After Effects not only has many ways to animate text layers, but also plenty of built-in ways to animate the text within layers. This allows you to create text animations in a matter of seconds with only a few keyframes.

One style of text animation you see often is character offset. This is when random letters are scrolled through and eventually stop to spell out the intended word or words.

In this tutorial video, I show you how to apply the character offset animation to a text layer. Then, I’ll demonstrate the properties you need to keyframe to get the intended effect quickly. Even those new to After Effects will be able to create this text animation in under a minute.