How to Animate a Speech Bubble in After Effects

Animate a speech bubble to show character thoughts in After Effects.

Speech bubbles are a classic cartoon and comic book tool to show dialogue and inner thoughts on characters. In Adobe After Effects, you can apply speech bubbles to characters and make the bubbles animate and follow the character around. Make the text appear and even change as you animate the text. The bubble follows a person using basic tracking tools and works in any version of Adobe After Effects.

Instructions

1. Draw or download a speech bubble picture that you want to use in Adobe After Effects. Choose a speech bubble picture with a translucent background or with a solid colored background that you can key out.

2. Import the speech bubble and your footage into a new project in After Effects. Drag and drop the footage into the "Layers" window to add it to the project. Now your footage will appear in the "Monitor" window.

3. Drag and drop the speech bubble onto a layer above your footage layer. Go to "Effect," "Keying" and select "Color Key" to remove any surrounding edge on the footage. Click on the color dropper tool to match the color and have the speech bubble sit above the footage.

4. Click once on the speech bubble layer and select "Layer" and "Pre-compose" layer. Press "OK" and a new composition will appear with just the speech bubble.

5. Click on the "Text" tool icon. Drag and create a text box inside the speech bubble. Type the text that you want to appear in the text.

6. Go to "Animation," "Animate Text" and select the type of text animation you want to apply, if any. Once all your text settings are complete, return to the original video.

7. Scrub through the video and find the person to whom you want to apply the speech bubble. Go to a point in the video where there is good contrast between the person and the background or props.

8. Click on "Window" and select "Tracker." Click on the "Track Motion" icon and a small box will appear. Click and place the box on the person's head over which you want the word bubble to appear. Click on the "Analyze Forward" tracking option and wait for the tracking to complete.

9. Right click in the "Layers" window and select "New" and "Null Layer." In the tracker window, select the "Motion Source" as the "Null Object." Click on the "Parent" drop-down menu for the "Speech Bubble" and select the "Null Object." Now the speech bubble will animate and follow the tracking of the person's head.

References

• Video Co Pilot: Tracking Tutorial
• How To COD: How to Make a Speech Bubble Using Scribble