Need help finding animation tutorials/classes for this style?

November 8, 2013 1:06 PM

Hi Everyone! All of my clients are asking for this style of animation/screen casting (SFW): http://youtu.be/RYZ7IkboW7M It's the manic screen twisting animation with text and simple images displayed over basic color backgrounds. I am moderately skilled in After Effects (and own the suite) so I'd love to accommodate them, but I am more accustomed to creating explosions, light sabers and monsters than this kind of stuff. I would like to know if anyone knows of specific online classes or easy to follow tutorials for this specific style/type of animation? I've found many After Effects tutorials, but I'm looking for something specifically geared to creating a video similar to the one posted above. I am happily prepared to pay for these as I really need to be somewhat proficient in this by early 2014. Thanks a million!
posted by MeetCleaverTheatre to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Can't point you to anything specific but your search term is aftereffects kinetic typography tutorial.
posted by Erasmouse at 1:22 PM on November 8, 2013

Best answer: Video Hive has a library of After Effects Infographic files (and other types of After Effects files) that might be worth looking through. They're licensed for commercial use but sometimes it's helpful to take apart an appropriate project file and see how it's done.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:35 PM on November 8, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks so much Erasmouse! I had no idea what that style was called. This will help immensely in tracking down some good tuts! Cheers!
posted by MeetCleaverTheatre at 1:35 PM on November 8, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks DarlingBri! That link is incredibly helpful. :)
posted by MeetCleaverTheatre at 1:39 PM on November 8, 2013

Best answer: If you own the suite does that mean you also own Illustrator? If so you should play with that, too.

If I do stuff like this, I'll usually create elements in Illustrator, place them in sequence on the AE timeline, then animate the transitions last. Get used to parenting, in extreme cases you can add one parent for each transition. (It's sometimes the easiest way to have each transition rotate or scale around a different anchor point.)

For words appearing I mask out each word and animate opacity for each one. It's pretty fast to just go through frame-by-frame hitting "." and "pgdwn" until you find the frame where you can't hear the first letter of a word, then pgup and set the mask opacity for that word. Since there's almost always plenty of space between letters, drawing the masks is fast, too.

For background gradients I like doing them by taking blurring photos and then playing with the colours in Photoshop.
posted by RobotHero at 2:11 PM on November 8, 2013

Best answer: I suggest a combination of AE, Illustrator, and download SureTarget 2. The tutorials on Video Copilot are very helpful. I threw this (YT self-link) together with only those three things for a school project.
posted by notaninja at 6:46 PM on November 8, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone who assisted! Your suggestions and infor was very very helpful and appreciated!
posted by MeetCleaverTheatre at 12:50 PM on November 11, 2013