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Animating a Signature in After Effects (MAC) – Adding a pencil

Adding a pencil
To add a writing utensil, simply import your raster art and move the anchor point to the tip of the instrument (pencil/pen/quill…).
You can use any positioning system you’d like, but for the sake of convenience, let’s use the “Write-On” plug-in since it already contains position data.

Follow the steps outlined above for technique No. 2 (Write-on). Then:

1. Import your pencil image (or download this one: pencil.tif).

2. Select the pencil layer and move the anchor point to the tip. (Keyboard shortcut = y)

3. Reveal the Position parameter for the pencil layer (p).

4. Option-click the stopwatch for position to turn on expressions. Using the pick-whip, drag to the brush position of the “Write-On” effect.

Now, where your stroke goes, so will your pencil. Change the timing? The After Effects expression takes care of the position data for the pencil layer.

You can download the “Love_Pencil” project for After Effects 6.0 here.
You can download the “Love_Pencil” project for After Effects 5.5 here.

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