Font animation

[Woolgnufski]

I would like to animate individual letters allowing me to transform them into other shapes / designs. Could anyone advise how this might be possible? How do you get a font licence that provides full access to each letter vector design while, at the same time, allows these vectors to be modified? Any help most appreciated!

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

No need for any special licensing or technical mumbo-jumbo. Once a text object is expanded/ converted to outline in AI, it is for all intents and purposes fully editable based on the original font contours. On the other hand doing so does not chnage any licensing rights for the actual typeface. If you will, a font is just a technical means of transporting a type design, nothing more. In most cases font usage is unlimited and "free" anyway these days - once you have licensed a typeface by e.g. buying a font, you are pretty much able to use it for any derivative work, including your shape morph. This would be nothing you do in Illustrator, though. That's what After Effects is pretty much for. At best you would prepare individual shape paths in AI to facilitate the process before copy & pasting over to AE, with the key point for this kind of thing being that you typically want to maintain an equal number of points between source, target and any intermediate steps to maintain control and smoothness. The specifics will depend on the actual designs and as a general rule, the direct route rarely ever works and looks good. You may need to get used to the thought that this is a more complex issue than turning some letters into squares and circles, at least from the animation side of things. Knowing your design clearly would help to give more specific advise, so share a concept sketch or screenshot if possible.

Mylenium