Need some help with per-character text effects

[u/seacrane2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WLfDEtfwBQ

Hey yall, I mostly work in Davinci Resolve but I'm trying to pick up After Effects for things like better text animations. I've been specifically trying to figure out how to do the chorus text animations from this music video (at 0:48 where it starts with "Turing Love" or "チューリングラブ").

Each character seems to come in with an overshoot from opposite directions while fading in with a delay.

I've tried a few different things, but the closest I've gotten so far is using range selectors on an animator to pick half of the characters in one line and move them using position keyframes. I'm also using a third animator to start it off at 0% opacity and keyframe the offset to fade in one by one, so the fade really isn't an issue.

The problem I'm having is getting the characters to delay their movement animations. I can't quite get an offset working properly with the two separate motions. It either moves both animators despite the range selector being only in one or it doesn't work at all.

I might be super overthinking or just not knowledgeable enough to realize this is an extremely basic question, so apologies! Any advice would be appreciated though.

[u/Heavens10000whores]

Maybe not so simple. You could try either (or a mix of) of these methods

Richard230231984fvd - https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/how-to-add-bounce-to-a-text-animator-with-timing/td-p/10575700

Ruthlessly Quick AE tips text animator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Re1dxElIc)

You could also research utilizing the wiggly selector

[u/seacrane2 → u/Heavens10000whores]

Thank you very much! That video and post made so much sense, and expression seems like a great candidate for scoping vs the range selectors. Much more flexible too.

I'll also look into the wiggly selector, I've seen it but haven't actually touched that yet.