Kinetic Typography: A Basic Tutorial.

Kinetic Typography

Disclaimer: You should already have a basic knowledge of After Effects and its interface before using this tutorial.

Hey guys. Today I am going to go over the basics of kinetic typography in the form of a lyric video. The song I am using is Jaded by Disclosure. Let's get right into the learning!

The Background

The background I am using here is very very very basic. Once you have all the words animated you can go back and customize it to make it your own. To make the background above, I just used a green solid and added a ramp to create a shadow around the edge of the screen. My priority right now is to animate the words.

The Audio

Once you have your audio, import it, drag it into your composition, select it, and press "l" twice to reveal the waveform. The waveform is very useful when making a lyric video because it allows you to see the beat and when words are spoken. It makes timing the words easy.

The Text

As for the text, it is up to you to choose your style. Usually I use Century Gothic or Helvetica. Choose your stroke, text size, and spacing. Make sure to make each word a separate layer. We want to animate every word individually. For this animation we are going to animate the position of the text and just have the words move on to the screen. Place the words in the position they will end up in at the end of the animation. 

The position at the end of the animation

The Animation

Once you have placed your text, highlight the first word that is being animated and press "p." This will bring up the position animator. Find the place in the song where the word is said, drag the time indicator to that place on the timeline, and press the stopwatch by the graph that is on the left of the word "position."A diamond should appear where the time indicator is. This is a keyframe. Make sure to easy ease in these keyframes. It will help the animation look much smoother. Then, drag the time indicator back the smallest bit, and move the word to its starting position. Another keyframe will be created. Make sure to easy in this one as well. You could end up with something like this:  

Keyframes

Starting point outside the frame and the endpoint inside the frame.

Make sure to RAM preview it by pressing this button on the upper right to make sure it lines up with the word: 

Once it lines up, repeat the same step for your other words. The trick here is to have a group of words appear on the screen at a time with the same animation, and then transition to another animation that introduces the words such as opacity, scale, etc. The possibilities with kinetic typography are endless. This is just one basic way to do it.