After effects: Scripty text write-one

Question

I'm looking for a better method of writing on my text than using the stroke effect. The reason I need a better method is some of the text changes width in the letters and using this method I have to use multiple lines for each letter. This can have an adverse effect as it will reveal portions of the letters I don't want to reveal yet. Here is an example of the text I'm using....

After I have all my lines drawn on with the pen tool, I increase the brush size within the Stoke effect to cover all of the letters, set my paint style to "reveal original image", and set a start and stop for the stroke so it writes on the letters. But with overlapping lines parts of the letters will reveal before others or not together.

What I would like to have is a method of writing this on/revealing it as smoothly as possible. Any help is VERY appreciated!

Answer 1

Because you have a custom created shape, that's not strictly a "path" in the sense that its a line, you need to make a "fake" path that replicates, reasonably closely, the shape of your text, and animate that. When you do that, you can use this new path as a mask, progressively revealing your logo/text.

However... since you've got cursive writing, you're going to need more thna one of these fake paths, and do some manual trickery to get it to all reveal as the writing would be done. It will be fiddly.

Here's a basic video outlining (horrid pun) some of the key points (even worse pun) of this process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYcp3qqPdDg