Lettersets

[Danago]

Hey. First post here :) Looks like a very nice forum :yes:

Anyway. Im just wondering how people generally make their lettersets, for glitter text generators. I just completed my first letterset, and it took me ages, to do each character individually. I did try making an action to automate the process a little, but that didnt work out as planned, and kinda just messed things up even more :shifty:

So...how do you make them?

[vulcanstudios]

Hey there man,
Welcome to the forums... I'm new as well but these places are great for gathering a lot of myspace resource centric people. Good to see you made your way here.

I've never designed a font or anything for glitter graphics but for all I know people might just use free fonts from the net.

If you want to design your own set but save time I found this nifty tutorial a few months back and googled it up for you (I've never done it but hey why not). It shows how you can use elements from other letters to make new letters.

Check here for the tutorial Font Making (http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/2d__and__photoshop/design_a_custom_typeface)

Thanks,
VulcanStudios

[Danago]

Hmm..i think i should reword my question.

I know how to make new fonts, but when i talk about lettersets, im actually referring to a set of 26 individual letters, A-Z, in gif format, which have each been animated, colourized etc. Bascially, what im trying to find out, is how i can reduce the time it takes to create each of these 26 individual letters.

Look, for example. Here are 3 letters from the set i recently created:
http://sunnyprofiles.com/lettersets/Dirty%20Ego/a.gifhttp://sunnyprofiles.com/lettersets/Dirty%20Ego/b.gifhttp://sunnyprofiles.com/lettersets/Dirty%20Ego/c.gif

Each individual character underwent a series of steps to reach the final effect. It is very monotonous to repeat for every single letter, so my question is, what can i do to speed up the process a little?

Thanks for the reply anyway :)

[vulcanstudios]

Ok ok,
I see what you mean now. You can look at this other thread of mine where I got bored and gave a tutorial on glitter images but it can apply to images. So my advice is do the entire alphabet with a method like mine and just keep them spaced out then after animation cut them apart from eachother into seperate gif images. I can get you a tutorial some time if you want. Just PM me if you want my aim so I can show you sometime. I have to switch computers soon and I don't have photoshop on there but then I can definately show you how to make a huge set of letters.

Forgot the thread here it is: http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1319

Thanks,
VulcanStudios

[Danago]

Ahh thats a good idea. I never thought of doing the whole set of letters, and then just separating them :) To separate, do i just use the slice tool in Image ready?

Thanks again for the help,
Dan.

EDIT: Just created another set, and jeeez, it was so much easier. Thanks very much for the advice :) I appreciate it greatly :)

[Helios]

Are you familiar with Photoshop's actions at all? Its a huge time saver for stuff like this.

[Danago]

I "know of" actions, and have used them for VERY basic things (like 2-3 step tasks). I tried doing it all with an actioon, but things kept messing up, and things didnt work how i wanted them. Im sure its me just doing something wrong.

Do you know of any good places that teach the use of actions?

[Selena]

i generally just make the whole alphabet into one image, and then pay someone else some forum points on another forum to do the cropping for me.
Works out very good for me :)

[DavidR]

i generally just make the whole alphabet into one image, and then pay someone else some forum points on another forum to do the cropping for me.
Works out very good for me :)

That's borderline slavery, good thinking!

[Danago]

Haha never even crossed my mind to do that :P Im a moderator at a fairly large forum, and have many thousands of points, so its worth a try i guess :P

[deep]

I "know of" actions, and have used them for VERY basic things (like 2-3 step tasks). I tried doing it all with an actioon, but things kept messing up, and things didnt work how i wanted them. Im sure its me just doing something wrong.

Do you know of any good places that teach the use of actions?


there an easier way with photoshop, no need to do copping. but will require few more mins of ur time. just create a tempate first, then just change the letters one by one.

if you create the template correctly then all you have to do is just change the letters and save which saves lots of time instead of creating a letter and then adding effects to it one by one.

cropping works good also :)

[Danago]

Im not quite getting what you mean :(

[Selena]

That's borderline slavery, good thinking!

well for instance, i just completed 28 sets and only have 1 set left that i have not assigned to a member of the other forum
do you know how long 28 lettersets would take me to crop. Even if i did use photoshop, its a lot to do, but its for a huge glitter generator, a clone of www.glitteryourway.com's gen but better because i'm making it :)

[Danago]

Well if the forum members are happy, youre happy, its a win win situation :D

[vulcanstudios]

I don't know if Macromedia Fireworks can handle animated gifs but if it can you could just import your entire letterset into there and then just set up rows and columns of slices and then if you go to export slices as .gif you can save each file in order like 1-26 will be the names but it'll be instant. Someone might want to try that. I'm to lazy atm but it sounds way simple.

[MrWizard]

well for instance, i just completed 28 sets and only have 1 set left that i have not assigned to a member of the other forum
do you know how long 28 lettersets would take me to crop. Even if i did use photoshop, its a lot to do, but its for a huge glitter generator, a clone of www.glitteryourway.com's gen but better because i'm making it :)

Now that glitter gen does some pretty nice work! Are you going public with your's or will it be for production use?

[Maz]

I have 65 glitter generators, and although I bought a couple of the letter sets, I made and cropped most of them myself.

Takes me ages lol.

[icesar]

I would definitely check out Photoshop actions. They're very underused, but they're amazing time savers for stuff like this.

[Selena]

Now that glitter gen does some pretty nice work! Are you going public with your's or will it be for production use?

I am going to make it public though not on its own individual site, it will be a main feature of my new upcoming site, which will be a beast by the way.
I'm having some xml problems with it, which i need to get solved, but other than that, it will be simply amazing.

[MrWizard]

Selena, can't wait to see it in action!

[Christine]

I don't even make my glitters in photoshop.. It's just alot easier and simple in jasc psp 8 in my oppinion. Although I do make most of my other graphics in CS..

I do the same as Selena, pay others in forum points to crop it if I'm useing it for personal use.

Looking forward to the generator, Selena.

[nsmchris]

I'd use fireworks to crop the images. You just create your letters in one long line of text. Then put a slice over each letters. Name the slice to the letter name. Select "animated gif", set the transparent color, and export with slices.

You can even reuse the slices for the next letter set.

chris...

[Matt]

i generally just make the whole alphabet into one image, and then pay someone else some forum points on another forum to do the cropping for me.
Works out very good for me :)

:eek: same. haha