Tutorials by DJ Mike

DJ Mike's Tutorials: Make Animated Glowing Text

(more examples)

1. Before you try an animated glowing image, you should be familiar with making static glowing text
2. You will use Annotate to make three images with identical text.
   1. One that is blured to make the glow effect on a black background.
   2. One on a black background that is not blured
   3. One on a transparent background that is not blured. This one may or may not be the same color as the previous one.
   As you make each of these images, save the URLs so you can get back to them later and so, if you make a mistake, you don't have to start from scratch.
3. Input the glow.
4. Click Output and save it to the clipboard
5. Input text on black.
6. Click F/X and select morph. For parameter, enter somewhere between 6 and 3. The more frames, the smoother the transition but also, bigger file size. Check the box that says use clipboard image.
7. Select Composite, enter the text on transparent image URL
, and select Over
8. Click Output and output to see how it looks. It will probably be faster than you want. If so, back up and put a number in the box labled Delay. The higher the number, the slower the animation. Try 20 to start
9. Take the results to Gifworks and use Smart Crop to trim the excess. (Trim at ImageMagick will not work on animations).
10. While at Gifworks, use Optimize to reduce colors so reduce the fils size more.

Glow: Lime pumkin font Overlay: Orange pumpkin font on transparent background.

Glow: Orange text with yellow stroke Overlay: Black text on transparent background.

Text: Lokicola font layered over music notation font. Glow: Gold Overlay: Gold with transparent background. Effect: Wave. Extra lines that happen when you wave edited out with Draw

Glow: Lime Scary Monsters font Overlay: Lime Scary Monsters font on transparent background

Glow: Lime Scary Monsters font Overlay: Lime Scary Monsters font on transparent background Effects: Eyes and horns painted.

Fade: Original image blured ad darkened. Dark image morphed with original. Eyes: Eyes of original painted red. All the rest cropped out using Draw. Background made transparent. Composited over the morph.

Used Roll to separate the bulbs from the cord, then painted the cord and bulbs. Unrolled to put them back together. Made back transparent & saved. Backed up and made background and cord black. Saved to clipboard. Spread and Blured and morphed with clipboard. (4 frames) Composited to saved image over the animated glow.

Created by DJ Mike from Santa Barbara