Kinetic Typography is a big topic so I might break it to few blog postings. This time I talk about the concept and method first. Later on I can show some more example tricks and techniques to animate text/letters/words. Further on, with Blender compositing capability, you could do a lot more. The possibility is limitless.
WHAT IS KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY?
Kinetic typography is a term normally applied to a type of motion graphic that mostly uses text arranged in certain way, so it looks beautiful; Not just looking beautiful, more importantly, it needs to be animated in interesting way, hence the "kinetic". On top of that, it needs to enhance the actual message as well. So there is some design element involved.
If you search for "kinetic typography" in YouTube, you will see some great examples.
BLENDER FOR WHAT?
Blender is not usually the typical tool people would use to create motion graphic. Well, I might as well be wrong, maybe there are already some artists using Blender to create motion graphics works. I bet most of time, in Australia anyway, when it comes to motion graphic works, people would think of Cinema4D or After Effects.
Apart from majority of people (with lack of knowledge) looking down on Blender, I actually found Blender to be an exciting tool that can be used to create beautiful motion graphics.
There is no job for people who use Blender, but we dare to be different and experiment with Blender :) Be brave. Who knows, tool is a tool after all, right? Time will tell, I think Blender has HUGE potential. Good eyes can already see it.
NOTE: In recent news, I heard Blender is starting to be used for some motion graphics works. The fact about Blender: it is an awesome side-kick for any one who uses other 3D package.
THE MAIN ACTOR
Before we jump into Blender right away, we need to get deep to the concept of kinetic typography first.
From those examples that you found on YouTube, Kinetic Typography you can see is usually an interpretation of some kind of long text or poem or a person voice talking or reading something. It could origin from a dialogue from particular movie, so the words have timing and certain emotion or meaning to it. This means, we have to treat typography as the main character of your animation. Imagine the screen as the stage and the typography is dancing beautifully on top of the stage.
Check out Sesame Street show for some simple examples of dancing alphabet. Check also some movie title opening/ending sequences. Some of them is arranged and animated in a very interesting way. For example: Spiderman The Movie opening title sequence where you have camera moves through web revealing words.
Know your font typeface well. In kinetic typography, having multiple fonts varieties is actually alright and more fun to see. Still, choose good and appropriate fonts.
TYPE EFFECT ANIMATION
What kind of typical effects do you usually find?
- Appear, stay and disappear from top, bottom, sides.
- Size up, size down.
- Rotating text.
- Flying text in and out.
- Re-Arrangement.
There are plenty more of generic effects, you could probably list more. But there is always new innovative effects. Text can be dynamically blown by the wind. Text can be displaced. Text can be like a liquid. Text can crack and perhaps explode in 3D. Text can be furry text. Can text appear like origami transformation? Imagine what you can do to text! Possibility is endless.
SECONDARY ACTOR
Apart from text animated effects, we could also have secondary elements such as simple animated symbol or other graphics (photos, PNG plane etc). Usually 2D elements type of animation.
CAMERA, THE EYES
Another important element we should not forget is the motion and animation of Camera. The camera takes the audience to fly from one section to the next section. Sure, we could have static camera and text animation in and out of the picture frame, but I think it is more exciting to imagine the camera flying through animated text.
PROS AND CONS OF DOING KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY IN BLENDER
Animating camera in Blender in 3D for kinetic typography is a breeze. It is very easy to set flowing typography motion and adjust the timing based on sound. Blender Text object is very stable and quite robust. Blender can do compositing and editing not a problem.
There are few downside, such as Blender does not allow fade in and fade out on 3D object easily. Animating visibility in Blender is also a little strange. Typewriter effect (letter appearing one by one) can be difficult because there is no out of the box method. Blender does not have preset motions or effects for typography, unlike After Effects.
Anyhow, apart from those limitations, we can be more creative by doing it differently. But the element is basically involving:
1. Setting up the typography and other elements and think how to animate them.
2. Set the camera.
3. Set the animation and time it.
Remember that the animation is what matters in the end.
PREPARATION FOR KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY WORK
With kinetic typography work, I usually like to keep element as vector artworks. This will allow zoom in and out while thing remains crisp sharp. Bitmap type of graphics is okey too, depending on the needs.
You may create your typography design/arrangement/composition in Adobe Illustrator before hand and bring then in words/letters as SVG curves into Blender. That would work fine, but you need to later do some grouping or joining. You also lose the capability of editing the word/text directly.
Typically, I would like to do typography arrangement inside Blender, word by word. Sometimes this is not always possible, some elements could be a more vector graphic typo of object. Either way, you will bring the elements in.
Obviously it is better to have some idea of what you are trying to do. Storyboard or concept will help you along the way. It is best to know what font you will be using.
Remember that you have to interpretate the message into graphic visually pleasing animated text.
CAMERA WORK METHODS
There are 3 ways I would tackle Kinetic Typography in Blender.
First way is to use a limited camera movement. Not allowing rotation of camera in all free direction, but only in 1 axis (what the camera is looking). Treating camera as 2.5D camera to allow movement in plane and zoom in/out. Doing it this way is simple and clean, very methodical. Doing it like this make it easy to re-frame part of text and redo the composition.
You usually arrange the typography in a simple flat plane. If you want a bit of perspective, you rotate the actual text. Parent each elements portion to Empty if you like to rotate it to keep things organized.
Work in Quad View can help with camera positioning. But also I would use the Fly Mode camera by hitting Shift+F and fly with AWSD button. R and G shortcut also works with your camera, within the camera view, make sure that you select the camera beforehand (right click on the camera frame outline).
Get comfortable with Blender camera works and it will make your live lots easier.
Blender is a 3D package, but does not mean things or graphics have to be 3D or look 3D. Sometimes it is best to keep things simple and adapt Blender to each language of job you are doing. Although, element of surprise is always expected!
Make sure you turn on the option Align Object to View, instead of World inside Blender User Preferences. This way, whenever you create Text Object it will automatically align to the camera view port you are in.
Third way, we think the camera work in more of 3D cinematic sense. Thinking the text as actor in a 3D space. Camera moves in a cinematic way and there is also cut, fade, clever fade, depending on how we stage our typography actor. I supposed this is the most elaborate one to do.
But all and all, all 3 methods of camera are often overlapping. They are just a slightly different to each other.
TIPS: Remember to activate motion blur at some point when you actually render your final animation.
Hopefully this short introduction can inspire you to do some awesome kinetic typography in Blender. Kinetic Typography is definitely interesting to discuss and research further, because it is a never ending exploration. It involves all kinds of elements of graphics.
A rather wordy article, I actually will make YouTube video tutorial companion to explain some of the above stuff. Soon~
If you saw an interesting Kinetic Typography effect, you can pass it to me and I can probably analyst how to do it :]
So, Blender has huge potential for Kinetic Typography. Probably not as easy as Cinema4D, because Cinema4D has more ways to deal with 3D Type and Motion, but Blender is cool.
MORE INSPIRATION
Kinetic Typography Tutorial Presentation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOi5P1qxrM4
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