Animation for Lettering: Making Morphing Word GIFs with Photoshop

Hi, my name is Chris Piascik. I’m an illustrator. In this class I’ll show you my process for making simple looping animations morphing one word into another without using any complicated animation software or features. This animation can be created in Photoshop or in Procreate using the same process. I am not an animator, and I barely know my way around After Effects—actually, I still get lost everytime I use After Effects. The reason I am telling you this is to prove that if I can do it—so can you! 

That said, I’m not a complete hack, I’ve worked with clients like Cartoon Network, Google, McDonalds, The Washington Post, Nickelodeon, and FX. Social Media advertising has become a huge market and simple animated GIF’s are highly desirable for that application. 

The animations we’ll create will have a loose, playful appearance, and vibrate a bit like old-school traditional animation. If you’re looking to make smooth, clean animations with tight vector artwork you’re likely better off with an intro to After Effects class. I’ll loosely touch on my lettering process in the first lesson, but if this is your first time working with illustrated type I’d recommend an intro to Lettering class first. My pal Mary Kate McDevitt has a great one!

• Intro
• Assignment
• Sketching Lettering
• Finalizing Word Illustrations
• Simple Shape Morph Exercise
• Script Exercise
• The Morph, part 1
• The Morph, part 2
• Conclusion