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Trying to create the Thing style title
Hi guys, I’m having a little trouble trying to create a title a little bit like the one from the film the Thing. If any of you know this film I hope you will be able to help, but I think its used quite a bit in loads of diffrent pices of media now.
Anyway basically what I want to achive is a set of titles apearing against a dark background, as it becomes brighter light streaks apear from the letters. I want the light to fluctuate a little, make it bit more organic. It would be nice if letters werent just bright white, I would like them to ripple a little…maybe not the right word, but so theres a little more texture. In the origional film it apeared that fire were behind the letters, slowly burning away what was ever behind them to reveal more light.So at any rate, this is how I have been doing it so far. I created a black coloured solid in front, then created a matte effect on that with a another text layer. The behind this I created another solid behind this at a slight slant, which I then applied fractual noise to with a gradual evolution. Then behind this I put two cc radical fast blur’s, one higher and one lower. This gets the kind of light streaks that I want coming through the letters, but if I alter the values of one light it seems to effect the other. The letter arnt that clear either, so I was wondering if any one had a better way of doing this? Any help would be great, hope this all reads ok?
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4 Replies
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i think you are pretty much on the right track… if you like the look you have right now, but need to punch the text out a bit, just create duplicate of the text layer, remove the effects and adjust the opacity to suit. maybe add a little glow on an adjustment layer over the top of everything.
you might also try cc light burst in place of radial blur just to see if you like that effect better… it’s actually designed to create those ‘light rays’, but whatever gives you the effect you are looking for is the way to go…
you could probably create that burn through effect similar to ‘the thing’ title sequence by animating the contrast/brightness in the fractal noise (i’m think of the kurt russel version, not the original).
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Thanks very much, I tried that effect and I think I have got some better effects. I will have a bit more a play with it and see what I can get. I still have a little difficulty when putting something infront of the light, doesnt really stand out.
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[william allum] “I still have a little difficulty when putting something infront of the light, doesnt really stand out.”
is it due to the light rays being too opaque… like they obscure the logo/text too much so it’s hard to read?
if, you are using cc light burst, try the ‘halo alpha’ option. that will limit the burst to just the edges and should make the logo/text easier to read.
you may be able to gang multiple effect on to one layer… i did a really quick set up using just 2 layers. one was a layer with fractal noise (animated the evolutions) which i then pre-comped to use with the set matte effect. the other was a text layer that i applied the following effects:
1. set matte: take matte from: ‘noise comp’; use for matte: luminance.
2. cc light burst: intensity: 80; length: 150; halo alpha checked.
3. cc composite: composite orig: add alpha.
4. glow: default settings.one nice thing about ganging effects up on one layer is that you can select all the effects and create an animation preset (animation>save preset…) that you can easily call up any time or take to another system to use in after effects.
it worked pretty well, but my sample text was pretty simple. if the text was small or thin it would probably need more work.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Hi Kevin, thanks for the post. That worked pretty well, thanks very much for the advice. I managed to get the result I wanted by not doing steps 3 and 4 on the text layer, but instead making another duplicate text layer and adding it above everthing else. I then applied the glow effect and a slight guassian blur, and used the colour burn tranfer mode.
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