Animate text layers in After Effects using keyframes, easing, and masks to create smooth, staggered transitions. Understand how to refine timing, duplicate animated layers, and control visibility using masks for more efficient animation workflows.
Key Insights
- Adjusting animation timing in After Effects is made easier by selecting multiple keyframes and using Option-drag (Alt-drag on Windows) to proportionally stretch or compress their spacing without disrupting the animation's structure.
- Masks play a key role in controlling layer visibility, and their properties can be edited using the selection tool or transformed with bounding boxes; the color of a mask’s edge is customizable for better visibility during editing.
- Noble Desktop emphasizes the importance of setting up animations before applying masks, especially when two parts of a composition animate in sync, ensuring consistency and simplifying the animation process.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
So this is a 10 frame animation, okay, so we have 10 frames. So again, the headline is in its finished resting position. So I'm going to make a keyframe at the end of the animation, 10 frames in this case.
I go to the beginning, I'm just going to change the position either here in properties, here, or just drag the layer if you want, no problem at all. If you drag a layer, make sure you use the selection tool. If you want to use the arrow keys, up and down, left and right arrow keys, move the layer one pixel at a time.
Shift, move 10 pixels. If you want to do that, no problem at all, whatever, okay. I'm going to move it so it's about halfway between, or like maybe towards the boss second line, there we go, okay.
And then I play it, I'm bored. So six, six would be about halfway through this, by the way, okay. So I know that the bottom of the Y has ends resting on that line.
If I just slide it up above that line, I've got my overshoot. Again, I'm going to right click your assistant, easy ease that middle one, and I get that now, a little bounce up, okay. Now the instructions leave it 10 frames, but maybe you decide, you know, that's too fast, I want to slow that down.
Maybe I want to make it a 15 frame animation. Here's my problem, I'm going to zoom in on this, so I can see it a little better, by the way, okay. If you drag that keyframe to there, this one stays there, you got to figure out where the new position should go.
However, if you highlight all your keyframes, the property name does that. If you hold down option or windows ALT and drag the last keyframe, notice it stretches them, okay. We drag a keyframe, it physically moves the keyframe.
If you have multiple keyframes highlighted in option drag, or ALT drag the beginning or end, it stretches the space between them. So it keeps the same proportional distance, so it preserves the relationship of my keyframes like that, okay. Now, by the way, the problem with that is it's too slow, so I want it at 10.
If you want to change it, go right ahead, but it's cool. So the instructions have you do it at 10, because I thought the timing on that was nice, but if you want to change it, go right ahead, that's how you would change it, okay, so there's that. Now, because the two parts of this animate together, animate the same way, same fashion, same place, ending same place, we did the animation first before we started cutting it out, okay.
So for the record, I'm going to rename this one headline 1, or headline start, headline end, or whatever, it doesn't really matter, okay. I'm going to duplicate it, okay, which makes a copy of it exactly including its keyframes. Okay, I'm going to solo the headline 1 for a second, so that's the headline 1, okay.
Here's the mask, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that is now all that's visible on headline 1, okay. Because the mask is set to add, which means whatever's inside the mask is visible, anything outside the mask is hidden on that layer, and it's only that layer, by the way, it's solo, that's why you're seeing this. With the selection tool, double click on the point of the mask, or if you're a Photoshop user, command T, pre-transform, will give you a bounty box around the mask that allows you to resize it, okay.
It allows you to rotate it, which I not do in this case, and then to finalize the change I just made, it's returned on the keyboard, okay. It is possible to manually grab points of a mask and adjust them if you need to, with the selection tool as well, okay. But it's supposed to be rectangle.
I'm going to un-solo that, I'm going to headline 2, headline 2 is now highlighted, I go back to my rectangle tool, okay. What is the keyboard shortcut of the rectangle tool, I don't remember, Q, it's Q, it's Q, it's Q. And then I'll just draw a mask around, use social media, like that. And eventually, here's what you do, move that over.
So how many of us at all use social media, so they're staggered, that'll happen last, okay. Now notice the mask, when a layer is highlighted, you'll see the mask edge. If you do not see the mask edge that you made, check to make sure that button is turned on, because that button would hide the mask edge.
Sometimes it gets disabled by itself, by the way, I don't know how, okay. So that's there. Why is the mask yellow, and why is that mask, whatever color that is, red, actually.
It's the color in front of the mask on the layer. Now, by the way, now that you have a mask, you have transform properties and masks. Just like when we added an effect, we get effects.
So the layer prop groups increases, you add more things to them. We add an effect to that, you get that too, which we will drop shadow, by the way, okay. Always nice, that's a mask.
Now, if you want them, M on the keyboard reveals just the masks, okay. If you change that color, that would change the color of the edge. It doesn't affect anything, except making it easier for you to see or not.
So maybe blue is like easy for me to see against this, so maybe I want it to be blue. Okay, I want them both to be blue. So the color is randomly picked, honestly, so they'll cycle through colors.
I don't like that. This is nice, woohoo, like that, same with that. Okay, that's a mask.