Creating a Sketched Type Effect
by Wizaerd

Date Posted: 10/24/2001 - You may have a need to digitally duplicate a sketched text effect (and you may not need to either), and if so then I offer up this efficient quick tip...

Open Canvas and create a text object. Fonts such as Times, Courier, Helvetica, etc... since they give a better result. You'll want to make it good sized so you can work easily with it, and for this example I also chose to have a bold face and italics.



Go to Edit->Duplicate and make two duplicate copies. For the record, you don't have to use the Duplicate menu command... you can copy and paste the object, or my personal favorite is Control+D for the Duplicate command. Seems like I use this keystroke one helluva lot more than any other. And you could also use the Edit->Replicate command as well to give you two copies immediately instead of duplicating your image object twice.

Ok, select the two duplicates and set the fill to None and the stroke to a weight of 1. As with any other tutorial on the web you can choose any stroke you want and any color you want, the tutorial only provides the basic guidelines.



Select the first of your duplicate objects, and go to Object->SpriteEffects->Add Effect->Blur->Motion Blur. (Of course you could always use the Sprite Effects Palette since it's a whole lot easier than navigating through nested menus....) In the Motion Blur dialog I have the direction set to 75 degrees since my text is italics. If your text is not in italics then choose a direction of 90 degrees.



Select your second duplicated text object, and apply a Motion Blur SpriteEffect to it as well, except for the direction set it to 0 degrees. Also for the record the Distance and Phase attributes are completely arbitrary.



After applying any type of SpriteEffect, you may notice the effect appears to be abruptly cutoff. This happens when the effect extends beyond the bounding box of your object. If this is the case, then open the SpriteEffects palette and click the Auto Crop button for both your duplicated objects. This will re-assign and re-render the effect and adjust it outside of the bounding box.



Ok, make sure your two duplicate objects (the ones with the SpriteEffects applied) are on the bottom of the stack or the stacking order, select all three objects and align them horizontally and vertically centered. Render them out, and you have what appears to be a psuedo-sketched text.