IntroductionRent any DVD at the video store and you'll find many similarities. They all have a plot, characters, a conflict, an ending and many more things that help make a movie, a movie. Another aspect that each film has is ending and beginning credits. They help credit the makers of the film and all the people that were involved in production. It also has the title of the film and what studio produced the film. In this tutorial I will help make your simple machinama films made with The Movies brought to a professional level with the addition of...custom titles with just the use of your simple MS Paint. They're extremely easy yet are just as effective as any custom title.
What You NeedRemember the whole simple thing I was talking about? Well all you need is
MS Paint and of course a copy of
The Movies Stunts & Effects game. That's it!
Let's Begin!Of course there are limitations with just using Paint to make your titles, but it's perfect to make nice, simple titles just for beginners! You can't make transparencies and animated titles don't come out quite as nice. Your artistic effects to your titles are also quite limited. A great free program call
The Gimp can be used to make more complex titles, yet you need to learn the basics before you can move on to that level of custom titles. Enough talking, lets move onto the tutorial!
Step 1Go into MS Paint and press Ctrl+E. A box should appear with two blank areas to write the width and height.
Make both of those 512. The box should look like this:
Press OK in that box once your neccessary areas are filled out correctly. Now your title is the right size. Move on to Step 2 once finished.
Step 2
Now you get to pick the background color of your title. The color should depend on the style of film. For instance, if your making a light comedy then the background color should be light and bright. How about orange?
To get the background color, take your cute little paint bucket and click on the color you want. The color choices can be found at the bottom of your screen in Paint. Now, with your bucket, click on the white area. The background will then change to the desired color.
Once that looks right, go on to step 3!
Step 3Now for the actual title. Think of the name of your film. Then click on the little 'A' representing text. Now you want to add the title in front of the background color. I want to have a bright color that is darker than orange. I should also pick a silly font for a comedic film. Insert the name of your film.
Now when you do that you notice that the background behind your text is white. To avoid that press on the second box below your toolbox that includes all those 3-D shapes. Now your backgrounds should match. Once your text is the right font, size and color you are ready to move on to step 4!
Step 4You made your beautiful title now you just need to get it into the game. So go up to File ~ Save As. Then go to the top dropbox that is most likely at 'My Pictures'. Press the arrow and get to the
C:. Press that and you are staring at any array of different files. Go to the
Program Files. Yet again, more files. Find the one called
Lionhead Studios Ltd.. Press that and now you should come to a screen with a file called
The Movies. Press that. Then go to Data~Textures~Overlays.
If you don't have an overlays file then create your own. Press overlays and you have made it. Now go to the space entitled
File Name. Name your overlay
overlay_aaa_v00.dds. Now The Panda And The Lion are flying through cyberspace onto your copy of The Movies. Go to Step 5 to find them.
Step 5
Run your copy of The Movies. Go into your saved game where you have your movie. In Advanced Movie Maker there is a side bar of all your tools to make the film. After picking a scene, go to the one tool that is a little circle thing, for overlays. Press that and get to the list of overlays. Your new title should be one of the first on the page of overlays. The thumbnail for it should be completely white. Press it and you have retrieved your title!
Wasn't all that crap easy? Now you can make more and more titles regarding other parts of your films, just with
Paint!