after effects letters animation

Question

Hi guys I am pretty new in after effects. Please guide me to create something like this.

Effects's names etc.

Answer 1

To do that I'd use animated masks on each letter to reveal them. First I'd make the text layer, then one by one add masks. So for the M I'd:

• make a small rectangular mask just below the bottom of the lower left leg, the same width as the leg.
• Because we want to see the letter while we're animating the mask I'd set the mask mode to none temporarily.
• Turn on animation for the mask shape (hit m to reveal the mask shape property and click the stopwatch to turn on animation, or just hit alt / optshiftm)
• Next I'd move the playhead a couple of frames to the right and drag the top two vertices of the mask up so that they follow the shape of the leg. If the mask was set to add at this point you'd see a bit of the M's leg appearing. Align the top right vertex of the mask with the inside vertex of the leg, where it meets the downward stroke.
• move say, another frame right and drag the top left vertex of the mask so that it is aligned with the top left vertex of the M. A bit outside it is probably best.
• move another frame along and now add another vertex near the top left one. Move it to the top-right side of the first leg of the M
• move this new keyframe and the old top-right keyframe to reveal the first downward stroke

…and so on. Basically you just reveal the character with a mask. Remember that between keyframes mask vertices always move in straight lines. So to get them to move in a curve you need to add lots of intermediate keyframes. You can also use smart mask interpolation to help.

In the video above it happens twice, so you can just copy the layer, set the opacity to 50% and start it a few frames earlier.

Answer 2

There are actually three different effects here. All are custom rather than canned and will require intermediate animation skill to get a similar look and feel.

The first is just an animated reveal like stib already did a great job describing, so I won't cover that again.

The second part appears to be a mix of kerning, scale, vertical positions on a wave and a bounce, though that might just be reducing the influence of the wave on vertical positioning. Kerning is the space between letters and it gets smaller over time while the vertical position is being offset on a wave that starts at the center. There might also be a slight vertical bounce at the end. The letters also get bigger as they come in. Additionally there is a quick fade in at the start.

The third part is a stretch and bounce and will likely require the most artistic animation skill. The image is animated along the vertical axis to create the bounce and then it is stretched along the vertical axis to give the illusion of it jumping. Timing this is key and can be rather tricky to get right as it's trying to apply the appearance of locomotion to a static object.