Text ripple upwards by character...

[jcskeeter]

I've been given the task of re-doing the animation of this companies logo. The original was done in Flash by someone else and I'm re-doing it in AE. Basically he wanted the movement to be smoother with some different timing and I've eased some of the abrupt keyframes.

I've got the castle animating in just fine but for the life of me I can't figure out how to replicate "Thoughtshelter". I looked over the presets 3 times to try to find a way to get it similar with no luck. I tried creating a path for the text to sit on but I can't seem to wrap my head around how to keyframe it to get the same effect. It's like a cross between a snake and ripple effect that affects each individual character.

Below is the original for reference to see what I'm trying to replicate. It's really subtle and I thought it was going to be easy but I was mistaken... As always, any help would be great.

http://youtu.be/RrKLm8ngol4

 

[Derek Chingwell]

Each letter looks like it's keyframed to an end position, but also has a little bounce effect - probably duplicate keyframes to create a slight settling motion.

There's a horizontal wipe/reveal on the text that completes when the T settles into it's end position - this basically wipe/revels the Thoughtshelter logo/text.

Easiest option (IMO) would be to key frame 3 positions for the T, get the timing on those keys (start, finish, settle) then duplicate for each letter... and offset each by a few frames (you'll need to mess with the timings to get a match) and then add a mask that can act as the soft wipe/reveal.

Simplest options are often the best and, if it was originally Flash, it was probably done in a similar way initially.

 

[jcskeeter]

So of course hours later I figured it out. Ended up being able to use solely text animators. One animator for the initial position change. Another animator to make the anchor point offset and then come back. Really simple of course but just a matter of putting it together. I animated a mask on the text to reveal it over time. My version is below if you want to check it out. Pretty close I think.

http://youtu.be/d-u3Ax7uFQo