Tutorial: Pen handwriting animation in Flash CS4

1. Preview the final result:

* Step 1: Create a new document:

* Step 2: Change the current Layer’s name to Text; Choose Text tool and font of your choice, and type the Text you want to display.
* Step 3: Convert to Movie Clip:

* Step 4: Break Apart from Menu Modify (or Ctrl-B) 2 times. Test by clicking V (Selection Tool) and Choose the Text, It must be below:

* Step 5: Now is the concept: we want the text to flows naturally as handwriting, by erasing the oposite flow and then reserve the timeline. Choose Erase tool and start erasing at each keyframe a little bit until all the text gets erased. I choose keyframe at frame 1, 5, 10, etc. (you can choose 1, 2, 3, etc.). After erasing all text, select all frames of the Text layer, go to menu Modify => Timeline => Reserve Frames. Ctrl+Enter to test the animation.

*Step 6: now we add a pen to go with the flow of the text. You can google or draw your own a pen (vector or bitmap). Create a new layer name Pen to add the pen, convert it to Movie Clip.

*Step 7: Now use Move (V) and Transformation tools (Q) to let the Pen goes hand-in-hand with the flow of text, by creating correspondent keyframes with the Text layer. Ctrl+Enter to test the result.

*Last Step: If needed, create a button to ask the user whether or not wants to play animation again. This Button (and ActionScript control) should be on its own layer name Button.

I like playing with Photoshop in free time, this was done in Aug.