Help urgently needed! Pencil-drawing effect?

[grace_adair]

I'm urgently trying to figure out how to do a certain style of animation in Flash MX. I want to have the effect of a line being "drawn", as if by an invisible pencil. How can this be done?

I wondered if this might be done somehow with a Motion Tween, but it didn't seem to work. Is there perhaps a 'mouse capture' tool that allows Flash to capture the movement of the mouse and the lines or shapes it makes on the screen?

I've seen it on websites such as Pencilmation.com, and need to know how to do it for a school assignment.

All help is much appreciated. If you know how to do this, please help. I'm desperate.

Thankyou!

[Biff Tanon]

Probably the easiest way to do that would be to draw the entire shape, and go through and at each keyframe delete a little chunk of the shape. Copy-paste each previous keyframe, then delete a little more.
Then select all the frames, and reverse the order. That will give it the appearance of drawing.
Hope this helps...

[katsoft]

Well it's not that hard ...I think there is a tutorial here too.You first make the text then you mask it and reavele leter by letter.

[Llewop]

http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/An...-575/index.php

check this link out m8y and youll find a tutorial which talks u through it.

[BaileyBoy]

Mask it.

Have the final line already completed on a masked layer and use a mask layer above to "reveal" the line - be sure to use a SHAPE tween not a MOTION tween.

I'll send you a sample if you'd like.

BaileyBoy

[grace_adair]

Thanks to everyone for their help...I had a nagging suspicion it might've been complicated like that, but oh well. I suppose everything worth doing takes time.

BaileyBoy, that'd be great if you could post me a sample. And I've also checked out the FlashKit tutorial (didn't even realise there was one!)

Thanks again. You've all helped me more than you'll know.

- Grace

[BaileyBoy]

here you go:

http://www.baileycreative.com/grace/sketch.fla

and

http://www.baileycreative.com/grace/sketch.swf

[Steven_edi]

I need to do the pencil drawing effect as my project ask for it . I try the tutorial but i can't do it .Pls help me as my project is going to end soon . thanks

[grace_adair]

Hi BaileyBoy

Thanks heaps for sending that file...

I'll let you know how I go once it's done.

Best wishes

Grace