Signature animation task

Greetings from another newb to the forum...

I have traced a signature using Xara Xtreme and wanted to find the best procedure for animating it to make it appear as if its being written. Im just now trying my hand in flash so have yet to find all the limitations of this program. Im sure there is an easy way and a hard way of doing most tasks, so I present this task in hopes that someone has experience in a similar procedure.

Note that I would really like for each stroke to show being animated but if that is extremely time consuming and an easier method can be employed for a similar effect, that would be good enough.

The Xara file of the signature: http://stillnem.com/avrilfangz/images/signature.xar

to be honest - if I wanted an animation of a signature being drawn - I would write it with a graphics tablet, and screen capture that process as a video with something like camtasia studio

a lot less work I would have thought - but may not be what you want? :)

Here is a link to an old PSP7 tut for an anim that shows your signature being drawn with a quil. You could use this as a beginning and make in any prg. and delete the quil altogether if you wanted to. Turning the anim into flash shouldn't be a problem.
http://www.quill-signatures.com/quillQA_graphics.html

Hi

A method I have used is to set the signature as the background and then use white vector shapes to reveal it - reversed!

In Xtreme you need to be aware of the basic concepts for Flash projects - naming the shapes, and "The 6 core transformations" - these are in Help.

Check out http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ight=Signature I think that shows what you want.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I did see some gif animations, which I am quite a natural with. I am just trying to brainstorm on a method that could be done with xara because I love the 'xtreme' quality and detail :) I will be sure to post the finished siggy when I get it done.

- edit -

stlewis has the right idea, its just what I was coming up with. With the sig as background, I plan to use named vector shapes to reveal the path of the writing, but rather than reverse, which was my first thought, Im gonna go straight from the beginning. This should prevent a ton of confusion.

So far Im naming the frames in order and # of strokes according to how many transformations it will take. I plan to insert 0-duration frames as required to allow me to follow the path as I would if I was carefully erasing it from a chalkboard. I should be able to use rotations to reduce the number of shapes required for each letter. As complicated as this may turn out to be, my goal is for the outcome to look dead on and anything short of perfect will be considered failure.

Timing can be tweeked but as this is an unfinished project, I'll leave final tweaks for the final. Check out the .XAR and feedback is welcome :D
http://stillnem.com/avrilfangz/image...lsignature.xar

Well done on the animation. However, I'm not sure why your messing with someone else's signature .... Aren't you going to get in trouble?

Excellent animation. I'd recommend that you speed it up to around a fifth of it's current length and apply the star in the i as a final touch, not in the middle of the signature (Are you using two hands so to speak?)