In this tutorial from our creative services Greenville NC team, we’re teaching you how to create text animation After Effects - specifically, bouncing text animation. Mastering text animation After Effects is simple and fun, not to mention a great way of strengthening your skills as a designer within the Adobe platform! Follow along with our step-by-step tutorial for creating bouncing text animation After Effects, or check out our YouTube video to help guide you visually. Let’s get started!

Step One

First, type out your text. Our branding Greenville NC team recommends selecting a heavy-weight, sans serif typeface for this text animation After Effects tutorial.

Step Two

Outline the text by selecting “Create,” and “Create shapes from text” in the “Layers” drop-down tab. Delete the extra text layer that’s left behind after outlining the text for your bouncing text animation After Effects project.

Step Three

Search “Path” in the search bar to bring up the paths for each layer of text within your text animation After Effects.

Step Four

Turn on the path keyframe for each path. Then, select all keyframes and drag them to the timestamp where you want the letters to stop falling in the final product of your text animation After Effects.

Step Five

Pull the timer back to the start and pull the letters up above the canvas, so the animation will show them falling. Adjust the keyframe times and positions so that the text falls at your desired rate of speed. Next, stagger the speed and distance of different letters falling to get a more bouncy effect.

Step Six

Now it’s time to add the bounce for your text animation After Effects design! The success of the bouncing text animation relies on the words being close together. Pull your top word down to overlap the second word. Direct-select the anchor points of the bottom half of the letters in the upper text shape, slightly pulling the points up to squish the text. Repeat this process with the top half of the letters of the bottom word.

Step Seven

Pull the top word up, and squish the letters more. Pull the top half of the bottom word up to meet the bottom half of the top word. Loop this set of keyframes in conjunction with the previous set of keyframes. Unfortunately, After Effects doesn't allow you to use the loop-out expression for this effect, so you need to duplicate the keyframes. The creative services Greenville NC team at Red Shark Digital recommends adjusting the keyframes if you want the text to bounce at different rates.

Red Shark Digital | Creative Services Greenville NC Tutorials

You have successfully created a bouncing text animation After Effects design! With practice, creating text animation After Effects will become second nature. Our branding Greenville NC agency encourages you to seek additional exercises to build your graphic design toolkit through our creative tutorials. For even more valuable resources, visit the Red Shark Digital YouTube channel. Stay tuned for more tutorials from our branding Greenville NC agency!