Kinetic type in After Effects

Rich Young

10 years ago

Kinetic typography can be considered a storytelling technique that broadly engages the literal Illustration, rhythmic embellishment, personification, and disruption of language. In general, type-in-motion is increasing popular, and although kinetic type per se may have reached it peak a few years ago (don't tell Creative Bloq), there are many handy resources for After Effects users if the need arises, including a specialized tool that works inside AE.

Kinetic typography as a storytelling technique was the theme of an earlier roundup by Lauren M. Rabaino at the journalism blog 10,000 Words. A good example of something simple but effective is from Matt Rogers using the words and voice of Stephen Fry (Rogers later offered his own tutorial).

Years later, kinetic typography may seem overdone — depending on how many “inspiration” roundups you seen. But there is a new kinetic type tool for After Effects, TypeMonkey (below), to speed much of the busy work.

Roundups had been offered by Topher Welsh and by Motion Design Love on some Tuesdays, and more recent collections may be spotted in YouTube Kinetic typography – Topic or the Vimeo Channels NiceType and Kinetic Typography — as well as on Creative Bloq (note the comments are 2 years old on their latest March 2014 roundup). A great Type In Motion class resource and tumblr blog were offered by Graham Huber some time ago, and AE Help offers inspecific guidance, for example in Text animation presets (see a gallery or use Bridge to preview) and Examples and resources for text animation.

There's really no limit on what type and effect tools you might use, like the Reshape effect, typewriter effects, circles and spirals, or expressions for text (Chris and Trish Meyer or Andrew Devis). But note that few of the tutorials will go beyond the styles now popular in this genre. While kinetic type does seem like animated “word clouds,” you really don't see similar stuff as found with Tagxedo, which took Wordle a step beyond with styles & stencils.

In any case, now there's a good number of techniques explained in many After Effects tutorials for this type of animation, including earlier ones like Design Rhythmic Motion Typography in After Effects and Create an Animated Homage to Bruce Lee by Markus Gustafsson on AEtuts+, and Elrond Hubbard's tutorials on Crooked Gremlins:

If you want to skip the smorgasbord of random tutorials, there's an entire course available for this offered by Angie Taylor, Kinetic Typography Techniques for After Effects at Lynda.com. Skillshare has another course, The Ultimate Guide to Kinetic Type in After Effects by Jake Bartlett. Here's a sample and intro:

In Create a Kick Drum Kinetic Type Animation, Brad Magnus showed how to use iExpressions and 3D Extruder to make a sound syncronized kinetic type animation. See also Kinetic Text Expressions for AE from Danny D.

Kinetic Typography Tutorial from Jesse Rosten is handy, but is not for fresh beginners:

VFXbro posted Basic Typography & Motion Graphics, which is bite-sized and chewy:

ECAbrams posted Swinging Text (motion typography technique) Tutorial (check out his video on Shape Arrays too). Meanwhile, Mike Borup showed a couple of moves in A Quick and Dirty way to do motion typography:

If you want to transgress the unwritten law (it's cruel but fair), try out Animate 3D Text Around Corners in AE to learn how to set up 3D type objects that can animate at angles in 3D space. There may be for other 3D text that might work too, so see 3D Text in After Effects: A Updated Survey of Methods on pseudo 3D and beyond.

School of Motion later posted a long 2-part video tutorial, Neverending Kinetic Type. Here's a sample:

To make things go much quicker (depending length and complexity), take a look at TypeMonkey: a kinetic type tool, which discusses a newer AE script tool by Dan Ebberts & Orrin Zucker that generates complex kinetic type animations, camera included, which are dynamically tied to markers for easy customization. See also Eran Stern's Tips and Tricks for Kinetic Typography in After Effects using TypeMonkey script for RTL type issues and also a tutorial in Hebrew. Here's some of TypeMonkey, including some of the moves it generates:

There a many decent and some attractive templates available, if the tutorials or TypeMoney don't fit the bill, or inspire you. See for example, Kinetic Typography Pack from Videohive.