Preparing a News Open: Basic and Path Text

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by Kurt Murphy, Paws For Effect, Amherst, New York USA ©2001 Kurt Murphy. All Rights Reserved. Used at CreativeCow.net by kind permission of the author. This edition ©2001 Creativecow.net. All rights reserved.

Article Focus: Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he continues his exploration of the process of re-creating the on-air identity of a local broadcast affiliate in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. At the end of the animation, Kurt Murphy adds the titling for each heading (Local News, Morning News, etc.) using Basic Text. In this lesson, Kurt shows you some tricks to using Basic Text and follows with Path Text. And then... Finishes with the Arc Reflection. This is the completion of the series.

Basic Text: Each heading (Local News, Morning News, etc.) was titled at the end of the animation using Basic Text. It’s a wonderful plug-in, but its main drawback is that it has no kerning capabilities, so make sure that the font type works for what you’re doing. Basic Text is applied to a Solid (fig. 39) and has many parameters to adjust. I animated the Tracking over time, spreading the letters from the center on out. A Drop Shadow was also added and I wiped the whole thing in using a Linear Wipe with a feathered edge. Figure 39 I rendered out a frame of the arc with an alpha channel (fig. 40) so that I could create a faux shadow in Photoshop (fig. 41) for the arc (I wanted a little more depth). It was dissolved in right after the arc settled. Figure 40 Figure 41 Without shadow With shadow Path Text: Path Text (fig. 42) is another great plug-in that is added to a Solid and contains more options than a schizophrenic Swiss Army Knife.* Along with it’s ability to kern, it’s also capable of animating your text on a straight line, path or circle. But the options don’t end there; it can also adjust tracking, stroke, shear, character jitter and rollover your IRA. Figure 42 For my purposes I ran the text along a path to match the leading edge of the arc after the arc had settled into place (fig. 43). I animated the tracking so that the letters spread out over time and was somewhat able to give the appearance that the text was resting on the arc by also adjusting the horizontal shear (fig. 44). I used a matte so that the letters would blend into the arc somewhat as it animated outwards (fig. 45). And finally, I used the Bezier Warp filter to help rest the letters onto the arc. This filter contains 12 tangents placed around the border of the layer which allow you to warp, stretch and reshape it over time. Figure 43 Figure 44 Figure 45 The KVEW logo flying in offered the perfect place for me to ‘wipe’ the “At Six” in. It was simply placed underneath the logo at a point in time where the logo would cover it up (fig. 46) and was revealed as the logo landed (fig. 47). Figure 46 Figure 47 * Thank you, Dan Rather Arc Reflection: To help sell that the arc was metallic in nature, I decided to add a reflection of the KVEW inside the arc as it landed into place. The KVEW Quicktime move layer was duplicated (Command-d), moved down over the arc and then flopped with the vertical scale reversed to -100% and moved down (fig. 48). I decided to stretch the vertical scale a bit to -105% so that the reflection would be stretched a bit more. Figure 48 Figure 49 A Gaussian Blur was added, with a vertical blur of 10 pixels and a horizontal blur of 2 pixels (fig. 49). The arc EPS layer was duplicated (Command-d) and moved to right above the altered logo (fig. 50). This would be used as a Trackmatte so that the logo would appear only within those pixels. Unfortunately there was really no place to introduce the reflection so that it was hidden by the logo flying in, too much of it showed (fig. 51). So a Linear Wipe was added to wipe it in from bottom to top as the logo flew over it. Figure 50 Figure 51 Final Shot: Want to see the whole series so far? Would you like to view the movie? That's All! Hope you enjoyed it.

©2001 Kurt Murphy. All Rights Reserved. Used at CreativeCow.net by kind permission of the author.
This edition ©2001 Creativecow.net. All rights reserved.

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	Preparing a News Open: Basic and Path Text by Erik Waluska 112424275 Thanks very much for sharing this project and your techniques. I definitely gained a few tricks from this tutorial. Reply   Like

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