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Creating a drop shadow effect with coloured Vinyls
Hi all,
Please have a look at the quick example Ive drawn up. say you have a blue van and want a white drop shadow with Red text.
How do you make your drop shadow?
Type 1, where you just cut the white of the drop shadow which would show and carefully register the red text next to it.
OR
Type 2, Where you simply cut the full lettering in both colours and layer the red type over the white type.
many thanks,
Neil.
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12 Replies
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type 1 is better than 2 but there are other ways on the way to bed now
anyway
NEVER PUT RED ON BLUE surely you can see why
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Thanks Chris, yes the image I made was purely for discussing the technique and not producing anything like you’ll be glad to know.
Many thanks :thumbup2:
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type 2 is easier, type 1 without any bleed will eventually leave a gap over time(and is a b*tch to register), type 1 with bleed and type 2, will leave a slight ridge where it overlaps, so don’t go any less than about 3-5mm so you get a decent grip on vinyl/substrate. I never done a lot of layers though, so I also await better answers than mine. :ball:
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Weld shadow and letter to create the bottom layer.
Then overlay top letter.
More difficult to register but looses the ridge that option 2 creates. -
Tim
I think that is called type 3!Simon.
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to be honest neither.
Type 1 will never be successfully registered and will creep over time.
Type 2 leaves a ridge & colour differences if the vinyls are a bit translucent.
Personally…
Similar to type 1.
Weld it with a gap of around 1-2mm…a built in space to take out the requirement for 100% alignment. Faster…and keeps colours true when as no overlay.
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I don’t stick to just one way so it would depend on the job I was doing. 3 methods mentioned all have their own merit & I have used all three.
Type 3 that Dave described is how a lot of traditional sign writers use to do it & I believe was refered to as a painters shadow. The sign writer could paint the shadow before the text had dried speeding up the job so I have been told. -
Here’s some of our preferred shadow methods very easily produced and altered in FlexiSign using 1 or 2 clicks.
As a sign writer too my preferred method is to leave a gap between letter and shadow. As Martin says it allows us to shadow without needing the letter to be dry. That said tho it’s easy enough to do a tight shadow.
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Thanks Guys for all your valuable feedback!, much appreciated 😀
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I’m with Tim’s method.
Pet peeve of mine is when a drop shadow color is used which would never be found in nature
(such as white)
I like to try and use a shadow tone a few shades darker than on my substrate.
Love….Jill -
Thanks Jill, and I guess laying outlined text would be done just like this…
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Yep but don’t forget colour shift with some colour combinations.
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