Logo Animation: Free After Effects Tutorial

Topics covered in this After Effects tutorial:

Working with Adobe Illustrator Files, Making a Dummy Comp Before Importing, Organizing the Timeline: Color Labels & Shy Layers, Animating Transform Properties: Scale, Position, & Opacity, Animating Multiple Layers Together, Creating Staggered & Sequential Animations, Exporting Transparent Video

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

In this exercise you’ll create a logo animation using a vector graphic made in Adobe Illustrator. As part of the Adobe family, Illustrator shares a special working relationship with After Effects. Layered files created in Illustrator can be imported into After Effects and converted into a composition, preserving its layers and layout.

Previewing the Final Video

1. Let’s see a preview of what you’ll be making. If you’re in After Effects, keep it open but switch to your Desktop.

2. On the Desktop, navigate to Class Files > After Effects Class > Logo Animation > Preview Movie and double–click Logo Animation.mp4.

3. Play the video and notice:

   • There are a series of letters that each animate in from the left by sliding over and scaling up.
   • The letter by letter animation is overlapping, so each letter’s animation starts before the previous one has completely finished.
   • The colorful boxes that make up the n icon are animated sequentially, with each color finishing before the next begins.

4. Replay the video if you need to, and close it when done.

Setting Up the Workspace

1. Launch After Effects.

2. Choose Window > Workspace > Standard.

3. Choose Window > Workspace > Reset “Standard” to Saved Layout to ensure all your panels are returned to their default locations and sizes.

4. If the After Effects window does not fill the screen, maximize it:

   Mac:	At the top left of the window, click the green button (the third button).
   Windows:	At to the top right of the window, click the Maximize button (the middle button).

Creating a Dummy Comp & Importing

When importing Illustrator and Photoshop file as Compositions, the dimensions are taken from the PSD or AI file but most of the other comp settings (duration, framerate, etc.) must come from somewhere else. These other settings are based on the last After Effects composition you had open, so to set them we can create a dummy composition before importing the files.

1. Choose Composition > New Composition (or click the New Composition button in the middle of the window).

2. Do NOT click OK until we say so! Set the following:

   • From the Preset menu choose HD • 1920x1080 • 29.97 fps
   • Make sure Resolution is set to Full.
   • For Duration type in 700 and hit Tab to set it 0;00;07;00 (7 seconds).
   • Click OK to create the composition.

3. In the Project panel, click on Comp 1 and hit Delete (Mac) or Backspace (Windows) to delete it.

   The main point of this comp was to set the framerate and duration for the Illustrator file we’re about to import.

4. Choose File > Import > File.

   Ways to Import Files

   Here are several ways to import files:

   • Choose File > Import > File.
   • Hit Cmd–I (Mac) or Ctrl–I (Windows).
   • Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on any empty area of the Project panel and choose Import.
   • Double–click an empty area of the Project panel.
5. Navigate to After Effects Class > Logo Animation > Media > images.

6. Click once on Noble Desktop Logo.ai to select it and:

   • Set Import As to Composition - Retain Layer Sizes.
   • Make sure Illustrator/PDF/EPS Sequence is unchecked.
   • Click Open (Mac) or Import (Windows).

   NOTE: Importing an Illustrator or Photoshop document as a composition converts the AI or PSD file into a native After Effects composition. This preserves the layout, layer naming, and other features so all you have to focus on in After Effects is animating.

7. In the Project panel, Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on the Noble Desktop Logo composition and choose Rename.
8. Rename it to Logo Animation and click on any empty area of the Project panel to finalize the name change.
9. Double–click on the Logo Animation comp to open it.

10. Choose File > Save As > Save As and:

    • Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Logo Animation
    • Name the file Your Name - Logo Animation
    • Click Save.

Organizing the Timeline: Color Labels & Shy Layers

When working in the Timeline, there are several features such as Layer Name, Label Color and the various layer switches can help you stay organized.

1. In the Timeline, select the noble-n layer.

2. Hold Shift and click on the desktop-p layer (at the bottom) to select all of the noble and desktop character layers.

3. To the left of any of the highlighted layers, click the color box in the Label column  and from the menu that appears choose Yellow.

4. Select the top layer named n7.

5. Hold Shift and click on the layer named n rectangle (this selects all the layers between them as well).

6. Click the Label color box and choose Blue.

7. We can hide some of the layers in the Timeline to simplify it, so we have fewer layers to scroll through. We can use Shy layers, which remain visible in the Composition panel, but are temporarily hidden in the Timeline.

   With the blue layers still selected, to the right of the layer names click the Shy switch . If you don’t see it and instead you see a Normal menu, go to the bottom of the Timeline and click the Toggle Switches / Modes button.

   All the blue layers’ Shy switches should now be .

   • means Shy (it will hide). It’s hiding its cute little face!
   • means Not Shy (it won’t hide)

8. Now that we’ve indicated which layers we want to hide, we must actually hide them. At the top of the Timeline, click the Shy button as shown here:

   

9. Now the Timeline should only have the yellow noble and desktop character layers.

   NOTE: To maintain consistency, the layers maintain their same numbering.

Animating Transform Properties: Position & Scale

Scale is one of the 5 transform properties that all visual layers possess. It controls the size of a layer, and can be set using a percentage (the default) or a more concrete unit of measure like pixels.

We’re going to animate with some exaggeration. The layers will “overshoot” their final position and size, and then seem to bounce back to their final appearance. Overshoot is a fundamental principle of animation, and can bring additional liveliness to your animations.

1. Hit Cmd–A (Mac) or Ctr–A (Windows) to select all the layers.

   It’s important to keep these layers selected until we tell you to deselect them!

2. Press the P key to reveal Position for the highlighted layers.

3. Hold Shift and press S to reveal Scale as well.

4. Move the playhead to 0;11

   We’re going to create an animation that lasts 11 frames. Because the layers were imported from Illustrator, we already have the complete logo designed how it should look when the animation is finished. Because of this, we are going to start by creating the end keyframe of the animation.

5. On the noble-n layer, click on the stopwatches next to Position and Scale.

   This adds keyframes to all the selected layers.

6. Move the playhead to the beginning of the timeline.

7. Hold Shift and hit the Left Arrow key twice.

   This moves all of the selected layers over by 10 pixels each time.

8. On the noble-n layer, set Scale to 0 (which does so for all the layers).

9. Play the animation so far.

   It does not look that good yet because we have not staggered the animations, but trust us it will look much better soon.

10. Now let’s add the overshoot. Move the playhead to 0;06 (6 frames).

11. With all the layers still selected, hold Shift and press the Right Arrow key twice.

12. On the noble-n layer, set Scale to 115
13. Play the animation to see the overshoot. It’s starting to look better.

14. With your cursor over the Timeline panel, press the ~ (Tilde) key to expand the Timeline panel to fill the window. The ~ (Tilde) key is at the top left of the keyboard, just above the Tab key.

15. Select all of the middle keyframes by dragging a selection box over the column of middle keyframes as shown below:

    

16. With all the middle keyframes selected, Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on any of them and choose Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease (or hitting the F9 key).

17. Press the ~ (Tilde) key again to return the Timeline to normal size.

18. Play the animation to see the easing. It’s very subtle, but it makes the overshoot bounce a bit smoother and more springy.

    NOTE: Easing adds some acceleration and deceleration to the animation. So the speed of the animation will slow down a little as it approaches the middle keyframe and then still be moving a little slower as it leaves this same keyframe. Think of it as “slow in” and “slow out”.

19. Press Cmd–tilde (~) (Mac) or Ctrl–tilde (~) (Windows) to hide all of the visible properties of the highlighted layers.

20. Choose File > Save or hit Cmd–S (Mac) or Ctrl–S (Windows).

Creating a Staggered Animation

Let’s stagger the character animations, so each letter animation starts a little after the previous one, creating a wave-like animation.

1. With the Timeline panel active, press Cmd–Shift–A (Mac) or Ctrl–Shift–A (Windows) to deselect all layers.

   We need to select the layers in a specific order for this to work, so we are going to re–select them again.

2. Click on the top noble-n layer.

3. Hold Shift and click on the bottom desktop-p layer to select them all.

   NOTE: The order in which the layers are selected, controls how they will be staggered. When you use Shift to select multiple layers like this, what is actually happening is that the application is selecting them individually from first to last.

4. Because this animation is 11 frames, we’ll give the letters an overlap of about half that and see how it looks.

   Move the playhead to 0;05

5. Press Opt–] (Mac) or Alt–] (Windows) to shorten the length of all the selected layers.

   Whenever you trim the Out point of a layer, the resulting duration is always 1 frame past the position of the playhead. So the clip duration is now 6 frames.

   NOTE: Opt–] (Mac) or Alt–] (Windows) trim the Out point of the selected layer or layers to the playhead, while Opt–[ (Mac) or Alt–[ (Windows) trims the In Point of the layer to the playhead’s current position.

6. Choose Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Sequence Layers.

   • Make sure Overlap is unchecked.
   • Click OK.

7. To jump the playhead to the end of the Timeline, press the End key if you have one (if you don’t, hold Fn and hit Right Arrow). If you prefer, you can drag the playhead to the end of the Timeline.

8. Press Opt–] (Mac) or Alt–] (Windows) to extend the length of all the selected layers to the playhead.

9. Play the animation to see the stagger.

   It’s improving, but this staggering is too far apart. It takes too long to play and is more of a letter by letter animation, rather than a continuous wave like we were hoping for. No worries, we can adjust it!

Adjusting a Staggered Animation

We’ve created a staggered animation but it isn’t to our liking, so let’s see how to fix it. We’re going to pretend that hitting Cmd–Z (Mac) or Ctrl–Z (Windows) a bunch of times isn’t an option, because in real-life project you can change your mind much later when undo is no longer available.

1. If you have deselected and reselected layers:

   • With the Timeline panel active, hit Cmd–Shift–A (Mac) or Ctrl–Shift–A (Windows) to deselect all layers.

   • Click on the top noble-n layer.

   • Hold Shift and click on the bottom desktop-p layer to select them all.

2. Move the playhead to the beginning of the Timeline.

3. Press [ to move the In point of each selected layer to the playhead.

4. Press Opt–] (Mac) or Alt–] (Windows) to trim the layers so that each now has a duration of just 1 frame.

   NOTE: If you wanted a longer stagger, you’d have to move the playhead over by how many ever frames you want the stagger amount to be.

5. Choose Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Sequence Layers.

   • Make sure Overlap is unchecked.
   • Click OK.

6. Press the End key if you have one (if you don’t, hold Fn and hit Right Arrow) to jump the playhead to the end of the Timeline. If you prefer, you can drag the playhead to the end of the Timeline manually.

7. Press Opt–] (Mac) or Alt–] (Windows) to extend the length of all the selected layers to the playhead.

8. Play through the animation, which is much better now!

   With the tighter staggering, the animated letters now have more of a continuously moving wave effect we were looking for. The entire animation is also faster, so it doesn’t feel like we’re waiting for it to finish.

9. Choose File > Save or hit Cmd–S (Mac) or Ctrl–S (Windows).

Using Anchor Points to Affect Transform Properties

Moving on to the n part of the logo, let’s scale up the rounded rectangle.

1. With all the layers selected, click in the Lock column to the left to any of the highlighted layers.

   That will prevent us from accidentally messing up this part of the animation.

2. At the top of the Timeline, click the blue Shy button to unhide the n layers.

3. Hit Cmd–A (Mac) or Ctrl–A (Windows) to select all the unlocked layers.

4. Click the Shy switch to the right of any of the highlighted layers to disable shy.

5. Move the playhead to 0;15

6. Press [ to move the In point of all the blue layers to the playhead.

7. Hit Cmd–Shift–A (Mac) or Ctrl–Shift–A (Windows) to deselect all layers.

8. Select only the n rectangle layer.

9. Press S to reveal its Scale property.

10. Hover your cursor over the first Scale value until you get the hand slider .

11. Drag the hand slider left and right and watch the Composition panel to see how the scale of the rectangle layer changes.

    Notice how the rectangle scales from the middle.

    Layer transformations are based on the location of the layer’s anchor point. By default, imported layers have the anchor point in the middle. We want to scale this rectangle from the right side instead.

12. Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on Scale property and choose Reset.

13. In the Tools panel, choose the Pan Behind (Anchor Point) tool .

14. To the right of the Tools panel, check on Snapping.

15. In the Composition panel, drag the anchor point over to the right side (on the vertical middle point).

16. To the right of the Tools panel, uncheck Snapping.

17. In the Tools panel, choose the Selection tool .

18. Move the playhead to 0;25

19. Click on the stopwatch next to Scale.

20. Press I to jump the playhead to the In point of the currently selected layer.

21. Set Scale to 0

22. Hit Cmd–Right Arrow (Mac) or Ctrl–Right Arrow (Windows) 6 times to move the playhead six frames to the right.

    NOTE: If you have a full keyboard, you can use the Page Up and Page Down keys to move the playhead 1 frame forward or back.

23. Set Scale to 115

24. Ctrl–Click (Mac) or Right–Click (Windows) on the middle keyframe you just created and choose Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.

25. Play the animation to see the rounded rectangle’s scaling.

    Cool, but it will look better when the colored boxes aren’t there (they’ll appear after the rectangle has animated in).

Creating a Sequential Animation

The n icon in the logo is composed of a series of colorful boxes. To create an interesting contrast to the wave-like overlapping animation of the letters, let’s animate the colors sequentially (one after the other with no overlap).

1. Select the n1 layer

2. Hold Shift and click on the n7 layer to highlight all of them.

   It’s important to keep these layers selected until we tell you to deselect them!

3. Move the playhead to the beginning of the timeline.

4. We want the color box animations to start after of the rectangle is done.

   Press the K key 3 times to jump the playhead to the last of the keyframes on n rectangle.

   NOTE: J & K are used to move between keyframes. J jumps the playhead to the next visible keyframe. K jumps to the previous visible keyframe.

5. Press [ to move the highlighted layers to the playhead.
6. Press S to reveal Scale for all the selected layers.

7. We’re going to create a short 2-frame scaling animation for the boxes.

   Press Cmd–Right Arrow (Mac) or Ctrl–Right Arrow (Windows) twice to move the playhead forward two frames.

8. Click the stopwatch next to Scale for the n7 layer (which adds keyframes to all the selected layers).

9. Press I to jump back to the beginning of the layers.

10. On the n7 layer set Scale to 0

11. Let’s stagger the animation. Press Cmd–Right Arrow (Mac) or Ctrl–Right Arrow (Windows) to move the playhead forward a single frame.

12. Opt–] (Mac) or Alt–] (Windows) to trim the Out point of the highlighted layers to 2 frames in length.

13. Before we sequence the layers, let’s sure they’re selected in the correct order. With the Timeline panel active, press Cmd–Shift–A (Mac) or Ctrl–Shift–A (Windows) to deselect all layers.
14. Select the n1 layer

15. Hold Shift and click on the n7 layer to highlight all of them.

16. Choose Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Sequence Layers.

17. Confirm that the Overlap switch is not enabled and click OK.

18. Press the End key if you have one (if you don’t, hold Fn and hit Right Arrow) to jump the playhead to the end of the Timeline. If you prefer, you can drag the playhead to the end of the Timeline manually.

19. Opt–] (Mac) or Alt–] (Windows) to extend the Out point of the highlighted layers.

20. Press Ctrl–tilde (~) to hide the properties of all the highlighted layers.

21. Click the arrow next to the n rectangle layer to hide its properties.

22. Play through the completed animation. Sweet!

Exporting Transparent Video

Animated logos are commonly used in video editing apps either by themselves, or overlaid on top of video. For that type of workflow, we can export the animation as video with an alpha channel (to maintain transparency).

1. At the bottom left of the Composition panel, click the Toggle Transparency Grid button .

   The checkerboard represents transparency, so our background is already transparent.

2. Click the Toggle Transparency Grid button  again.

3. Move the playhead to 5;00

4. Press N to move the end of the Work Area bar to the playhead.

   The Work Area bar controls the area of the Timeline that previews and exports.

   Work Area Bar Keystrokes

   Press B to move the beginning of the Work Area bar to the playhead.

   Press N to move the end of the Work Area bar to the playhead.

5. Choose File > Export > Add to Render Queue (or Composition > Add to Render Queue).

6. In the Render Queue panel, confirm that Render Settings is set to Best Settings.

   This will produce the highest quality output.

7. Next to Output To click on Not yet specified and:

   • Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Logo Animation > Exports.

   • Name it Your Name - Logo Animation (You can ignore the file extension. If you delete it, it will add it back once you close the dialog.)

   • Click Save.

8. To the right of Output Module, click the arrow and choose High Quality with Alpha.

9. At the top right of the Render Queue panel, click the Render button.

   When the rendering is done, you’ll have a video with a transparent background that you can use in video editing projects or even other After Effects projects.

10. Choose File > Save or hit Cmd–S (Mac) or Ctrl–S (Windows).

    Mac users: If you open the exported file in Quicktime you’ll get an error and can’t play it. Refer to the next section for how to view the file (if you want to).

Optional Bonus: Previewing a Video With Alpha (Transparency)

Programs for watching videos (like QuickTime Player or VLC media player) typically don’t preview videos with alpha channels very well. If you want to see video with a transparency, you’ll normally want to view it in a video editing or graphics app.

1. In After Effects, choose File > Import > File.

2. Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Logo Animation > Exports.

3. Double–click the Your Name - Logo Animation file to import.

   NOTE: The file extension will be different on Mac or PC. When using the Lossless preset, Macs default to creating a QuickTime file while PCs create an AVI.

4. In the Project panel, double–click on the Your Name - Logo Animation video file.

5. A Footage panel will open where you previously saw the Composition panel.

   At the bottom left of the Footage panel, click the Toggle Transparency Grid button .

6. Press the Spacebar to play the video file on its transparent background.

7. You’re done, so choose File > Close Project (and don’t save the changes).