Comments

BinaryCafe wrote on 7/30/2012, 10:38 PM
KRyan,

I'm sure there are lots of other ways to achieve a chalk on chalkboard effect (and l look forward to reading other responses), but this is how I create mine. It works great and really looks good. This method relies on tools other than Vegas.

1. Wacom tablet (larger tablets are easier to work with, if you're recording large screen sizes)

2. Photoshop (I am using Photoshop CS 5.5 Extended)
- set the canvas size to your video resolution (e.g., 1920x1080, 72pixels)
- set background to black or make a custom background, with logo, etc.
- create a new layer that you'll be 'drawing' to
- select your brush tool [press B on keyboard]
- in the brushes palette, append the 'Dry Media' brushes
- select one of the pastel brushes and modify the size to your preference (press [ or ] to decrease/increase brush size)
- select the brush ("chalk") color of your choice as the foreground color (yellow, cyan and pink look good)
- press tab to turn off your palettes/toolbars in Photoshop, press F on keyboard to go to full screen mode
- press CTRL+0 to fit canvas to fill your display area...press CTRL and plus key to zoom in a bit more, if necessary

3. Use Camtasia Studio to record yourself drawing in Photoshop in full screen mode
- When you edit your video in Camtasia, turn off the cursor preview
- I am using Camstudio Version 8. You need to 'Produce and Share' your Camtasia project file into a format that Vegas can import. I produce the the files as MP4 files and Vegas imports them with no issues.
note: Camstudio is a free alternative to Camtasia Studio, but isn't as flexible/powerful

The taskbar is not visible on my Photoshop monitor when I'm recording it; I have a 2nd monitor that has all the other junk (e.g., taskbar and notes) that I don't want to record. You could set your taskbar to autohide if you only have a single monitor.

You can also use After Effects to manually illustrate paths/objects, but it is much more time consuming.

The key is the Wacom tablet. It makes it so easy to create the handwritten effect because...well, that's exactly what you're doing. It's impossible for me to achieve anything that looks decent with a regular mouse.

btw, the Wacom drivers can cause issues with Vegas Pro 11, as reported in other threads.

Cheers!





JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/30/2012, 10:44 PM
I use Boris RED. Insert a Paint tack, change the brush type to spray, and draw away with a mouse or tablet. Then set an animation keyframe for Stroke Begin and Stroke End and you've got animated handwriting that looks like chalk on a board.

~jr
DGates wrote on 7/30/2012, 10:48 PM
Geez, Binary, I think he might be looking for a SIMPLE way to do it.

=P
Steve Mann wrote on 7/31/2012, 8:47 AM
Is this what you wanted?



I used the free Route Generator program to do this with a mouse. A tablet would have been much smoother.
KRyan wrote on 7/31/2012, 9:33 PM
Thanks for the tips! I can make something work with those suggestions. FYI, This is very similar to what I'm trying to do. This is actually a white-board but...
http://scribeseo.com/

Thanks again!

Ken
Steve Mann wrote on 8/1/2012, 11:56 AM
You should have showed us the sample of what you want to do first...

Would stop-motion animation work:






KRyan wrote on 8/2/2012, 3:05 PM
Steve,

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I wanted to do. Sorry for not being clear earlier. Since I'm not a good artist (pretty bad actually) I was wondering about showing the had drawing, but then having what actually appears be something like a font or something that doesn't look crap like it would if I actually drew it;).

So is it just a matter of setting up a video camera upside down and filming my hand drawing?

Ken
farss wrote on 8/2/2012, 3:51 PM
"Since I'm not a good artist (pretty bad actually) I was wondering about showing the had drawing, but then having what actually appears be something like a font or something that doesn't look crap like it would if I actually drew it;)."

You can do this fairly easily in After Effects.
Type the text you want, trace it to create paths and then "stroke" the paths with a "pen". Been there, done that.
If you want the hand you can use a suitable shot of a hand holding a pen. AE has a very neat trick that'll convert a path to keyframes to move an object along the same path. Just started working with this.


As you don't have AE or Boris which I think can do much the same try this.

Print the text on a piece of paper using a laser printer. Put the paper on a sheet of glass. Get a thick felt pen. Now setup the camera to shoot the paper through the glass. Using the printed text as a guide write the text with the felt pen.
The ink will seep through the paper to cause the text you're writing to be captured by the camera. The laser printed guides will not be visible. You need to take a bit of care with lighting to avoid reflections etc.

One thing worthy of a mention is chalk on a blackboard is very different to a marker on a whiteboard.

Bob.