutorial demonstrates the following basic After Effects skills :

Adding and Editing Text
Using the Fractal Noise Effect
Using Adjustment Layers
Using Displacement Maps
Animating Scale (Slow Zoom Effect)

Link to the YouTube video.

How to Create Handwritten Text in After Effects | Video Tutorial

Learn how to create hand drawn text animation in minutes! This short After Effects video tutorial shows how to properly animate your text in a handwritten style, using the Pen Tool.

It’s a tricky one to get perfect, and you can cheat by using a simple wipe, but hand drawn text always portrays elegance and sophistication. This would be a great technique for wedding titles, for instance.

We show how to use the Pen Tool to trace the strokes of your letters, forming a ‘mask’ path. This is then animated and used as a Track Matte to reveal your text as if it were drawn, by hand, onto the screen. As a keyframed animation you can then easily control the speed in which the text is ‘drawn’ by moving a single keyframe.

This video tutorial demonstrates the following basic After Effects skills :

Adding and Editing Text
Using the Pen Tool
Animating a Stroke Using Trim Paths
Using Layer Masks
Using Track Mattes

Link to the YouTube video.

How to Create Wiggly Text in After Effects | Video Tutorial

Learn how to create jiggly text animation in minutes! This short video tutorial for After Effects shows how to easily add wiggly, jiggly effects to your text.

Known in the animation industry as ‘boiling’ the wiggling text (and graphics) effect has been popularized by music videos and YouTube lifestyle vlogs.

We show how to use the Turbulent Displace effect to automate jittery movement and control the speed of this by adding a Posterize Time effect – which reduces the frame rate resulting in stop-frame style motion. To add further, subtle wiggle movement we show how to add simple wiggle expressions to the position and rotation of your text.

This video tutorial demonstrates the following basic After Effects skills :

Adding and Editing Text
Using the Turbulent Displace Effect
Using the Wiggle Expression
Using the Posterize Time Effect

Link to the YouTube video.

Let’s Create with Enchanted Media

Let’s Create is a series of video tutorials by Enchanted Studios aimed at beginner-intermediate level users of After Effects and Premiere Pro. We often use resources from the Enchanted Media website, home of high quality video templates and animation assets.

For more Let’s Create step-by-step video tutorials please subscribe to the Enchanted Media YouTube channel.