How to make and animated cartoon text

Here are somehands and feet that I've already prepared, you could use these or make your own. Zip ufo file here These are the ones I use to make my emoticons, you could recolored them if you want. They are in done in pixels, just zoom in on them, it will be easier for you. You could use the tranform tool but only the flip ones, no rotation cause you will get some jaggies and we don't want any on our transparent animation.

Open Ulead PhotoImpact.

Before we begin, let's open a RGB white canvas 400 x 100 pixels. We could always crop our animation later on if we have to much space.

The Font I did use is Abadi MT Condenced Extra Bold. You could use any Font Text you like, Script Font are a little harder to use to make Cartoon from it.

A good place to get free font is from: http://www.dafont.com be prepared to spend quite some time there.

Select the tool text and choose your font. If the tool setting window is not open, open it. Unchecked the Anti-aliasing, since we are making a transparent animation, we don't want any soft edge that will give us jaggies.

Type in the word you want to use. Here I did use the word " Walk ".

Select the pick tool, and reselect the text tool. Open your tool setting window.

Now is the time, to make changes if you want. Change the font color, add a border or what ever you like. I did keep mine as a 2D mode and use a black color.

You could put a check mark in the keep the original text if you want but not necessary here for the animation I want to do here, then what we need is to split our text so we could move each one individually.

Here is what happen when we put a checked mark in the Keep original text, it does duplicate the text, each letter are on it owned but they are just all selected. We just need the split text here. So if you have have the original delete it.

Now that we have our text ready, we need to make it look like a cartoon. We are going to make those letters some eyes. Select the path drawing tool with the setting above. Of course you could choose other color, try to be a bit realistic.

In your panel Tool Setting-Path, unchecked the anti-aliasing, same reason as before, we don't want any jaggies on our transparent animation.

Draw an ellipse 10x16 pixels, don't worry if you are not accurate the first time, use the transform tool to give the exact size for your shape.

For the pupille, select the circle shape, but without any border. Make your circle 8x8 pixels.

Let's position our eye's part on our first letter here. If you haven't open your zip file yet, it is time to do so and bring it into PI. Select the feet and hands you would like to use.

Do the same for the other letters. Hey, we got them to look at us.

Hide your background and save as a transparent gif format. Call this one whatevername001.gif

Now we are going to have some fun. Select all the pupill eyes and make them all look at the right side of the canvas.

Hum, pretty cool. Hide your background and save as a transparent gif, but this time instead of 001 make it 002.

We are going to make them ready to start walking. For this we need to change theirs right foot for a slant one. I just did replace the right foot on each one of them. Hide your background and save as a transparent gif, but this time instead of 002 make it 003.

Now to complete our side view, we need to take those left feet and flip them horizontally or choose it from the feet image. Here I have position the slant ones on the left and the flat one touching the ground on the right. Great they are all facing right.

Before we save, we are going to select all object. Now on your keyboard, hit the right arrow key 10 times. This is going to move forward our letters 10 pixels. Save as above but this time name it with 005.

For the next move, we are going to change the feet, the right one goes on the left and the left one goes on the right for each letter, as they walk together. Once you have done that, select all object, and as we did before, use the right arrow key to move them forward 10 pixels. Save again and name it with 006.

As they are walking, theirs hands are moving along as well, so let's change theirs hand for a side view here. Change the positon of the eyes and reverse the position of theirs feet. Select all, move forward 10 pixels. Save again and name it with 007. Now they are really walking.

Hum, let's tell a story here.

Change the position of theirs eyes, facing straight side way and adding one hand to the front letter with a pointing finger. Reverse the feet again, yes thay are still walking here. Save again and name it with 008. Hahaha You are wondering what is going to happen hey?.....

Wow a stop sign. Where is it coming from? To make it, just use the Path drawing tool, and use the ready made custom shape and type in stop. Again we do change the eye's position, but this time, we duplicate the left feet and position on the right, of course we do delete the slant foot for each one. As you could see the stop sign is at the top. Save again, name it with 009.

Select the stop sign and bring it to the middle vertically. Select the eyes and position them as they did follow the movement of the sign going down. If you notice I did also change the hand with an other one, pointing a bit downward. They have stop walking here, no more forward movement. Save again and name it with 010.

Hehehe.... They have just realize they have to STOP!

Now they are going to face us. Position the eyes facing us. Move the left hand on theirs left side, change the right hands for some other hands except for the last letter that is still pointing. Select the left foot and flip horizontally, it will make them standing facing us. Save again and name it with 011.

Here I decide to make them tell us that we do have to stop by using different hands. Just change theirs hands and position. Save again and name it with 012.

Here we just continue the movement telling us to stop. Just repositon them. Save again and name it with 013.

Hahaha!! They are scared that we won't stop, so they hide theirs eyes with theirs fingers over theirs eyes. Save again and name it with 014.

Here we just unhide theirs eyes. Save again and name it with 015.

Well that's it. Close PhotoImpact and open Ulead Gif Animator.

Use the animation wisard to open your images. remember that outr canvas is 400 x 100 pixels. Click next, click on add images, navigated where you did save your files and select all of them and click next. Make sure they are all in order, if not just highlight and drag in place. Once done click next twice and click ok.

With the last frame selected in UGA, use the rectangle selection tool, and select as shown on the left here. Then crop your canvas. No use to have extra space here. Check the preview if everything look ok. Go back to the edit tab. Make the first frame properties at 50, and the two last ones at 40, the others in between, make it about 25. You could play with those setting here, to see how fast or slow you want your frame to move.

Here is my finished result. The border you see here is just to show you how to make your cartoon and do not apear on my original one.

Here is an other type I did made for the Valentine using my name.

Have fun, make those letter do all kind of things, run, jump, push, pull, dance whatever you want them to do. Make a short story.

Don't forget to show result at PhotoImpact International, I would love to see it.

If you are not a member, you just have to register, it is free.

Hope you did learn something new and had as much fun as I did had to write the tutorial for you. If you need help you could always contact me. or use the critic icon in the animation forum for help.

Don't forget to grab your award.