Free-form drawing in AE

[Guy Burns]

I don't know much about AE, so before I look into this in detail, I simply want to know if what I want to do is possible.

I want to be able to generate free-form brush strokes by drawing on my Wacom tablet with its pen. For various reasons I can't just do the drawing in Photoshop and record the screen (my first preference). The alternative is to use AE (or Premiere) to record my pen movements as keyframes, and then I attach whatever brush I desire to the path and presto – I have a signature, a track on a map, a squiggle, a cross-out, whatever.

I cannot use Motion Sketch because there is a bug with CS6 running under OSX 10.9 (my setup), but a suggested workaround is to use Puppet Tool to record the keyframes.

Ques 1.  Given that I have a real-time path on my screen courtesy of Puppet Tools, can AE apply a brush to that path? The path may have to be copied and pasted somewhere else in AE, or undergo some other process, but once I have the path, can it be brushed with all the normal brush variables (style of brush, diameter, colour, roundness, hardness)?

Ques 2.  Is there any method in AE of screen recording? i.e. I select a brush, apply all the brush settings, and start my squiggle. Doesn't have to be a direct screen recording, but the end result after processing by AE, is a free-form brush movement.

Ques 3. Any suggestions as to other software, or other approaches in AE or Premiere, for obtaining a digital version of real-life strokes?

[Martin_Ritter]

AE have only very limited brush strokes, there is no support for any artistic brushes like you have in PS. You can create a straight line of the desired stroke in PS, or AI and use puppet tool to curve it, but this is an insane amount of work and far away from the idea to "draw" something. There is a plugin Bao Boa which can make this process easier, but it's still not drawing.

Therefore, I recommend you using Animate (formerly Flash), which is designed for realtime drawing with all brush strokes and parameters you are used to. You can keyframe in Animate like you do in AE and you can export the final artwork as movie file or interactive HTML (and Gif and others ...).

*Martin

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Evan Abrams recently released a tutorial where he creates brushstrokes in AE, with a special focus on using the Echo effect. https://youtu.be/ui0-AvpjrIA

You may also obtain interesting results with a single-frame brush image and then using a particle generator to create animated strokes along a path.

If you feel like updating to a newer OS or app, Adobe released Adobe Fresco but I'm not certain if it does animation.

https://www.adobe.com/sea/products/fresco.html

And there's Procreate which has gotten a lot of good reviews.

https://procreate.art/

[Guy Burns]

Thanks for the suggestions. I went through the ones most suitable, and this is what I’ve decided:

• The Abrams tutorial was most interesting and showed me how complicated it can be (hours of time) to try and digitally mimic a real-life 2-second signature. I’ll give it a go sometime.
• The mention of Procreate jogged my memory. A few years ago a friend did a signature for me on his iPad using Procreate, then exported to mp4 for use in Premiere. It worked really well in one of my AVs. I was hoping for a Mac version to try out, but no luck.
• So the technique I’m going to experiment with is basically an analogue version: recording from a Wacom tablet. These notes are for my future reference and for anyone else who might want to do this sort of thing:

1. Install Cursorcerer, software I only discovered recently, to hide the cursor – not possible otherwise with my version of PS and the Wacom, although the cursor problem may not matter with a recorded Action (see below).
2. Choose a white PS brush and practice the brush strokes few times over the image that will be used in the final video.
3. Record the brush strokes as an Action (Allow Tool Recording; Playback Options set to Step by Step).
4. Replace the background image with black (or another colour to be keyed out in Premiere).
5. Prepare Quicktime for recording a selection on the screen.
6. Start recording and play the Action.
7. Import the video into Premiere and apply the Luma Key effect with suitable settings for Threshold and Cutoff so that only the white brush strokes are visible.
8. For brush strokes other than white, use the Tint effect and set Map White to whatever colour is desired.

I haven't fully tested yet, but it looks like a goer for achieving brushstrokes that retain the natural rhythm of handwriting.

Thanks again for the purely digital suggestions.