After Effects On the Spot[c] Time-Saving Tips and Shortcuts from the Pros

Overview

When we got our copies of AE 6, the single feature that made us most impatient to rip the shrink-wrap off the package was the new Type Tool. Yes, you can now grab this tool, that sits innocently in the Tool Palette, click in the Comp Window and type-just like in Photoshop or Illustrator.

After Effects used to be weak in the text department. To achieve complex text-based animation, especially if we needed to animate text character-by-character, we turned to third-party plugins like Boris Graffiti or Digital Anarchy's Text Anarchy suite. Now we only need After Effects, which is now, in our opinion, the most advanced text-animation tool on the market.

But with power comes complexity. The rules for animating text are different from any other sort of animation in After Effects. This chapter will help you sort out your Ps from your Qs, and by the time you're done reading it, you'll think text is as easy as ABC.