in this lesson, we'll be creating this simple clean lower third. You can have access to this project file. It's called clean, lower third or you can build it from scratch following these instructions. So first with most titles I like to build out the entire title before I actually animate it. So let's go ahead and start a new composition. I'll just call this lt Phil that's my way of just writing out lower thirds lt Phil Duration five seconds is fine. So first let's create our text. So taking the text tool, choosing a font, I'm gonna choose Helvetica bold for my name and I'm also going to choose all caps and make sure it's white. Then I'll just tape in Phil Brenner looks good now to change the size let me select the selection tool and then increase the size. Cool now let's add the other text and so I'll take my text tool again, click down below filibuster and put a little description, you know for lower thirds this could be anything, this could be a website, this could be you know a des...

cription of who you are. And usually I like to change up the size so that the description is smaller than the name, I usually put it below like So cool. Now let's add our background shape layers. Taking our rectangle tool, I'm going to change the color so that I can more easily see it because white would just match with the text. Let's just pick something like blue for here. It's kind of gray blue. I like that And now let me zoom in here to 100 pressing space bar to move my composition in place. And now let me just create this bar behind the filibuster text or in front. But now I'll put this behind the Philip Burton text while I create real world world projects. I really like to keep things organized. So I'm going to rename the layers, name description just by clicking onto the layer description and then pressing the return key on my keyboard or the enter key name bar. That's what I'll call that one. I'll align everything in just a minute. But let me just create one more shape for behind the video school online text so that pops out a little bit more. You don't necessarily need that though and I'll just make sure I'm not clicking any of these layers so that I create a brand new shape. Let me put it behind the description and I'll also select both the description and this shape layer and put it behind the other text and let me select that shape layer and make it a little bit darker so it stands out or stands apart. I'll rename this description far. Cool. So now let's align things and I could use the align panel over here on the right hand side to do so so if I select the name and the name bar. I can vertically aligned so that it's aligned better for the description bar and the description text. I will do horizontal alignment. So there's equal space On the left and the right for this one and then I can select these and move it up or down depending on what I want to do. Cool, so that is the basics of setting up our text, we can see it there, we can select all of it and we can move it around depending on what we want. We can change the size next. What I wanna do is pre compose the different aspects of this graphic so that I can animate it separately. So if I go to my original one, I have the filet. Benner text pop on and then the video school, online text pop down. And those are two separate pre comps. So let me take the name bar in the name, text, right click pre compose. I'm gonna call this name two. So that's just the name. If I turn that on and off you can see. And then same thing for the description and description bar. Pre compose, description too. And the reason I do this is because once I animate this, which I'll be animating the pre compositions not the actual layers within the pre comps, I can go back and change the name and description more easily. All right. So when I animate things, I like to put key frames for the final position and then go back and animate how I want it to appear by going backwards in time and moving off the screen. So let me go to 1 2nd for both of these. I will select both and then press P on my keyboard to bring up position, setting a position key frame by clicking the stopwatch icon right there. Now if I go back in time I can go back to the beginning or in the middle, depending on how fast I wanted to go, I'm going to drag the name all the way to the left. Okay, So this is cool. And then here after the name comes on, I wanted to start the video school online text to start going down. But one issue I have is that I want my video school, online text and the bar to be attached to this name. So whatever happens to the name happens to the description and that's through parenting and that's this column right here. If you don't see that parent column on your timeline, just click the toggle switches modes button down here if you see that. So for the description tool, I will drop down this parent column And attach it to name two. Now whatever happens to name two, which is this motion happens to the description as well. So here now I can take this key frame which I'm going to move over to the right and then maybe go back right around here and drag the position up. Okay, So it's off the screen. So now the bar comes on and then the lower bar comes down. Looks pretty good. But we can make the movement and the motion look a little bit more dynamic by selecting all of these layers, Right clicking going to key frame assistant and easy easing them. That's pretty good. Let's make it have a little bit more pop with these key frame selected, click the graph editor button, make sure we're on the speed graph, whoops, not the reference graph. I want the speed graph. I'm going to select all the key frames by clicking and dragging over all of them here and then click the handles to pull them to the right and the other handles to boil them to the left. Now, if I play through this, that's pretty darn cool. It has a little bit more pop. Let's add some motion blur to both layers and enable the motion blur for this composition with this button here, let's render it out and that's looking pretty darn cool. This last little graphic might come down a little bit too quickly. So let me draw this out right here. That's pretty cool. Maybe we wanted to go a little bit earlier so let's drag it back so we wanted to come popping down right there. So yeah, that looks pretty good, awesome. So this is a clean lower third that now we can take and add to our other video projects in the exporting and saving section of this class. I go over how you take graphics like this, the lower third graphics and you work with them in other video projects. So if you're curious about that, check out that section, as I mentioned that before, you can go in and now easily change all this stuff so I can go into the name to change the name to Ashby pop who is my dog? Who is sitting right next to me? I don't know if you can hear her, She's itching a little bit. So Ashby pup and maybe I want to move it to the right a little bit and then for the description and change the description to my brand new dog. Maybe you want to change the spacing or maybe you want to change the size of this shape by clicking and dragging in the sides. What I did there was just I double click the edge of the shape layer and brought it in and now if we go back to our lower third. Now we have this brand new graphic for Ashby pup, My new brand new dog, awesome. I hope you enjoyed this lesson and we'll see you in another real world project

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Philip Ebiner

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Clean Lower Third

Clean Lower Third

Lesson Info

35. Clean Lower Third

Lessons

Class Updates & My Favorite CC 2020 Updates

Understand the After Effects Workspace

Starting a New Composition

CC 2018 Update - Starting a New Composition from Footage

Adding Media to Your Project and the Timeline

Using the Basic After Effects Tools

Create a Perfect Circle, Alignment, and Shape Colors

Working in the Timeline

Layer Properties

Quiz: After Effects Basics

Animating in After Effects

Position, Scale, and Rotation Animations

Tips to Make Your Animations Look More Nautral

Using the Graph Editor

Challenge - Bouncing Ball

Solution - Bouncing Ball

Quiz: Animating with Keyframes

Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

Adding Layer Styles like Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Gradients

Shape Effects - Trim Path Animations, Wiggle, and Zig Zag

Quiz: Shapes and Solid Layers

Track Matte Animations - Make Layers Appear and Disappear

Using Pre-Compositions to Group Layers

Easily Reverse Complicated Animations

Playing with Time

Blend Modes

Stabilize Shaky Footage

CC 2018 Update - Previewing and Favoriting Fonts

CC 2019 Update - Responsive Design Time

CC 2019 Content Aware Fill

CC 2019 Create Motion Graphic Templates

Quiz: Important After Effects Skills

Intro to Motion Graphics Projects

Clean Lower Third

Logo Reveal Animation Bumper

Colorful Transition

Text with Mask Path Animation

Text Bubble Animation

Weather App 1

Weather App 2

Weather App 3

Quiz: Motion Graphics Projects

Flat Animation Challenge

Phil Designs his Flat Animation Scene

Animating Fireworks with the Repeater Effect

Removing Green Screen Background

Adding a Background that Matches the Foreground

Adding Motion to a Still Image with the Puppet Tool

Adding Movement with the Ripple Effect

Quiz: Flat Animation Challenge

Intro to 3D

Swinging 3D Text Animation

Build Out Your 3D Composition

Animating Our 3D Scene

Create Stars in After Effects

Quiz: Green Screen (Chromakeying)

Using the Rotoscope Tool

Cleaning Up Your Edges

Finishing Our Rotobrush Animation

Quiz: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool

Easy Screen Replacement with Masks

Replacing a Screen Version 2

Screen Replacement with Mocha

CC 2019 Update - Native Mocha AE Plugin

Quiz: Rotoscoping

Using the Puppet Pin Tool

Animating Your Puppet Pins

Animated Blinking Eyes

Adding Perspective with Animated Clouds

CC 2018 Update - Advanced Puppet Pin Tool

Quiz: Screen Replacements

Applying Text Animation Presets

Create a Page Turn Effect with CC Page Turn