How do I simulate handwriting?

programming flash
1

I’m trying to realistically simulate cursive handwriting as it’s being written. I’m not exactly sure where to start. Motion guides and masks? Do I do it frame by frame a pixel at a time? Does any one have any suggestions?

The words I need to simulate are “is now Instant”

thanks in advance for any help.

2

There is a great article about this in Flash MX Most Wanted by Friends Of Ed. The Gist of it is use a mask that is a rectangle with a slanted end. Then pic out a nice cursive font. It won’t be perfect but I’ve used it before and it looks pretty good.

3

yeah, you would probably have to use a combination of frame by frame and motion tween masks.

Its probably possible to do with all actionscript, but that would be time consuming…

4

type what you want, then frame by frame take a bit away then reverse the frames

it look good i did it

you can make a 4-5 frame gap between each new part then shape it for a better look

takes a long time but does look good

5

Thanks for the suggestions. Looks like it’s going to be a lot of tedious frame by frame work.

-peace

6

if you have a really good hand writing and a great mouse control, you can redo this effect by storing the ‘image’ in an array as coordinates, and plot them after… kind of like this:

(draw anything with the mouse and click ‘redraw’)
http://24.141.60.208/drawer.swf

7

I ended up putting a mask layer over my text. Every 2nd frame, I added to the mask exposing more of the letter below. The effect came out pretty well.

thanks for the suggestions.
-peace