Chapter8.Animating with Illustrator

Chapter 8. Animating with Illustrator

Making titles that engage the viewer is tough nowadays. Movie and television audiences often treat titles like commercials, during which it's normal for people to talk to others, check cell phone messages…basically do anything but actually read the titles. Sometimes all you need to do to keep people engaged in the titles you create is to add a little mystery that makes the viewer pay attention as they try to figure out what's going on. This chapter's project shows you one technique to accomplish just that.

In this chapter, you'll animate letters so they appear to be drawn onto the screen, sort of like an Etch-a-Sketch drawing. Part of this technique uses a workflow between Adobe After Effects and Adobe Illustrator that helps simplify a seemingly complex task: animating objects along the paths of an intricate font. You can take this technique and apply it to other things besides text, as long as those things contain paths.