I animated the bar’s scale parameters to match it up with the anchors (which took a little fiddling with in the keyframe editor) and then applied the CC Light Sweep preset to the bar graphic and the Text Sequence – Magnify preset to the text, adjusting the offset value until I got the look that I wanted. In the original composition, I left the bar, the video footage and the text. So once I imported each of the layers into After Effects, I “pre-composed” the two anchors and also the little placeholder graphic and animated the position of the two anchors and the opacity of the placeholder. I also wanted to add a little life to the bar while it was open using a light sweep, but I wanted the light sweep to just effect the bar itself that the text was on, not the anchor graphics on each side. I actually used a composition within a composition for this and I’ll explain why… Here’s my simplified version in it’s own composition (with the KeyLight preset already applied: So I took the basic elements of the bar graphic – the two anchors on each side and then the bar with the text – and created them as separate layers in Illustrator (see my other video on that) and then imported them into After Effects. Once the intro is over, I wanted Mike’s head to fade out and then the bar to close back up. My idea was to have the graphic appear in the middle of the screen, flicker on with the music intro, and then open up with the bar in a scroll-like fashion. I wanted the beginning of the video to start with Mike’s talking head appearing over an animated bar similar to a sportscast on TV with a similar look to the graphic below, but not quite so sophisticated since I’m not the best artist around. If you prefer this as a video tutorial, just scroll down to the very bottom of the post. I’m going to compile this and several other posts into a series I’m calling “How I Went from Knowing Nothing About Adobe Premiere and After Effects to Producing a Client Video in 2 Weeks.” How’s that for a short, catchy title? Since this effect was the last item I did in the video, I’m going to lead off with this one (and reorganize later!).
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