Tools ...

paint program - Paintshop pro in my case.
fraps screen cap - www.fraps.com
Pop Video Converter
video editor capable of reversing footage
CTA for compositing and animation!

1 Load writing into paint program - turn background green or blue.
do in layers .....one layer all blue / green, 2nd layer just word with transparent background ..

2 Start Fraps and check "Hide Mouse Cursor"

3 Work in the largest view you can in your paint program, start erasing in the proper order so when you reverse it looks like it's writing forward ( not backwards )

4 load capture footage into video editor, trim reverse and render.

5 Start pop video converter - green screen to isolate the text, do any final crops ...save as pop video

6 - load into your CTA scene!

"Tada" - Wall-e

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That sounds like a workable workaround...

hrmm, you just gave me an idea ....hows this ...

in a photo program you import a scan of your writing .....then do a screen cap of you erasing it ....then play it in reverse in a video editor!! :w00t:

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looks like flash to me. Perhaps the Drawplus tool has the ability to do this?

Adobe AfterEffects has a "paint on" effects as well, and while under normal circumstances it's very expensive, the Creative Cloud does offer a fairly good monthly fee, for access to all of Adobes graphics and video applications.

But assuming that's not an approach, I believe there was a video editor that also offered a paint on effect and it was "affordable", depending on your definition of affordable.

Last resort... a series of still images? Set up a camera on a tripod, tape the piece of paper down to prevent shifting, then draw a segment, take a pic, extend the segment, take a pic, etc...

yeah, i agree.....i know there are ways to do it in iclone with particle effects but it doesn't seem practical because it turns into a time consuming project. Am trying to figure out a way to pull it off with scanning handwritten text and some trick with opacity maps....mainly because I don't have a tablet. Messiah has a draw over option but writing / drawing with a mouse looks corny! so i need a plan b! lol.

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My guess would be you wouldn;t do this in CTA since there are no actual drawing features in CTA. You'd have to do it in another program, render it out as a video then import ythe video into CTA for interactions with characters.

How do I do effects like this with CTA ...this seems to be a popular style for businesses looking for animations ....not sure how to pull off the real time drawing effect in CTA - I'm sure it's probably a tool in the Adobe flash software , but am wondering how to pull it off with CTA ....without making it into a science project lol :)

I'm guessing this would also need a tablet to get the smooth realtime writing motion.

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"To define Tao is to defile it" - Lao Tzu