kinetic typography (moving text) combines the beauty of typography with dynamic motion, usually sync’d up with audio from a movie or song/spoken word.

there are a bunch of examples on youtube if you search for “kinetic typography” (my favs are the ones with pulp fiction and fight club)…

…so i decided to throw my hat into the ring…

i knew the audio was going to be a critical part of the whole project and i didn’t want to do movie quotes… then it came to me (like the windows 7 commercials)…

i chose a comedian with a TON of energy and awesome delivery: aziz ansari

aaaand since this was my first one, i just wanted a quick bit to learn the steps and then upload to youtube — so i chose one of my favorite bits from his cd: “hotel luxury linens”

overall it took me 6 hours to make this 26-second video… part of it was a shitty mouse that would randomly double click when i did a single click (grrrr) and then the majority of it was me being a super n00b

my one and only resource was this site: crooked gremlins — the video tutorial was well made (though i WISH the video was hd quality because there were a few points where i needed to see the details of what he clicked)

the funny part is that the tutorial totally breezes past the toughest part… the timeline edits. for those familiar with flash, adobe after effects is preeeetty similar… similar in the way that you make “keyframes” to time the animations just right — but it’s a little different… a different logic for the way you have to animate it. i think now i somewhat have the hang of it, i’ll be speedier during that part of the process

about the video — i’ve seen it several times already and i kinda wish i did a few things differently:

• better emphasis: when aziz first says “two ninety six!!” i shoulda made that HUUUUGE and more dynamic… instead it just shows up on screen without much pop
• text layout: i need to lay out the text a little better in illustrator — this is what kind of determines how the motions will play out
• work in different degrees other than 90: when the video rotates, i played it safe and used 90 degree increments each time (cept for the last word, where i used 45 degrees to fit the whole thing on screen)

for future projects:

• graphics? i’ve seen some really good KT’s that use vector graphics in them, which adds to the overall effect of the video
• words within letters: this doesn’t make sense to you… but it’s an effect i’ve seen people do where the next words start to form within a letter in a different color

so yea… lemme know what you think — and if you have any suggestions for my next video

you may have seen him in parks and recreation, funny people, or even flight of the conchords (the dood who was racist against australians)

anyway, here are some funny clips from the special:

and the inspiration for the title of this post: