Animate text in After Effects

Discover curated resources and tips to master text animation in motion design.

Published December 23, 2025

Text animation is an essential part of motion design that can grab attention, guide your viewers’ eye, or help tell your story. Whether you're creating short social videos, corporate motion graphics, or prime-time commercials, adding custom animated text will make your work feel polished and professional.

Diving into animation can feel daunting, but this guide will walk you through everything you need to know to create your first text animation, including formatting your text in After Effects and adding movement using keyframe animation so that you can create your lower thirds and other graphics.

Text animation essentials

To kick off your learning, these 6 tutorials will help you get started with text animation to grab attention and move your story forward.

This first video will show you the basics of adding and animating text in After Effects, including changing the style of your text and adding motion in your composition.

00:01

Introduction

Hi, I'm Sarah, a Videographer and Motion Graphic Artist.

Adding animated text to a video project, social media post, or a motion graphic project is a fun way to draw attention to a specific text, create a professional modern appearance, or even enhance the story you're telling.

In this tutorial, I'll show you the basics of adding and then animating text in your After Effects projects.

In your new project, create a new composition.

00:22

Creating text layers: point text vs. paragraph text

To add text, choose the Type Tool in the Toolbar.

You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl T on Windows or Command T on Mac.

If you're adding a block of text, paragraph text is likely a better choice.

Let's add some paragraph text and look at the difference.

With the Text Tool active, select and drag anywhere within your composition.

This will create another text layer where we can add details.

As you can see, the text automatically wraps when we reach the end of the line.

If we change the size of the bounding box, the text size does not change, but it will wrap or expand as needed.

If we do the same with our point text, it actually gets bigger.

Hold the Shift key as you drag to keep it from distorting.

Now that we have some text to work with, we can adjust how it looks using the Properties panel.

01:10

Formatting text with the Properties panel

This is where we can edit the Font, Size, Text Alignment within the layer, and more.

For now, let's change the font size and color.

In the Font dropdown menu, let's select a new font.

We can also change whether we want it to be regular, narrow, italicized, bold in this dropdown.

Whatever properties the font itself has can be edited here.

We can change how big our point text is by selecting a size from the Font Size dropdown.

Or we can drag right to increase or left to decrease the size.

Finally, let's change the color.

Select the box next to Fill to select a different color.

Let's also adjust our paragraph text.

Now that our text looks the way we want it to, let's reposition it.

01:56

Positioning and aligning text in the composition

First, we need to make sure we're using the Selection Tool by choosing it from the Toolbar or using the shortcut V.

Now we can freely move the layer around by dragging it.

We can also get a more precise placement by enabling Snapping, which will allow to snap the layer to the center of the composition.

If you want to temporarily disable this feature, you can hold down Control on Windows or Command on Mac to fine-tune placement to your liking.

I think the text looks great up here, but let's also make sure it's perfectly centered using the horizontal center option in the Align panel.

We'll also go ahead and make some adjustments to our paragraph text.

Now, let's add a simple animation to draw attention to the heading.

We have the text in the center of the composition,

02:37

Animating text with position keyframes

which is where we want it to end up when the animation is complete.

I'll drag the Current Time Indicator, or CTI, to a spot a few frames in and create a keyframe by selecting the Stopwatch next to Position in the Properties panel.

Next, I'll move the CTI back to where I want the animation to begin, and I'll drag the layer upward off the page while holding the Shift key to keep it center aligned.

If we look in the Timeline, we can see both keyframes there.

Another way to add keyframes is directly in the Timeline itself.

Let's try it using the paragraph text.

In the Composition panel,

03:14

Adding opacity fades and previewing the final animation

open the Text layer options and then open the Transform options.

I want this text to fade in after the heading drops in.

So, let's move the CTI to about a half a second after the first animation completes and select the Stopwatch next to Opacity to create a keyframe.

Now we can move the CTI back a few frames and change the Opacity to 0.

Let's check out our animation by moving the CTI to the beginning of the composition and pressing the Spacebar to preview it.

Looking pretty awesome thanks to those animation keyframes.

Now that you've mastered adding text with a simple animation, keep learning with another After Effects tutorial.

Continue with this series to learn about different kinds of text animation.

Text tools available in After Effects

Once you're comfortable with text animation, it's helpful to understand the tools that make advanced techniques possible. These articles from the After Effects User Guide will help you gain skills you'll use every day while working on motion designs.

Creating and editing text layers
Learn how to format character-specific styles, like font and kerning, and paragraph-specific styles like justification or spacing.
See the details on available presets and what text properties you can animate
Find inspiration with these examples and resources for text animation

Design and animation concepts to build your skills

Adding motion to your designs is just one part of the motion design puzzle. Design principles like alignment, information hierarchy, contrast, and balance will improve the impact of your motion designs. Use these resources to deepen your design knowledge.
An introduction to kerning
Picking the right font: Serif vs. san serif
Demystifying graphic design with 10 tips for non-designers
Understanding the 12 principles of animation

Try these tutorials with After Effects

Create visual effects and motion graphics.

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