By the end of this article, we will have taken our text-based static lower third from the previous article titled Create a Static Lower Third with Alight Motion Elements, and added graphics and animation.

Note that this will be updated with video and images when possible.

Downloads

Create a Static Lower Third: https://support.alightcreative.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028806291

If you’d like to follow along, you should have Alight Motion and all seminar assets on your device, and you should have gone through Create a Static Lower Third with Alight Motion Elements before starting.

Font: https://www.dafont.com/bebas-kai.font

If you’d rather follow along with a finished element, import the project into Alight Motion with the link below.

Completed Element Link: http://alight.link/Befx5uvPReKTyHGt7

Adding Animation

Now, let’s animate our lower third. You can do many different effects, but for now, we’re going to make the background slide on and off screen, and we’re going to make the text fade in and out.

First, let’s tap on the text layer. We’ll pinch our fingers together on the timeline to compress time, and then we’ll tap and hold on the right handle that appears next to the layer, and drag it to the right to make it last longer in time. Let’s make it 10 seconds long for now. Tap off of the layer to see all layers, and then tap the left side of the screen for each other layer, and then tap the Extend button to stretch every other layer to 10 seconds as well. All three layers should be 10 seconds long now.

Tap the white rectangle, and move to 1:00 on the timeline. Tap Move & Transform. The position icon should be already highlighted. Tap Add Keyframe. Move to 8:15 and tap Add Keyframe again. From 1:00-8:15 on the timeline, the graphic will be in this position. Next, move to 0:00, and then using the control pad (and not the preview) drag the white rectangle off screen to the left. A keyframe should have been created at 0 seconds. Move the timeline to about 0:15 and tap Easing Curves. Chose the third item from the top, and then drag the top pointer to the left. This will make the motion start quickly, but decelerate over time, creating smoother motion. Make the white triangle exit left between 8:15 and 9:15 and set the easing curve to start slow and speed up over time, the opposite of 0:00 to 1:00.

Tap the black rectangle, and do the same as the white rectangle, except a few frames later. Because the easing curves aren’t linear, the black rectangle will look like it is trailing the white one.

Now, let’s make the text fade in and out while the white rectangle is stationary. Tap the text layer and move to one second. Tap Blending & Opacity, then tap Add Keyframe. Let’s move to 1:15 and  8:00 and add opacity keyframes at each point. Move to the 1:00 keyframe and slide the opacity to zero. Move to 8:15 and do the same. The text should fade and out at these points.

Now you have a simple animated lower third!

Marking Intro and Outro

With Alight Motion elements, it’s possible to define a portion of your element as retimable, or stretchable in time. In this case, we may want to make our lower third a few seconds longer or shorter, without affecting the pacing of the in and out animations. We can do this by adding re-timing marks to our element.

Move the playhead to one frame after all in animation has finished. Tap Settings on the top right of the screen and tap Mark end of intro. Move the playhead to one frame before the out animation starts. Tap Settings, then Mark start of outro. With these two marks set, you can shorten or lengthen your element when placed in a project, and the in and out animations will be preserved.

What To Do Next?

With Alight Motion, you can create a virtually infinite amount of effects to place onto your lower third. Check our user guide for more ideas! Here is a sample link that may give you some ideas!

Light Sweep Effect

You can see this effect on many lower thirds from commercial text outlets. In the article a bar of light is sweeping across some text, but you can make it sweep across your custom graphics as well!

https://support.alightcreative.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019730711-Light-Sweep-or-Shine-Effect