PE11: Titler Shapes For Highlighting

INTRODUCTION

Titler's Text, Styles, Animation, and Shapes have already been featured in the July 2013 blog posts, PE: Titler - Part 1 Text Animations and PE: Titler - Part 2 Styles.

What follows is a spin off of the Styles blog post's section titled "Creating and saving user created Style and Setting it as Default Style". Focus now on the part in that section which stated

In this instance, the Fill and Stroke where not available in Color Properties. Please refer to the Adobe document "Premiere Elements/Adding Color and Shadows to Titles" for a full discussion of Set the Fill and Set the Stroke in Color Properties.

Circles for highlighting moving objects as well as round or other shapes for picture framing an object were created in the Titler taking advantages of all the principles detailed or alluded to in the three references given above.

SOLUTION

The basic ingredients for creating these circles and frames with transparent centers in the Titler included (See Figure 1 which represents the creation of one of these circles for highlighting a moving object)

• draw Shape 

• apply Style that came with built-in Fill and Stroke (not all do)

• set Gradient to "Eliminate" in Color dialog of Shape section to change Color Fill to transparency leaving Stroke

• adjust color of Stroke if necessary, and 

• usually disable Drop Shadow option if it is present in the built-in Style.

Figure 1. Creating A Circle For Highlighting Moving Object. Shape: Circle From Shapes' Ellipse Tool. Kozuka Mincho Lime 27 Style From Style's Built-In Collection..

The same principles for creating the circle would apply to creating the frame for a picture, except the shape selected is the rectangle instead of the ellipse. 

HOW TO

Shapes For Picture Framing

Following the basics described in SOLUTION, the following frames were created with the Titler Shapes section rectangle and with Styles Kozuka Mincho Lime 28, Lithos Pro Wide White 51, Hobo Medium Gold 58, Tekton Pro Yellow 93, and Myriad Pro Caps Lt Blue. Examples are given in Figures 2 and 3.

Figure 2. Shapes For Picture Framing. Styles Kozuka Mincho Lime 28 And Lithos Pro Wide White 51.

Figure 3. More Shapes For Picture Framing. Styles Hobo Medium Gold 58, Tekton Pro Yellow 93, And Myriad Pro Caps Lt Blue (Stroke Colored Corrected In Color Dialog)

Each image that went into a "picture frame" was cropped to fit the "picture frame" with Premiere Elements 11's fx Effects/Transform/Crop, except for the rose image. There a 4-Point Garbage Matte was used for the fit. Either crop or the garbage matte technique could do the task. The frame (Stroke) color was left at the default except for the "framed" Hostas plant flower. There the color was adjusted to one that blended in better with the color of the flower than did the blue default. To change the Stroke color, click on the Stroke button in the Color dialog of Shapes and then adjust the color. Images were from Premiere Elements 11 Clip Art except for that of Hostas plant flower which is my own photo.

Circles For Highlighting A Moving Object

Phase 1

In this phase of the project, embellishment of the circles took on a life of its own and took over as you can judge in the first animated video example which is titled "Scrambling Robots".

In the creation of the "Scrambling Robots" animated video (AVCHD.mp4), many techniques were involved beyond creating the circle for highlighting one of the robots in the video. They included:

• Keyframing the Motion/Position property for each of the three robots

• Keyframing the Motion/Position property of the circle to follow only the blue headed robot

• Track selection to set each robot's front/behind position and motions with respect to one another

• Cutting one robot file at strategic points in order to create change in direction of that robot's path using fx Effects/Transform/Horizontal Flip. 

Phase 2

At one point, there was this green circle with its center transparent. What next? So, what next turned out to be working out an animation where a green crayon appeared to be drawing the green circle that we created in Titler's Shapes as described above. This resulted in the next animated video (AVCHD.mp4).

This phase took on still more techniques besides creating the circle for highlighting objects.

• Eight-Point Garbage Matte applied to the circle file.

• Keyframing Motion/Position property of the Eight-Point Garbage Matte so that it hide and then revealed the circle in a sequential fashion around the circle

• Importing a green crayon graphic from Premiere Elements 11 Graphics and keyframing its Motion/Position property so that it moved around the circle to give the illusion that it was drawing the circle.

Phase 3

The question became "Just what to do with an animation with a crayon appearing to draw a circle that started out in the Titler's Shapes. This is when the "Scrambling Robots" were called back into the scene. 

The Phase 2 AVCHD.mp4 representing just the green crayon drawing a green circle was placed above the images of the motionless robots in this Phase 3 video, and the robot with the blue headed targeted. The result is seen above in this Phase 3 video (also an AVCHD.mp4 type).

Some advanced activities were planned for the "Scrambling Robots" after the blue headed robot was targeted by using a green crayon to draw a green circle around its head, but it was decided to put that off for another time, in a future blog post more specific to the topic of animation as presented in the blog post PE: Perspective Effects.


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Premiere Elements 11 Windows 7 Professional SP1 64 bit was used for this work.


ATR