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Animating Signature using a FONT
I apologize if this topic is up somewhere. It seems to me like it might be a popular question, but I can’t find it anywhere (which makes me nervous about what the answer might be).
Is there any way to animate a signature using a font? Basically, I have a graffiti font that I need to animate on the screen. I can’t use the stroke effect that I have in the past because there are some smooth, skinny curves, and so fat boxy parts. If I used that stroke, I wouldn’t get the nuance.
I have been trying to use a stroke to reveal the font, but it is just too difficult to get the brush size right and not reveal parts of the rest of the letter. I currently have each letter in an individual layer — please — any suggestions would be MUCH appreciated.
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4 Replies
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That’s the only way to do it: with some kind of a track matte.
If you want to really do it with care, you should go into Illustrator, turn the font into outlines, then separate it into layers, where each layer represents a stroke, say, the cross of a “T”. It’s manual work, moving and deleting vector points.
But it’s necessary, since nobody has yet invented a way of making fonts draw themselves on while remaining “live”, as fonts. You have to get in there, make them outlines, and cut them up. You could also draw the letters manually on different layers in AE with the pen tool, but separating the strokes of the letters into layers is the key.
Anybody else?
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just like Steve said – you can’t possibly avoid preparing your artwork first. Once you have converted your type, so many more options open up. Depending on what letters you use, you may even get away with simple soft-edged wipes. There is also some artsy stroking effect based on masks (it’s called Scribble, I believe) which should give you some interesting results when used as a track matte.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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You could just paint out a matte frame by frame by hand (or every other frame)with vector paint? That’s how I used to do it on me ol’ Paintbox!
Still alot of manual work there, but at least you can paint the exact parts you want, as you want?
Failing that, is there a text preset in AE7 for something like that? Haven’t got it in front of my, but might be worth having a scout…
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Thanks for the suggestions folks — I am creating different layers for the different strokes and it is working pretty well. I had to switch to a different font because the one I originally was using would have taken WAY too long (really fat font that would have required me to create about 7 or 8 new layers PER letter).
Maybe someday this will become an easy, self-contained effect based on the vector. Until then, thanks again for the help.
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