Producer - Motion Designer - Rigger
THE CHALLENGE was to create an animate template that allows anyone with zero After Effects knowledge too easily, and quickly create animated social media animations, in a variety of aspect ratio’s, and formats. THE SOLUTION was to use a series of expressions to lock down properties, and make all pre-defined animation dynamically adjust to inputted parameters. This animation uses sourceRectAtTime to determine the bounding box around text, and an expression that keeps the anchor point locked to the center of the text, regardless of how the text changes. Using those expressions, other layers of copy and then automatically adjust the their distance from each other dynamically.
The goal of this project was to give non-animators as much flexibility to input copy, change the styles of the copy, and move elements around without breaking the animation, as well as having the animation adjust based on what was inputted. THE RESULT has been a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of F5’s social posts, time saved by F5’s designers, accurate, and consistent content.
When extra lines are inputed, or the type size is increased, the overlapping layers of text automatically adjust, maintaining line spacing respective to what is inputted above and below it.
“boxTop = thisLayer.sourceRectAtTime().top; // Position of top of text box
boxHeight = thisLayer.sourceRectAtTime().height; //Height of textbox
//Offset anchor down from boxTop using half the height of the box
[value[0], boxTop + boxHeight ];”
Designers can select the template they’d like to utilize and easily input copy, background images, or iconography. This template allows designers to export social media animations, in less than 5 minutes, saving time and money for the business.
