We can't talk about text without talking about the vector images that are available to us through Special Characters. It opens up a world of motion graphic possibilities as we can fly in on these images with cameras, and put them in replicator and particle systems, creating complex animations.
We start with creating a new project for this exercise.
- Create a 720p project, 10 seconds long at 30 FPS.
- Press T to select the type tool and click somewhere close to the center of the Canvas. Go to the Edit menu and select Special Characters from the list as shown in the following screenshot:
- Under Symbols, go to Miscellaneous, and locate the skull and crossbones image (the location of these images may be different depending on your current operating system). With the image selected, click on Insert located on the bottom-right of the window. Press the Esc key to exit the text entry mode and then F7 to bring up the HUD.
- Change the value of Size to
288, center align your image, and drag it into the Canvas to center it to the screen using your dynamic guides to help you. While we can't scale the image any further in the HUD, we can scale this value infinitely in the Format pane of the Text tab. Press F4 to go there. - Change the value of Size to
500. Go to the Style pane and change the color to a gradient of your liking and add any additional changes you want. Use the following screenshot for reference.
Some of the icons available to you under the Special Characters library are also available under the font Webdings. Select the Type tool and Webdings as a font. Spell out the alphabet. Do it again, this time pressing Option before the letter. Use the following screenshot for reference to see some of the available graphics:
