Any Suggestions for How to Create Dragged Wide Shadow?

[skmwrp]

An effect like in this image, where the shadow offsets from the center across the lines of text, are attached the entire way back to the font, and sharp...

We've tried different things, but nothing comes out right. Or easy.

We prefer to use Designer, but have Photo & Publisher as well.

Thanks for any help.

[v_kyr]

There have been some threads and tutorials about that theme in the past! - Overall it's always some work to do so, either by using two text chars and then combining them by lines so the behind/beneith 3d like area can be filled black, or by using a bunch of stacked/displaced/combined duplicate (Ctrl-/Cmd-J) repeats of chars. - Or via ADe isometric design grids.

See overall:

• 3d text shadow site:forum.affinity.serif.com
• ADe editable 3D text (Youtube)
• ADe 3D vector text (Youtube)
• Websearch theme images
• ... etc.

 

... and so on, do also a forum search!

 

[skmwrp]

8 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

... and so on, do also a forum search!

Yeah, okay, but none of those are close to what we're trying to achieve if you look at our actual image, which is not 3D but hand cut back around 1932. It is as though the light is at bottom center & it radiates out from there, which none of your examples show. We've tried perspective warps, convert-to-curves and drag lines, and they all sucked, but we're hoping there's a graphic design genius who knows this obscure are.

We're close to falling back onto Blender, but we like Affinity products better.

So while we appreciate the help, maybe you can help us on how to search for "Text Shadow" and find what we're looking for. Not that you should assume that we didn't already try that.

Does anyone even recognize the movie this image came from?

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, skmwrp said:

Does anyone even recognize the movie this image came from?

Nope, also don't know that old edged font there. - Though that label "Radio Pictures Presents" can be found often on images of old movies when performing a Google search.

Another way would be to vectorize that stuff ...

 

[skmwrp]

30 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Another way would be to vectorize that stuff ...

Okay, I don't know how you did that stuff.

[PixelPest]

8 hours ago, v_kyr said:

also don't know that old edged font there.

Seems from the early 30ties and is most likely hand-drawn on glas plates.

And no 1-click-bliss available in Affinity Suite here. And because we have no adjustable "Long shadow"-effect it´ll become tedious but very robust in the end by doing it in vector:

 

[v_kyr]

9 hours ago, skmwrp said:

Okay, I don't know how you did that stuff.

There are basically two ways to trace/vectorize bitmaps to vectors, either manually by redrawing the char shapes by hand, or automatically by using some third party tracing tool. - I for my part cleaned and prepared that pixel/bitmap image slightly for autotracing, aka making a transparent background out of it, so only chars + shaddows are there. Saving the result as JPG/PNG (white/transparent) background and then I throw the resulting pixel image through an autotracing tool for vectorization. - Afterwards one can open the by the trace tool generated PDF/SVG in ADe and fine tune the vectors further if needed!

[skmwrp]

Okay, after having a night to sleep on it, we realized that even though they were trying to portray a "shadow effect" in the titles & credits, it is actually what we would call 3D text.

Worked on different ideas using Designer & Photo, but none came out looking right, so we broke down and went to Blender…and learned that Blender has the worst text editing tools.

Anyway, created the text, added some thickness, converted it all into mesh, selected all the vertices other than those along the front, scaled them up from the origin point so they spread out to either side, then moved them up the z-axis until they were even, changed those extruded faces to pure black while keeping the front faces an off-white, put it in front of a green screen using an orthographic camera with shadow casting turned off, rendered, and…

What a pain.

Now if we could only find a font close to obviously hand-done one.

3 hours ago, PixelPest said:

by doing it in vector:

PP, what app are you using in your top image?

Anyway, thanks everyone for he help.

And the image is the opening credits for 1933's King Kong.

[PixelPest]

36 minutes ago, skmwrp said:

PP, what app are you using in your top image?

That is CorelVector.

37 minutes ago, skmwrp said:

And the image is the opening credits for 1933's King Kong.

I thought the Radio Antenna animation was in the opening.

Glyphs are easy to to draw - but this is pretty close if not based on this: https://www.fontspring.com/fonts/ae-type-inc/reload

[skmwrp]

2 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

I thought the Radio Antenna animation was in the opening.

Yeah, it comes before the T&C, but that part was easy to mimic with a cat, a child's record player, some cotton balls, and the recording of morse code in meows.

 

3 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

Glyphs are easy to to draw - but this is pretty close if not based on this: https://www.fontspring.com/fonts/ae-type-inc/reload

Thanks for this, it does look like what we're looking for, but as you say, this font should be pretty easy to make by hand; especially since all we need are caps.

But if there's a faster, easier, less expensive way, we tend to go lazy.

Thanks again for your help.

[iconoclast]

You could possibly get an acceptable result if you use Power Duplicate. But you would need to create a very subtle transformation in the first step, not to get a too ugly aliasing, and you will get a huge stack of layers. And you will have to do it to each of the characters separately if you want the shadows exude to all sides.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, skmwrp said:

Now if we could only find a font close to obviously hand-done one.

You have to recherche via "What Font Is", "What the font"  etc.

• https://www.myfonts.com/pages/whatthefont

 

Applying longer shadows and the like to text can also be done easily in LibreDraw. - Additionally it also hat a Fontwork option for more artistic things!