Flashing your Logo with a Beam of Light - Page 3

Part 3: Shining The Stuff

Ready? Good. Now import or create your logo, if you haven't already. If you are importing a bitmap, trace it because your logo must be in vector format. Now you have your logo, decide which part you want to shine. If you have a 3D logo, it would be better if you just shine the surface, like in my demonstration, I only shined the "sm" part, without the 3D stuff. Look closely and you'll see. Here's the difficult part: if you have two objects to shine, you have to do it differently. Don't worry if that's the case. I'll show you both. Now, use the Arrow tool to select the parts you want to shine. Here, I selected the "sm" part. Choose EditCopy. Deselect the part you want to shine. Now make a new layer. Now, choose EditPaste In Place. Deselect the part. Now you should have two layers, each containing the part you want to shine.

If you have two or more parts to shine, read on. Select the Paint Bucket tool. Select the gradient you just made in Part 2 from the Fill colour swatch. It will be shown below. Turn on the Lock Fill modifier as it is very important. Now click on the objects you want to shine. It may look a little ugly, but it could be changed. There. Now your two objects are to be treated as one object. Okay, now to the shine...

If you just have one part to shine, just select that part with the Arrow tool and select the Fill in Part 2 as of above. Now, whether you have one or more objects, select the Paint Bucket tool, if it isn't already selected. Those who have multiple objects, turn off the Lock Fill modifier. Then, for everybody, click on the Transform Fill modifier . Click on the part you want to shine. For those who have multiple objects, click on just one of them. Okay, now for each of y'all...

For those who have multiple objects, zoom out to half its size, so that the Stage looks like it has shrunk to half its size. You can now see... urm... two blue lines, two circles, and one square, right? Click and drag the square until the whole two lines just surround the part you want to shine, not the Stage. A screenshot is placed below in case it gets so difficult for you. Then return to full size, like the Stage just went back. Also, move the center circle (which should be formally on the left of the stage) to the middle of the parts you want to shine. Difficult to say, just look below.

To

For those of you who just have one object, just make sure yours look something like the second picture above. Now, for everyone, grab the circle on the top of the second line, and drag to rotate the fill. For best results, try to rotate it approximately 45 degrees. It should look something like what's below.

That's it: You've got your shine, but the purpose is to animate it, right? It needs to flash through, not stay there! So don't click away just yet: Part 4 will deal with the animation.