Work
Project: Motion Graphics
Fia Aragon

Getting Revealing

I was thrilled when my good friend Fia asked me to help to put together a Logo Design reel for her. Her designs already stand well on their own in a portfolio. But being in marketing, Fia knows the power of video to tell a story.

The question: How to showcase Fia’s designs in a video? A simple slideshow seemed too easy of an answer, and not very interesting to watch.

The answer: Animated logo reveals, of course!

Almost every explainer video, corporate video, and even some personal brands begin with a logo reveal. And they all happen in different ways. Depending on the design, there are all kinds of methods to reveal a logo. I relished the opportunity to try out different styles on Fia’s work.

Without a doubt, my favorite reveal here is the Habenero Pepper. Fia had designed it with so many shapes and gradations of color. I was almost certain that she had constructed it in 3d! But nope, it was all in illustrator, shape by shape.

So I got to work. I imported the entire piece into After Effects, all 116 layers of it. And while I knew that I wanted each piece to come on in sequence, I also knew that I wanted to control which parts of the pepper were revealed first, second, third, etc, ending up with the stem.

It took a bit of layer organization, and anchor-point adjustment, but that’s the kind of thing I live for. Put on some music, or a podcast, and I’m a happy clam, organizing away!

After figuring out where each specific piece was located, and how it would fall into place, it only took a little more tweaking to see the entire reveal come together perfectly!