Animating Variable Fonts in After Effects
30.7K views · 2026-09-01
Motion Design
Get Type Jazz: https://jkinmo.com/4tkomm
After Effects has supported variable fonts for a while, but the controls for animating them are surprisingly hard to find. And that's a shame, because the extra control they offer for text animation is incredibly powerful.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you exactly how to animate variable fonts, and it’s easier than you might think! Using variable font axes lets you create procedural, smooth animations that would otherwise require dozens of keyframes and lots of painstaking manual labor.
Jake In Motion Discord: https://discord.com/invite/b5PkuCCCAu
---------------------------------------
📸Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jakeinmotion
🐤X: https://x.com/jakeinmotion
🏷️ Tag @jakeinmotion if you learned something!
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:16 Finding Variable Fonts
01:21 Using Variable Fonts in After Effects
02:02 Adding Axes to Text Animators
02:56 Animating with Keyframes
03:34 Center-aligning the animation
04:10 How the animator interacts with the font
04:57 Animating with a Text Animator
06:08 Looping the Animation
06:42 Adjusting the transition ease
07:15 Shaping the text animator
07:54 Combining font axes with other properties
08:46 Combining Animators
09:58 Variable Fonts in Type Jazz
After Effects has supported variable fonts for a while, but the controls for animating them are surprisingly hard to find. And that's a shame, because the extra control they offer for text animation is incredibly powerful.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you exactly how to animate variable fonts, and it’s easier than you might think! Using variable font axes lets you create procedural, smooth animations that would otherwise require dozens of keyframes and lots of painstaking manual labor.
Jake In Motion Discord: https://discord.com/invite/b5PkuCCCAu
---------------------------------------
📸Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jakeinmotion
🐤X: https://x.com/jakeinmotion
🏷️ Tag @jakeinmotion if you learned something!
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:16 Finding Variable Fonts
01:21 Using Variable Fonts in After Effects
02:02 Adding Axes to Text Animators
02:56 Animating with Keyframes
03:34 Center-aligning the animation
04:10 How the animator interacts with the font
04:57 Animating with a Text Animator
06:08 Looping the Animation
06:42 Adjusting the transition ease
07:15 Shaping the text animator
07:54 Combining font axes with other properties
08:46 Combining Animators
09:58 Variable Fonts in Type Jazz