The Animator options allow us to make quick animations with our text without having to do too many keyframes.
Open After Effects and Create a New Composition
1920 x 1080 or 1024 x 768
4 seconds
24 frames per second
Now create a Text Layer.
Write some text, center it and align it to the center of the canvas.
Now open up the Text layer and find the Button that says ‘Animate’ it has a small Arrow next to it.
Press the small arrow next to ‘Animate’ and choose either:
Position
Scale
Skew
Rotate
Opacity
When you pick one of these, a new sub-layer will appear called ‘Animator 1’.
Change the name of ‘Animator 1’ by clicking on it and pressing return. It is a good idea to name it after the option you picked, this will help you identify it later.
Each of the options above have different settings but the basics are:
Adjust the values for the specific option and use keyrframes to change it.
Open up the ‘Range Selector’ to do further adjustments, the ‘Range Selctor’ will allow you to change how the effect applies to the letters you typed by adjusting the ‘Start’, ‘End’ and ‘Offset’ keyframes.
Next open up ‘Advanced’ which is under ‘Offset’, this will allow you to make more modifications to the Animation.
You can also open up the ‘More Options’ setting and adjust the ‘Anchor Point Grouping’ to change whether or not the affect applies to each letter or to the word.
Experiment!