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Drawing out swooshes
Okay so for some time now I have been wondering this. How do you get those swooshes to draw themselves out. What I mean by swooshes, are those Illustrator styled lines. For that matter anyways, how do you have a shape draw it’s self out smoothly. I know you can use a mask for certain things, but when I watch an example of it, it appears that they do not use a mask, rather it’s like it fills itself into the shape.
For example, to see exactly what I’m talking about go to Stardust.tv and watch the Lebron James video clip. It’s like they use 3d stroke but with a custom shape. I know you can use illustrator paths with 3d stroke, but I’m unsure how to use 3d stroke and have the actual shape be solid in stead of a stroke shape with no fill.
Anyways, any help would be much appreciated.
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5 Replies
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Sorry, didn’t see any “Lebron James” clip on the site. Is it listed under a different name?
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Look at “Force Zoom Lebron 3”
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As with a lot of recent ad work, this looks like it is most likely not a single technique, but a seamless combination of several.
To start, if you haven’t already, you should look at the Cow tutorial on using strokes to reveal pre-drawn artwork:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/850040
Beyond that technique — which could easily handle the vine-like ends of the 3D strokes we’re seeing here, you could use Trapcode’s 3D Stroke to handle the heavy lifting of all those many 3D strokes, most of which do not end in specific shapes. Also keep in mind that it is possible to vary the thickness of a stroke over its length — which might also account for some of what you’re referring to as having “the actual shape be solid.”
It’s hard to know for sure what they used here (anyone from Stardust out there and want to weigh in??).
But the free download of 3D stroke and the tutorial above would be good places to start thinking about it.
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Alright, thanks you for the advice.
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If you see depth on a stroke (it looks like a tube), a 3D app was probably used. Cinema 4D is good at that sort of thing.
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