Handwriting - Masked?

1

Hi,
I have seen many, many Flash sites that have handwriting text that looks like they are actually writing it on the stage from left to right. I am wondering how this is done; is it masking? That would seem pretty hard to do. I can’t figure it out??
I am also in a fog as to how some sites achieve what appears to be a line that looks sorta like a Fuse that, as it zigs and zags all over the stage, a ‘tail’ sorta fades out behind it.
I have been trying to make these effects for 2 days and have decided that they must not be easy.
Any ideas or examples for either of those effects?

Thanks,
Rustyd

2

The easiest way to do the handwriting is to put the full signature in the first frame, then duplicate that, erase a little bit at the end and duplicate again. Keep going until you’ve finished, then reverse the frames. It takes a while but the results are very nice. There’s a few tutorials for this around, but I don’t know where off the top of my head.

3

That’s definately the way, you can even shapetween you steps for simple parts across multiple frames.

4

Ah thanks for that guys I’m glad someone else also had this problem and phrased it better then my thread. Will try tonight. Cheers again.

Edit: I’ve tried rubbing out the text but it doesn’t effect it at all. It won’t rub out the text :o(

:tb:

5

I will begin immediatley and see how it comes out.
I have tried to ‘reverse frames’ before on tweens, but I usually end up losing them somehow!?! I’ll post my handwriting result if I can make it work.
Thanks to both of you for the quick replies!!

6

np

7

Glad to help

8

i prefer masking to erasing. just start adding bits of mask and then work your way 'till the end. no need to start reversing the frames and it is faster too.

9

am doing the masking as said, its good effect. loving it. thanks :}

10

actually, you just added masks to the clip , thus making more objects and slowing down your movie.

11

yeah, but if we are talking about short texts it really aint an issue. you can also more easily emulate the handwriting speed/style when you dont have to think in a reverse way all the time.

12

:crying:

how do you erase the text as well flash isn’t let me rub anything out.

13

Hit ctrl+b twice to break apart into shapes.

14

Cheers for that :blush:
The noob in me strikes again.

15

I am trying both ways, first with the masking because I too couldn’t erase the text - but with that question now answered, I shall try erasing and reversing to compare the two.
I must say, this is tedious, but produces a good effect - also, it taught me a lot about masking!
However, it appears to work. The only problem is, with so many frames, there’s a glitch in the “T” I need to fix so it looks like i’ll need to edit everything from that point.
Attached is the masked version if anyone is interested.

Thank you all!

(Note: I was about to attach the FLA but it is 1.6M using masking!!! So here is the SWF.)

Rustyd

16

huh, doesn’t seem to work in firefox . . .

looks good in IE though - although I would recommend dotting the i and crossing the t at the same time as the next letter is being written instead of waiting until the end. Nice work though! :thumb:

17

Worked fine in Firefox for me lunatic. Anyhow, I’ll second that on the i and t comment. A pretty nice effect for the effort though eh?

18

works great in Safari 2.0

19

i like it dude, but agree need to sort out the I and the T and it will be mint. Hopefully I can get mine to match how you did yours.

Know what you mean about tedious though. Great effect but so much time needed.

Lewn

20

Hi Guys, just to say i’ve done mine. any advice on improvements?