Lettering

[Laurence Finston]

I've been working on film titles for planned YouTube videos. The techniques I describe below would be applicable for use in paper (scale) models, because the images may be shrunk and printed onto paper or transparent film. I bought a couple of sheets of the latter that have an adhesive backing and can be printed on using an inkjet printer, but I haven't tested this yet.

The program MetaPost has a "glyph" command, which with one retrieve the "paths" that make up the characters (glyphs) from a PostScript font. These characters consist of cyclical paths describing closed areas that are either filled (black) or unfilled (white).

The first four images are pages from this document: https://www.gnu.org/software/3dldf/g...ph_test_a4.pdf which is on this web page: The GNU 3DLDF Glyphs Page

It contains glyphs from the fonts Computer Modern Bold Extended 12pt, Computer Modern Sans Serif Bold Extended 10pt, Euler Roman Medium 10pt and Euler Fraktur Medium 10pt, all scaled to a size usable for displays.

The following is a film title using Euler Roman Bold 10pt for the capitals and Euler Roman Medium 10pt for the lowercase letters. I created the image using MetaPost, which uses TeX for the typesetting. In this case, it's not necessary to use "glyph" because the letters are filled in completely. I need the paths for "hollowed-out" letters or other effects, which are more difficult to create.

The problem with Euler is that it was never intended for typesetting complete words, so the spacing has to be adjusted. It was designed by a famous type designer, Hermann Zapf, for the book "Concrete Mathematics" by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik and only for use in mathematical formulas. To the best of my knowledge, it has never been used for any other book. I've adjusted the spacing a little, but this needs more concentrated work.

The next two pictures are this title and a second one, where the harsh red and blue of the original images produced using MetaPost have been replaced by softer colors. In fact, the blue is tissue paper and the red is construction paper, both of which I scanned using a DIN A3 scanner. Unfortunately, these images are too large to include and I couldn't figure out how to compress them without investing too much time into it, as I'm working on an unfamiliar computer.

To accomplish this, I use masks and overlays. The technique is basically the same as using a green screen in filmmaking. It is very much easier digitally than it was in the past. In GIMP, first I make the red letters transparent, which creates a mask with the blue background and "holes" for the letters. Then I load the image with the red construction paper and put it into a layer behind the mask and combine the two layers. Then I make the blue pixels of the background transparent and load the image with the blue tissue paper and put it into a layer behind the red letters and combine the layers and I'm done.

However, I would also like to make backgrounds using various kinds of paint, pastels, etc. The following 5 images show a canvas panel, the tools I used to make a border and a first coat of encaustic paint. Encaustic is oil paint mixed with hot wax and may be applied with palette knives. I've got a photo stand with which I can make photos up to DIN A3 (420mm X 297mm, landscape).

(To be continued.)

[Laurence Finston]

There is a potential problem with the output from MetaPost: It can produce three different kinds of output: 1. PostScript at various "levels". 2. SVG and 3. PNG. Usually, I want to generate Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), which can be included in TeX files. However, only with PNG output can you disable antialiasing. Antialiasing means that the colors of pixels along edges may be changed in order to improve the appearance of the edges. However, color replacement depends on pixels being of one specific color and pixels with modified color values will not be affected by commands that change the color or make it transparent.

This problem can be solved simply by outputting PNG instead using the appropriate option. However, it can often be solved by using the "Posterize" command in GIMP, which reduces the number of colors in an image by modifying pixels with similar pixel values so that the latter are the same. This works well if the image doesn't contain too many colors, which should be the case when using masks.

With PNG output, it is also possible to have an "alpha channel", which is needed for transparency. In other words, you can just make areas transparent in the original image without converting them in GIMP. However, it's more flexible to use a color because you can make a color transparent, but you can't replace transparency with a color, at least I don't think so. That is, I don't think you can do so directly; if you can delimit the area in some other way, then of course you can fill it with a color or edit it in some other way.

I'm limited to working with DIN A3 because equipment for sizes up to A3 is readily available and relatively affordable. For anything bigger, you need professional equipment. At the library, they have A3 copiers, printers and scanners and at home I have a printer for A4 and my photo stand can be used for A3. A common aspect ratio for video, and the one used by YouTube for the "normal" videos (i.e., not the "shorts"), is 16:9 (width:height). I'm not sure what it is for the shorts, maybe just the same but turned on its side. The largest rectangle with the ratio 16:9 that fits onto A3 with a reasonable margin (i.e, at least 1cm) is 400mm × 225mm. That is the size of the frame for the titles. However, there is an added complication with the width of the pen used for drawing the frame and the question of whether I delete it or change it to the background color. It may be that the software I use to combine the images into an MPEG file (video) will coerce them to a ration of 16:9, in which case a small inaccuracy may be introduced, unless the images already have exactly this proportion. Dealing with this is on my list of Things to Do, but hasn't made it to the top yet.

I printed out some of the pages from glyph_test_a4.pdf and cut out the letters. It's ordinary copying paper, probably 80 or 90 g/m2. I thought I'd see what the letters look like as real physical objects and with the relatively thin paper, it wouldn't be as much work as cutting it out of 170g/m2 or 300 g/m2 paper, which is what I've done for stencils.

I'm happy with the results but it is nonetheless a considerable amount of work and the paper dulls the blades of the x-acto knife pretty fast. For effects like piling up the letters and interlocking them, it is much easier and faster with real paper letters than to try to simulate this on the computer.

For Computer Modern Bold Extended, I saved some of the negative shapes from the letter because I thought they looked interesting and potentially usable for something. I didn't save many of the "boxes" out of which I cut the letters, because they didn't seem that interesting to me. However, I kind of regret this and have started saving them. For Euler, I thought the boxes looked more interesting than the negative shapes, but I've been saving both.

On some images with the glyphs that I haven't posted to the website, I drew lines between the dots and the rest of the letter for the letters "i" and "j" to keep them attached and filled them in with green for replacement in GIMP. On the ones I'd already printed out, I just did this by hand and used a colored pencil to fill in the lines.

The last two images are another example of using color replacement. In this case, the orange is tissue paper and the blue is construction paper. I'm not sure how much of a difference there is. To get the effect I want, it would be better to use watercolor, which is fairly close to the top on my list of Things to Do.

[Laurence Finston]

Originally Posted by Laurence Finston

It contains glyphs from the fonts Computer Modern Bold Extended 12pt, Computer Modern Sans Serif Bold Extended 10pt, Euler Roman Medium 10pt and Euler Fraktur Medium 10pt, all scaled to a size usable for displays.

It may seem like pedantry referring to the design sizes of the fonts, in this case, 10pt and 12pt, but, at least in the case of Computer Modern, it does make a difference.

Traditionally, i.e., with letterpress printing using hand-setting, or with machine-set type, e.g., with Monotype or Linotype, the proportions differed depending on the design size. For example, the glyphs in a (very tiny) 5pt font would tend to be wider in proportion than those in a 10pt font. In the standard PostScript fonts, this is not the case. They are identical at all sizes and may be magnified or shrunk more-or-less continuously, e.g., in a PDF reader.

The concept behind METAFONT, which is what MetaPost is based on and was the programming language used to create Computer Modern and Euler, is different. Euler is not a great example of this because, in fact, it only exists in a 10pt size and does not contain any of what Donald Knuth, the inventor of METAFONT and TeX, calls "meta-ness". This term refers to the fact that the values used to generate the fonts may be parameterized. A METAFONT program will tend to use variables rather than raw numbers and depending on what values are "plugged in", the different letter shapes for a whole font family may be generated. Computer Modern, designed and implemented by Knuth with lot of help, expert and non-expert, is the best example of a "meta-font". Incidentally, it was based on a Monotype Modern font.

METAFONT produces bit-maps and it is still possible to use bit-map fonts in TeX documents. However, in all modern TeX installations, versions of the Computer Modern fonts that have been translated to PostScript are used by default. It is these fonts that MetaPost's "glyph" command accesses.

This is also why Computer Modern can be magnified "continuously" in a PDF viewer. If the bit-map versions are used, versions at high magnification would be very "pixillated".

[Laurence Finston]

I just scanned in some hand-lettering I did some time ago but I wasn't able to upload any files. My own computer is being repaired and I can't upload them onto any of my websites as an alternative. I'll try again another day.

[Laurence Finston]

It would seem that the images from the A3 scanner that I tried to upload were too large, because these photos uploaded without any problems. I'll see if I can reduce the resolution of the others.

The first six photos show some letters I made out of felt and colored metal foil. A couple of them have sequins on them. I sewed them onto black photo board using embroidery thread. I meant to photograph the backs but I forgot.

The second to last picture is a piece of photo board with a "W" marked on it in dots made with yellow transfer paper. I can't remember what purpose it was supposed to serve. The last photo is an "E" pricked out with holes in photo board, with traces of chalk that I used for transferring to something else, presumably another piece of photo board or a piece of felt. As I remember, this didn't work very well.

Ultimately, I was satisfied with the results but it was rather time-consuming.

[Laurence Finston]

The first three images are examples of hand-drawn lettering for two projects, i.e., "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Adventures of Don Quixote". The next two are examples of letters made with stencils and some paste-on letters, possibly from Letraset.

The last image is a drawing with some lettering in it. It's an illustration for "The Nutcracker" ballet and the letters are from the original French title, namely "Casse-Noisette". The monster is drawn with Polychromos colored pencils (on a wax basis) and the letters are in tusche, probably from Rohrer und Klingner. I find that both of these media not only look good "in real life" but also reproduce very well.

This drawing is for a title sequence for animations based on "The Nutcracker". However, at 30 frames (drawings) per second = 1800 frames per minute = 180,000 frames per hour, it is not possible for a single person working by himself or herself to realize a project like this. Even just storyboarding it would be a huge job. At present, I would be very happy to produce a few seconds of animation.

[Laurence Finston]

Originally Posted by Laurence Finston

However, at 30 frames (drawings) per second = 1800 frames per minute = 180,000 frames per hour [...]

That was a typo: It's 108,000 frames per hour.

However, normally, even full (as opposed to limited) animation is a mixture of "on ones" and "on twos". That is, sometimes the image changes in each frame and sometimes each image appears on two subsequent frames. The standard for cine film (once there was a standard) was 24 fps, so a second of animation was between 12 and 24 images. It can be very interesting to step through an animated film frame-by-frame ("Einzelbildfortschaltung" in German). However, there's can be a problem with this depending on the video format used. In Europe, 25 fps was the standard for TV and video cassettes, so they didn't bother to do any conversion: the film was just played slightly too fast. In the US, 30 fps was the standard and the conversion messed things up for this purpose.

Of course, even when the motion is slow, it's much smoother "on ones". Personally, I'd rather watch a second of really good full animation than an hour of animation with static characters with overlayed mouth movements, the same walk cycle repeated over and over, pans and zooms and all the other techniques used to disguise the fact that there isn't much movement going on.

[Laurence Finston]

For the encaustic backgrounds, I'm using canvas board. It's expensive, but I think the extra stability is worth it. For watercolor backgrounds, I will use watercolor paper. At first, I thought I'd use some 200g/m2 paper (last photo) that's already cut to A3. However, for wet-on-wet techniques, which is what I need, the paper either needs to be stretched or you have to use thicker paper.

The first three photos show some watercolor paper that I may have bought when I was 16, but probably before I was 20. That makes it at least 40 years old. I only wish I'd aged as well as it has. It's 140 lbs but I don't know that the reference size is, so that information is pretty useless to me. I might be able to find out, but it's not really important. The point is, it's plenty thick and shouldn't curl up too much when it soaks up a lot of water.

It's 18" X 24", so when torn in half, the sheets are slightly larger than A3. Given a choice, I will always tear paper (carefully!) rather than cutting it. It's fast and accurate and saves wear and tear on my X-acto knife blades. Thick watercolor paper like this will dull a blade faster than you can say "Jack Robinson" --- I'd say a single cut would do it.

[Laurence Finston]

I've made a start on monochrome watercolor and gouache paintings for backgrounds and color replacement. The red is Old Holland watercolor, rose madder and the blue is Schmincke, Horadam gouache, ultramarine light. Like everything else I've ever painted, both of the paintings need a second coat. I'm sure I could save a lot of time by just doing the second coat in the first place, but I never remember. For the watercolor, I want the "wash" effect but gouache is meant to be matte, so I may need more than two coats.

Old Holland makes the best oil paints and watercolors that you can buy. It might be possible to mix better ones oneself. They are used for restoration and cost around twice as much as other top brands. I only have 4 or 5 tubes of the watercolor and none of the oil.

Schmincke is a top German brand and Horadam is their top line for gouache and watercolor. They have another line of "Designers' Gouache" specifically for repro with normed colors.

Watercolor is one of my favorite media. Traditionally, it uses translucent pigments only. For some colors, there are no translucent pigments. There are watercolors that use non-translucent pigments and you just have to accept that they're not translucent or dilute them, with produces results that may be good enough but aren't really satisfactory. Red is particularly a problem. For me, the prototypical "red" red is cadmium red and cadmium isn't translucent (or cheap, either).

High-quality watercolor consists of (highly concentrated) pigment, water, glycerine and gum arabic and usually nothing else. It is therefore nearly pure pigment. Watercolor paint penetrates and stains the paper rather than just lying on the surface, like guache. Since it's translucent, light reflects from the white or off-white paper through the pigment. That explains the intensity and luminosity of watercolor paintings.

Watercolor comes in tubes or as tablets. For large amounts, tubes are convenient but otherwise, it's six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other. I like them both.

I only use distilled water for mixing. I do use tap water for rinsing out the brushes. Normally, I would have brushes that I only use for watercolor. However, since a lot of my art supplies are packed up and not accessible, I've loosened this restriction a little and will use them with tusche and gouache. For watercolor, rinsing is usually enough, no soap is necessary. Soap is also harmful to brushes and they must be rinsed out thoroughly. It can be necessary with watercolor for black and white paint, otherwise it hardly ever is.

Gouache is like watercolor except that it is meant to be opaque and matte. Non-translucent pigments are therefore advantageous for gouache. Sometimes, additives such as chalk are used to make it opaque. It forms a layer on the surface and doesn't seem to penetrate it to any considerable extent.

It is possible to get "wash" effects with gouache, like the first coat in the photos, but why bother? Watercolor is far superior for this purpose.

When a brush is not in use, I wrap it in rag soaked in water and lay it flat on a palette. Brushes should never be placed in a jar or anywhere else standing on their bristles, even for a moment and they should always be cleaned immediately after use. Some of my brushes are over 40 years old and still as good as new. Take care of your brushes and they will take care of you.

I'm converting to porcelain palettes but still have a bunch of plastic ones. The best thing I've found to clean them is washing soda (sodium carbonate). The company "Frosch" (engl. "frog") sells cleanser on a soda basis. If they're really stained, something like Ajax works, but it's hard to get rid of the residue.

Where possible, I prefer to work with one color at a time. This prevents the colors from contaminating each other.

Watercolor and gouache can be saved indefinitely. If it hardens, you can just dissolve it with water; by soaking, if necessary. I will be doing the second coat soon, so I'll just leave the red on the palette. Otherwise, I'd scrape it off and put it in a little jar.

If I was impatient, I could dry the paintings with a hair dryer. However, I think it would make the paper curl up even more. I will wait for them to dry thoroughly before doing the second coats, otherwise, it would tend to dissolve the pigment that's already there too much. This will probably happen a little anyway after they're dry, but it should be hardly noticeable.

After the second coat and any additional coats are dry, I will probably have to press the paper. The ideal tool for this would be a bookbinder's press with a large enough working area, but unfortunately that would be a high-cost, large and heavy item and I don't own one. I will make due with some heavy books on a table.

[Laurence Finston]

The blue and red backgrounds are now dry. I gave the blue gouache background a second coat. It's not completely uniform, but I think it looks good the way it is. Anything where the surface can easily be damaged or the color could rub off, I wrap in tissue paper before storing it in a folder. I will press these backgrounds and photograph them using my photo stand before I put them away.

I think the red looks good without a second coat and I'm afraid that putting one on would spoil it. I may make another sheet with two coats just to see how it looks.

The yellow is also Old Holland watercolor and still wet. There's a puddle on it and I'll have to wait for it to dry enough so that it can be moved. I've had these watercolors for a long time but haven't used them much. The are the most intense ones I've ever used and I'm tempted to buy more and to try their oil paints, although I'd really like to use up some of the art supplies I already have.

The brush is an inexpensive one I bought for hide glue, but since it was unused, I used it for this purpose and it worked fine. I don't usually need such a big brush for artwork.