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Free After Effects Lower Third Template: Red Zone


This is an animated lower-third graphic (sometimes called a Chyron) that I created in After Effects CS6. Its design was inspired by a recent segment I saw on a major cable-news network.

The animation is subtle. The borders of the two left boxes have a glint that cycles, and the red background pulsates a bit. All these animations occur in a seamless loop over 10 seconds. Obviously you could change any of these settings within After Effects.

The logos and preview graphics are all broken out into their own comps so you can easily replace them. The text is all on its own layers as well. All the nuts-and-bolts are hidden as Shy so you don't need to be bothered with them unless you would like to. All aspect ratios of all sub-elements are 16x9. Overall resolution is 1920x1080. You should easily be able to scale this up to 2K or 4K without any quality loss using the Scale Composition script built into After Effects, as all elements are composed of shape layers. The only issue you might run into doing this is the Layer Styles on the borders. Double check to make sure their thickness is to your liking after you scale.

Here's a GIF preview of the animation, obviously quality is reduced because it's a 256-color GIF, but you'll get the idea. It may take you a moment to even see anything happening:

I'm making the project available for free for whatever use you like, even commercial. I only ask that you do not redistribute it (or a modified version of it) as your own template or as part of a collection of templates.

After Effects Version


 

Rendered Version

For video editors, I have also uploaded a rendered version of a more basic Lower-Third. This is just the leftmost red and white boxes. You should be able to add your text on top of them and go. The zip file includes the video file (H.264 .mp4) and both an alpha and luma matte .png file). There are no in/out transitions on this lower third but a simple fade in/out after you composite your text should suffice. The logo and preview boxes on the right of the original are not included as they need slightly more advanced compositing that should really be done in After Effects. To use those, download the AE template files above.


 

Thank you to Pixabay for the free images I used as placeholders in this template:

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