Hello, friend! This is a quick tutorial
showing how to recreate the Mighty MagiSwords logo in Photoshop.
Someone left me a comment in April 2017 asking me to make this video.
That’s a few years ago now, but I’m sure this will still be relevant.
[Sad horn plays]
Ah. Well. Let’s get on with it anyway…
You’re going to need two publicly available fonts,
‘BeckerBlackNF’ and ‘TipTop’, as well as a few assets that I’ve provided
in a folder, including the logo background,
an image with all the colours we’ll need, and some alpha channel videos I’ve made
in case you want to make an animated video version.
Links for all these things are in the description. Start off by opening Photoshop.
I’m using the current version of Creative Cloud,
but any old version should work, as we’ll just be using basic features.
Create a new document at 1920*1080 resolution. Import the textless logo background,
as well as the colour sample image. Put that out of the way in a corner somewhere.
We’re going to start with the top bit of text,
that says ‘mighty’ in the original logo. Choose the text tool and set the font to BeckerBlackNF.
Enter whatever you want it to say. Set the size to 180pt and set horizontal scaling
to 120%. Choose the ‘warped text’ option up here.
The style we’re going to use is ‘Shell Lower’.
Change the bend property to -20%, and the vertical distortion to +10%.
Press OK to confirm these settings. Right click on the text layer you just made
and choose ‘blending options’. Add a drop shadow.
Get the drop shadow colour from the colour sample image.
Set the following settings: Normal blending, 50% opacity, 50º angle,
global light off, 15 distance, 100% spread, 0 size.
Your top text should be complete. The next thing we need is the big text,
which originally said ‘MagiSwords’. Create some new text with the text tool and
set the font to TipTop. Enter whatever you want the text to say.
Set the size to 450pt and the vertical scaling to 200%.
Set the colour of this text to the ‘main text’ colour from the sample.
Choose the ‘warped text’ option again. The style we want this time is ‘Bulge’.
Set the bend to -45%. Right click on this new text layer and go
to blending options. Add a stroke.
For the stroke colour, grab the colour marked ‘stroke’ on the
sample. Use the following settings:
45pt stroke width, outside, normal blending, 100% opacity.
Duplicate the layer. Go to the blending options for the new layer.
Turn off its ‘stroke’, and add a gradient overlay.
Set the following settings: Normal blending, 100% opacity, -90º linear
gradient, and make sure ‘reverse’ is switched off.
Now, click on the gradient and choose any preset that has two colours.
Click on the colour on the left side and select the ‘gradient dark’ colour
from the colour sample. Then do the same for the right colour and
‘gradient light’. Move this new layer a bit down and to the
right, then right click on the layer and choose ‘create
clipping mask’. Your still image logo should now be complete!
If you’re going to export it, I suggest you do that as a PNG.
That way, it won’t lose quality and if you hide the background layer then
it saves the transparency too. If you wanted just a still logo,
then you should be finished at this point. But in the show, it’s accompanied by sound
effects, a voice over, and the logo glints in the light
in one of two ways. The first version seems to have been used
for the mini ‘webisodes’ before the show got a full TV series.
For this version, you’ll need to go back into Photoshop
and export just the lower text on its own to a PNG.
Open this PNG in Photoshop, hold control and left click on the single
layer. Use the eyedropper tool to get the light blue
colour from the image, or from the ‘main text’ colour sample.
Now go to edit-fill, choose ‘foreground colour’, and press
OK. Your logo should now be a solid light blue.
Save this to a separate image. Open Vegas Pro.
I’m using Vegas Pro 15, but other versions should be fine,
as again, we’re just using basic features. Set the project settings to 1920*1080, progressive
scan, and 23.976 fps. Import your logo image (and the background
if you kept it separate), and on a track above that,
import the version of the logo text you turned completely blue.
For some sample audio, I included the original intro title audio
in the folder, and I also included a version with just some
similar sound effects in case you want to record similar audio yourself.
Import the original audio to your project as a guide for where to apply the effect.
Make some markers for when the sword unsheathing noise starts and ends.
Make your blue logo image start and end at these points.
Go into the blue image’s ‘pan and crop’ settings
and go to the ‘mask’ timeline. Choose the rectangle mask tool and draw a
very tall and thin mask, like I’m doing here.
On the left, change its feather type to ‘both’, and the feather percent to 5.5.
For a beginning keyframe, rotate the mask slightly clockwise
and place it so it just touches the left edge of the text.
Make a second keyframe at the end, rotate it slightly anti-clockwise
and make it just touch the right edge of the text.
If you preview your project now, a bar of shiny light should glint across the
text. That’s all for that one. Let’s look at
the second effect. This one has some proper animation over it
rather than just a simple shine effect. Set up the project the same way as with the
previous version. Import the background, your logo,
the blue single colour logo text you made, and some sample audio to time the effect against.
Go to the effects for the blue single colour image
and add the ‘HSL Adjust’ effect. Drag the ‘luminance’ slider up to the
max. This will make the image turn white.
Find the ‘shine effect’ video I’ve provided and place it on the track above now-white
logo image. Make it start where the sword unsheathing
sound effect plays. Right click on this new event and go to its
properties. Go to the ‘media’ tab and switch the alpha
channel mode to ‘premultiplied’. Now, on the white logo image track,
find and press the button over here labelled ‘make compositing child’.
Change the compositing mode on the shine effect track to ‘multiply (mask)’.
If you preview your project now, the shine effect should dance across your
text. Finally, find the ‘sparkle effect’ video
I’ve provided and place it on a new track at the top of
your project. Make it start about four frames before the
shine effect below ends. Again, go to this event’s media properties
and change the alpha channel mode to ‘premultiplied’. Now the final thing you need to do is go to
this track’s ‘Track Motion’ and move it so it touches the top-right of
your logo, something like this.
That should be everything! Here’s a few examples that I came up with
to demonstrate. So, thanks for watching.
If you do make use of this, please let me know,
as I’m fairly certain absolutely nobody will.
At least I had some fun making this! If you liked this,
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Love you, bye bye!