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Vertically Arched lettering tutorial


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VA Tutorial

VA Tutorial pics

Yeah, freewebs is crap like that, so you have to open two windows to get it to work. I originally had it all on one page, but it made the pictures look bad. Give it a try. If there is any problems or you can't get it to work, let me know so I can reexplain some of the steps or add a step here or there.

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This is really confusing. The pictures won't show up on my site. That has never happened before. I will post the tutorial here. Nevermind, I just got the tutorial back up on my site.

1) First, you need to know what you are going to vertically arch (VA.) Here, I will VA the name ?Hunter? from a concept I made a while back.

VA1.png

2) Next, make an oval or circle. The degree of the arch will depend on how big you make your oval or circle. The wider it is, the less of an arch you will have. Here I will use a circle that will give an arch that is not too big, but gets the job done and is easily visible in this tutorial. Also, my arch will be two pixels thick. I am working with lines bigger than one pixel because when you VA your letters, it is easier in the end. I also am making the color of the circle lime green because that is not a color that is used in the lettering here. When you make your circle, I highly suggest using a bright color (lime green, pink, etc.) because it is so much easier to see and distinguish from the letters and you will not be confused.

VA2.png

3) Now, look at the top portion of the circle, the very top of the circle, the part that goes straight across. I drew an arrow to show what I mean.

VA3.png

4a) Now, at the top of the circle where the arrow is, we will count a ?buffer zone?. This ?buffer zone? (bz) will be where the top of our letters touch. This bz will not be part of the circle. It will separate the letters from the circle so that we know how much to arch our letters, while keeping the VA parallel to the circle completely intact and as perfect as can be. This bz can be as thick as you?d like, though I tend to keep it at two pixels, sometimes one. A quick warning though, the thicker you make the bz, the more elongated your letters will turn out in the end, so beware of how long you make your bz.

Now here is how we will apply our bz. On the very top portion of the circle, where the arrow is pointing, we will split that portion in half. Admittedly, I have not VA any names for a while, so I will work with a two pixel thick buffer. If I recall, the first time I did this I either a one or two pixel thick buffer, though I do not remember. For this tutorial, I will use a two pixel thick bz. The blue area underneath the top of the green circle is our bz.

VA4a.png

4b) Since I used blue to distinguish our buffer zone, I will use a different color to distinguish the pixels that are halfway at the top of the green circle. Now whenever you measure the top of the circle, the middle will either have one or two pixels. To figure out the middle of the top of the circle, you MUST (THIS IS A MUST AS WITHOUT THIS, YOUR ARCH WILL NOT LINE UP CORRECTLY) measure every pixel in one color EXCEPT for the final one or two pixels. This is so that you can tell which pixels are the middle of the top of the circle. The two pixels in the middle will be pink.

VA4b.png

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5) Now, just like how we measured the halfway point of the top of the circle, we will measure the halfway point of the word in which we want to VA. So for ?HUNTER? I will measure it similarly as to how I measured the top of the green circle (except using different colors), two pixel thick bz, using light blue this time and then using peach to distinguish the middle pixels from the rest of the bz. Obviously you can choose whichever colors you?d like for the whole thing, but I am trying to use colors that are easy to distinguish from one another.

VA5.png

6) Next, you put your letters inside the circle.

VA6.png

7) After you do this, you will line up the bz that is on top of your letters with the bz that is on top of your circle. However for this step, you must make sure that ONLY the top pixel in your buffer on the letters touches the bottom pixel in the buffer on the green circle. See how the bz on top of the letters lines up with the bz of the green circle? Yes, you can see part of the bz of the green circle, but that is ok. You can see the green circle?s bz because the buffer on top of the?N? and ?T? in ?HUNTER? are only supposed to touch the green circle and NOT go over the top of it at all. It is ok that you can see the green circle?s bz, though with every name you VA, you may not always get that outcome as some words are longer and shorter. Now, since the middle pixels of each buffer line up, you do not need the bz on the rest of the letters, ?H,U,E,R? so get rid of it. Now make sure that your all the letters except the two where the buffer is still necessary touch the green circle, but do not overlap it at all. I have zoomed in so you can see this effect.

VA7.png

8) Since the bz on top of the letters and the bz on the top of the green circle line up, you can get rid of the bz on top of your letters and the bz of the green circle. After you get rid of them, make the two letters, in this case, ?N? and ?T?, touch the green circle, just like the other letters, ?H,U,R,E?. Once again, I have zoomed in for detail.

VA8.png

9) Now, you can see that the letters form an arch, though it is not the final VA that we are looking for. We still have to work on the bottom portion of the letters. First and foremost, you will delete roughly the bottom half of the circle as you only need the top half.

VA9.png

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10) Now that we have the essential parts we need to focus on the bottom of the letters, we will copy the top half of the circle. Now we have the green circle with ?HUNTER? underneath it, and the other green circle that we will use.

VA10.png

11) Now just like earlier, you line up the buffer zone of the letters with the buffer zone of the circle that will go below the letters. Wait, we no longer have a bz, what will we do? It is ok because you do not need a bz. All you have to do is line up the bottom circle with the top circle. This is not hard, but it is IMPERATIVE that this is done perfectly so that your VA lines up exactly how it should in the end. One sure fire way to ensure that your circles align correctly is to draw a line on each side of the top circle. Here I have drawn a red line to make it easy. Now there is a red line coming down from the top circle and now the bottom circle should align properly. While this is important, the step that is even more important is making sure that your bottom circle touches the pixels of the ?H? and ?R?. Obviously the top circle touches the two uppermost letters, ?N? and ?T? and the bottom circle touches the two lowermost letters, ?H? and ?R?. Think of it like this, top circle touches top most letter(s), bottom circle touches two bottom most letter(s). Simple enough logic.

VA11.png

12) Now we get into the actual VA part. We will work on arching our letters here. You will obviously be extending the letters so that they reach both portions of the circle. To show the part of the letters that I am adding, I will use red. Now you need to make sure that your letters are touching the circles. If they are not touching them, then you will not have the accuracies that you want. Remember, the part of the letters that I am drawing in are red. Here I have drawn what I will be how the letters look after being VA. Then I have another version where the whole VA is red, just so you can see the difference.

VA12.png

13) After the letters are VA, you can go back and recolor them, outline them, etc. Now you have your letters that are vertically arched!

VA13.png

Yes, I know this is a tedious process. Are the letter measurements exact? Probably not most of the time. I have not devised a formula to ensure that letters have the same dimensions or have figured out any other way with this VA process. If anyone has any suggestions, or improvements, please send me an e-mail.

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