Creating a Title Paint-On Effect With RED

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One of the more interesting text animation techniques is a paint-on effect where brush strokes reveal a title on the screen. To create this effect I chose Boris RED 4.2 for its comprehensive paint features.

I'll start with a simple title running across the screen in large heavy type. The choice of font is important for this effect since the animation will take place inside the text alpha channel. A skinny font would not work well.

The Text Tool provides an easy way to type and position text on the screen.

Tip: Use Control/Command 6 to bring up the Tool window if one is not already displayed.

Choose the T tool from the palette and click in the Composite window. A text object will automatically be created in the Timeline.

Once the text is typed in select the text to change font and size.

Choose Arial Black font (or another font of your choice) and Size 90 points in the Control window. Position the text by dragging the outline box.

Text styles such as fill or stroke are not important for the purpose of this exercise since we are going to fill our text with paint. Our strategy is to create a special texture for text object consisting of a paint stroke. Paint animation will gradually reveal text on the screen.

Now we are ready to draw the paint stroke. Deselect all tracks in the Timeline. Choose a Spray Paint tool and start drawing a stroke. Note how a new paint layer pops up in the timeline.

I started from the left side of the view, going all the way to the right, down and back to the left.

Can you tell I?m not a very good painter? The line is not straight and is not going to cover the entire text area. But I know that I can fix it later. For now it is good enough. My next step is to create the texture track for the text.

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