After Effects Text Animation (beginner guide)

Create animated text using After Effects’ per-character Text Animator system. Here’s how to do it in After Effects on macOS, step by step — part of the free After Effects beginner curriculum.

Lesson 6 of the After Effects curriculum. Before this: Masks and Shape Layers. Next up: Rendering and Export.

What you’ll do

• Select the Horizontal Type tool (Cmd+T) from the Tools panel at the top, click in the Composition panel to create a Point Text layer, and type some text
• Open the Character panel (right side, or Window > Character) to set font family, size, color, tracking, and kerning
• Open the Paragraph panel (right side, or Window > Paragraph) to set alignment (left, center, right)
• In the Timeline, twirl open the text layer to reveal its Text property group; click “Animate” to the right of the Text property to open the Animator menu — add an Opacity animator
• Understand the Animator structure: each Animator has one or more Animator Properties (like Opacity) and a Range Selector that defines which characters are affected
• Animate the Range Selector’s Start value from 0% to 100% over time — this creates a typewriter reveal where Opacity applies progressively across characters
• Add a second Animator with a Scale property set to 0%, same Range Selector animation — characters will scale in as they appear
• Try the Wiggly Selector (click Add > Selector > Wiggly under the Animator) as an alternative to Range Selector for random per-character activation
• Animate the Source Text property by enabling its stopwatch — this lets you swap text content over time, useful for countdowns and switching words

Do it hands-free with Skilly

Reading steps is one thing; doing them while the menus are in front of you is another. Skilly is a voice-first tutor for macOS: you ask out loud — “where’s the text panel?” — and it answers while moving your cursor to the exact button, watching your actual After Effects window. It’s the same After Effects curriculum these lessons come from, taught live instead of read. Free to start.

Keep going

This is one stage of the full After Effects beginner curriculum. Previous: Masks and Shape Layers. Continue with Rendering and Export.