I got the idea for this animation when watching a video for the XSplit live streaming software. In this video which talked about recent updates, they featured an animation which had several different icons morphing around the screen. This version isn’t as stylized as their’s was, but I wanted to keep things low-key.

I’d envision this being used as the intro to a YouTube series; a lot of podcasters video-record their sessions as well as offer them as audio-only recordings, and this could be a nice way to preface those videos.

Relevant Websites

This Creative Cow tutorial from Chris Zwar was pretty much my go-to resource for learning how to use the Reshape effect.

Relevant Resources

I had originally tried to make my own vector icons, but I wasn’t making anything good enough to satisfy. I found a pretty closely modeled series of game and media icons at Iconfinder.com. Each icon cost between $2 and $3 USD, and can be had as PNG, AI, or other useful formats.

The icons were nice and smooth, so I used the Effects > Stylize > Moasic effect on them to increase their pixelization. I then used Effect > Distort > Sharpen as well so the edges weren’t too warped. I applied these filters to the “Your Name” text as well.