Digital Tutors - Animating with the Forces of Nature in After Effects

Duration 3h 50m Level Advanced Project Files Included

Software used

After Effects 12.2.0.52, Illustrator 17.1.0

What you will learn

In this series of tutorials, we will learn how to create typographic animations that appear to be affected by different forces in nature.

We start out with magnetism, a force that is relatively easy to make look realistic. We then follow that up with animations for gravity, water and wind. As we move to the different forces, they ascend in difficulty. We learn how to create an expression and use a slider to control its properties over time. We also create an animation preset that can be reused later in the project.

We cover many different principles of animation and how they relate to the affectation of objects to give them a real-world feel. By the end of this training, you will be equipped to bring your typographic animations to life as well as save time while making them.

1. Introduction and project overview 00:54

2. Getting started with our Illustrator project files 07:46

3. Magnetism: Setting up and placing the letters in the comp 07:30

4. Magnetism: Controlling the first letter's rotation with an expression slider 09:36

5. Magnetism: Setting keys for the slider 08:09

6. Magnetism: Adding position and rotation keys to the other letters 06:37

7. Magnetism: Staggering keys and tying them all to a duplicate slider 07:55

8. Magnetism: Chromatic aberration for secondary animation 10:09

9. Gravity: Setting up to create the swinging effect 06:57

10. Gravity: Creating a swinging effect with 3D layers 09:16

11. Gravity: Creating and using a user defined animation preset 06:23

12. Gravity: Breaking a layer to move its anchor point 08:11

13. Gravity: Creating the fall and follow through animation 07:49

14. Water: Animating the position of the first letter 06:38

15. Water: Animating the rotation and orientation of the letter 'a' 04:55

16. Water: Setting up sliders for rotation and position idle wiggle control 06:47

17. Water: Reusing the keyframe data and editing it 06:56

18. Water: Editing the orientation for each letter 03:12

19. Water: Using CC Particle Systems II to create background bubbles 07:09

20. Water: Editing the particles system to make bubbles for the individual letters 08:36

21. Wind: Adding a Fill effect to the letters 02:39

22. Wind: Starting the 'w' animation 07:20

23. Wind: Fine-tuning the rotation 07:40

24. Wind: Adding orientation keys 04:44

25. Wind: Adding the CC Page Turn effect to show wind gusts 09:04

26. Wind: Setting up sliders for Y Position wiggle control 04:40

27. Wind: Starting the 'i' animation 08:20

28. Wind: Smoothing the 'i' animation 08:45

29. Wind: Creating the 'n' animation 07:29

30. Wind: Building the 'd' animation 07:56

31. Wind: Editing the page turn effect to include the final letter 07:56

32. Wind: Adding Turbulent Noise for wind direction reinforcement 06:31

33. Wind: Final polish 06:27