This project was an exploration of work by a motion designer I admire named Mélina Poiré. I really love her series of letter designs and I used a couple as inspiration for this piece.
I was able to create a similar stroke animation with a trim paths effect and a gradient with many colors. The challenge I had to overcome was the camera movement. The solution ended up being pretty simple with me placing the null manually and using the easing from the strokes trim paths effect.
The 3D cube snapping and the stroke filling from below felt like a strong way to tie everything back together for the final shot. We can then see the full path of the stroke being the letter "P" as well as the ball and cube forming the letter "O" emphasized with a scale animation and multiple small popping animations.
Here's the final sequence. It was animated in 1920x1920 to better suit the format of Instagram reels.
