Motion Graphics in After Effects- Unfolding Text

I followed the tutorial by PremiumBeat channel, demonstrating how to create a text animation where the text unfolds itself. I am going to following future tutorials because I want to be able to create my own motion graphics intro for my COP 3 practical. I feel that having an eye-catching, animated intro will give the video a professional aesthetic to it. Since I hope my practical will be a series of videos, having an intro gives it a good beginning and end. These skills will be used for future projects; I find it very interesting because it teaches me a vast amount of After Effects tools that I did not think of using or combining.

The tutorial uses shapes to create the unfold technique, there are other processes of producing this effect that YouTube commenters have explained but this tutorial goes through the whole process, as this will benefit me understanding the process more instead of taking a shortcut.

Below are the steps explained briefly:

1)   Create a type layer with any letter of your choice. I used the same letter in the tutorial that was U.

2)   Add a shape layer, changing the points to 3 so it changes into a triangle.

3)   Creating a pattern following the way up to the top of the letter.

4)   Add more shapes to fill out the pattern, placing it where gaps exist.

I found step 4 the most difficult though it involved much repeating and duplicating, I could not get my head around what values the Orientation and X Rotation was. It started to make sense but I think with this technique, I still need time to perfect and understand it thoroughly. The instructor in the video moved quite quickly so I had to rewind back a number of times, though in the end this helped.

My colleague Ash showed me this title sequence of a game he played titled Deus Ex Human Revolution. While I was following the unfolding text tutorial, it reminded him of this title sequence. This has given me the idea that I can apply this unfolding technique to shapes or images instead. Since my practical is titled 'Afro-Identity', I would like to use the African Map logo as part of my intro to the video series. This is what I will be experimenting on next.

Tutorial Finished: