How are motion graphics like this created?

Question

A few days ago i was browsing a forum, and I came across this person's signature which was underneath their comment. I contacted them a few days ago because I was interested in how this sort of motion graphic was create but I had no response due to me only realising that they had been offline for over 2 years. I couldn't find out anything about them. But I wondered if anyone knew what I might have to search to find out how I would make this? Or if any of you knew how/what software is required to do it? I have after effects along with other adobe products but I doubt it's the only thing required.

Thanks in advance, David

Answer 1

Totally doable using After Effects as it comes out of the box.

I'd be making each letter a separate layer, turning that layer into a matte for the colour, which would be provided by the gradient ramp effect (there's a subtle red-purple gradient in the letters). The reveal would be done by either making an animated mask to control the moving colour, or the stroke effect with the brush size large enough to fill the strokes of the letters.

3D extrusion is done with the built-in 3D extrusion in the ray-traced 3d renderer. You'd have to pre-comp the coloured layer probably ifyou're using track mattes etc.

The movement would be a combination of keyframes and the wiggle expression.

There are probably a dozen more ways to do something like this–this is true for anything in AE.