How to Animate a Kickstarter Widget in After Effects (Thanks to Joke and Biagio)
During the Man-child Kickstarter campaign I received a few questions about my pitch video, which included an animated example of the Kickstarter widget. This is not something that originated with my campaign -- it was a creation of the filmmaking team Joke and Biagio, who first used it in their Dying to do Letterman campaign, and then shared it for anyone else to use. It's a very nice tool to help illustrate how a crowdfunding campaign works, so if you're going to run your own campaign, you might find this useful:
I modified the animation a bit, adding a slight stroke to the border to better separate it from the background, and I also made the layers 3D in After Effects in order to give the widget some subtle lighting, but that is just me being aesthetically picky. Hit the link below for their source files, and it looks like you can back their project on IndieGoGo despite the Kickstarter campaign having ended.
Speaking of Kickstarter, here are a couple of interesting projects worth checking out. The first is by Wide Open Camera's Jared Abrams, who many of you know thanks to his invaluable contributions to the indie film/camera communities over the years. Help him out if you can!
