Trying out text animation with After Effects: Lesson 16-3
It's a simple matter to add text to an After Effects Composition and then animate it. I'll give you a quick run-through.
1. | Open After Effects 7.0. |
2. | Select Composition > New Composition, select an appropriate video preset, give your composition a name, accept the other defaults, and click OK. |
3. | Select Composition > Background Color and give your composition a color other than the default black. |
4. | Select the Text tool, drag a text bounding box in your Composition window and type in some text. |
5. | Click the Toggle the Character and Paragraph Panels button in the Main Menu bar (highlighted in the next figure) to open those two panels.You can change the font choice, its size and color, and add strokes. The two color boxes in the upper right corner of the Character panel specify the fill and stroke color as well as whether they're activated (clicking the small box with the red diagonal line will turn off the display of whichever color box is in front). The drop-down list lets you select the type of stroke.[View full size image]![]() |
6. | Twirl down the text layer's disclosure triangles in the Timeline. |
NoteAfter Effects has the same keyframeable parameters found in the Premiere Pro Motion effect along with some additional options. You can add many, many other parameters to this text layer or to any other object in the Timeline. I offer up a few examples in the upcoming steps .

Working in 3D
Animating text on a curved line
1. | Delete the text layer (select it in the Timeline and press Delete). |
2. | Add a new text layer by clicking the Text tool, clicking anywhere in the Composition panel screen and typing in a line of text. |
3. | Click the Pen tool (to the right of the Text tool) and create a curved path using the same techniques you used in Adobe Premiere Proclick and drag to make one point with handles then click and drag elsewhere to create an additional point with handles. That adds what's called a Mask layer to the Timeline. |
4. | Twirl down Text > Path Options in the Timeline and select Mask 1 from the Path drop-down list.That drops the text onto the curved path you created in the Mask 1 layer.[View full size image]![]() |
5. | Click the Animate button (highlighted in the previous figure).Now you can work with all sorts of keyframeable animation parameters. For instance, Tracking adjusts the spacing between characters and First Margin denotes the text's placement on the curve. |
Text animation presets
After Effects lets you animate text on a per-character or per-word basis. You can animate text strokes to look like you're writing letters one by one. And you can add animation to text interiors using things like squiggly lines. There are so many text animation and effect possibilities, it would be impractical to go over them here.One quick way to get an idea of the possibilities is by using a preset. After Effects has about 300 text animation presets. Here's a brief preview.