The project show cases an extension of Signed Distance Field fonts. They use bitmaps however they denote the distance from the edge of a font rather than simply white or black for a given pixel. With some shader logic edges can be smoothed and look effectively like vector fonts, even at large magnification. Font weight comes for free, so is a simple thing to animate.

Taking the "distance" plus an angle we then have polar coordinates that can be used in the shader to perform various mappings, say to colour spectrum (see Love to Dance Video), perlin noise (flame and smoke effects) or even into images (see Angelic Video).

LightStorm Animated Text Video