Rotate to LockupEnding
Chromatic Stretch
Some letters of a wordmark stretch horizontally with RGB ghosting, distort in steps, then snap back clean.
Full recipe
Why it works
The background and the type are black and white, and only the few distorted frames show a saturated separation into cyan, magenta, and yellow, so the color flashes and never stays. The distortion acts only on some letters and the rest stay clean, so the wordmark remains readable.
Spec
- Timing
- Film 10.5s (315 frames). Wordmark: entry distortion 0.1-0.4s, second 0.73-0.97s, third 1.3-1.53s, smear-out 2.4-2.73s. Headline 1 enters 2.8s (settled 3.1s), re-distorts 4.0-4.17s, smears out 4.87-5.13s. Headline 2 enters 5.2s, re-distorts 6.4-6.57s, smears out 7.27-7.53s. Closing wordmark enters 7.6s (settled 7.9s), distorts 8.13-8.4s, tagline fades up 8.42s over 0.6s and holds to 10.5s
- Easing
- Stepped, no tween between states: each state holds 2 frames (66ms), then the ghost strength drops to 0.3 for 1 frame and the line returns clean. The stretch amount decays across the steps (4.4x, 3.7x, 2.9x, 1.8x). The master timeline runs
ease: "none"; the tagline usesexpo.out - Camera
- Fixed frame with a slow push on each block, scale 1 to 1.03 over its on-screen time
- Subject
- Each distortion picks one letter segment (2-8 characters) and stretches it horizontally up to 4.4x (smear-out reaches 16x), scales it 1.1-1.55x vertically, arcs the baseline up to 28px, and squeezes the rest of the line to 0.6-0.96x. The R, G and B channels are warped separately and offset by 2.2% of font size each (about 4.7px at 214px) with a 12px horizontal blur on R and B; added on black and subtracted from the background, the misaligned channels read as cyan, magenta and yellow. Smear-out shifts the block left up to 420px and trails 22 fading copies
- Style
- Background
#f4f4f6, black ink. Wordmark Inter 500 and 300 at 214px, letter-spacing -0.034em; headlines Inter 600 at 104px with 34px supporting lines at 47% opacity. RGB color exists only on distorted frames; settled frames are pure black on light gray
Prompt
Build a wordmark opening called Chromatic Stretch, 10.5s at 30fps. Light gray background #f4f4f6, black Inter wordmark centered (500 for the name, 300 for the suffix, 214px, letter-spacing -0.034em); the source film uses Ember Pro. Distort one letter segment at a time in 2-frame steps with no tweening: stretch it horizontally from 4.4x down through 3.7x, 2.9x and 1.8x, enlarge it 1.1-1.55x vertically, arc the baseline up to 28px, and squeeze the rest of the line to 0.6-0.93x. Warp the R, G and B channels separately, offset each by 2.2% of font size with a 12px horizontal blur on R and B, add them on black and subtract from the background so the edges split into cyan, magenta and yellow; drop the split to 0.3 for 1 frame, then return clean. Run three distortions on the wordmark at 0.1s, 0.73s and 1.3s, then smear it out to the left at 2.4-2.73s (stretch up to 16x, shift up to 420px, 22 fading trail copies). Swap in two headline blocks (2.8s and 5.2s) using the same enter, one re-distort and smear-out pattern, then bring the wordmark back at 7.6s with one more distortion at 8.13s and fade a tagline up at 8.42s (0.6s, expo.out). Push each block in slowly from scale 1 to 1.03; color appears only on distorted frames.
People describe it as
- Letters stretched sideways with colored ghosting
- The wordmark distorts a few times and then recovers
- An RGB-split glitch effect on text
Often confused with
- Mark-to-Wordmark UnfoldMark-to-Wordmark Unfold changes the order in which the wordmark appears; Chromatic Stretch locally distorts a wordmark that is already visible.
- Foreground Wipe & FlashForeground Wipe & Flash is a scene transition; Chromatic Stretch happens on the wordmark itself.
More Ending
