[Tex/LaTex] Scary Font Echo Effect

backgroundsfontsshadows

I'm trying to reproduce a strange font effect that is normally seen in horror movie trailers. In the trailers, a word will usually be flashed on screen, with 'echos' or 'shadows' of the word around it.

I failed utterly to find an example, but I rigged up an image that looks something like the effect:
enter image description here

In some renditions, the shadows overlap the word, in others the shadows don't touch the word; I am not particular.

My question is: How would you achieve this effect on a few words or part of a sentence using LaTeX?

For bonus points: Can the shadow effect be achieved and still leave the surrounding words readable?

[EDIT]For further clarification: I did specify 'LaTeX', but any flavor of tex is A-OK in my book.

Best Answer

This solution, using nested stack insets, still has vertical height/depth to the overlay. The relative placement of the insets is controlled by the length parameters (2nd and 4th arguments of \stackinset are (x,y) offsets).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{stackengine}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\begin{document}
\def\MyText{not scary}
\newcommand\mytext[1][black]{\textcolor{#1}{\MyText}}
This is 
\stackinset{c}{2ex}{c}{1.4ex}{\mytext[red!90]}{%
\stackinset{c}{-3ex}{c}{3.2ex}{\mytext[black!25]}{%
\stackinset{c}{-1ex}{c}{-1.7ex}{\mytext[black!40]}{%
\mytext%
}}}
text.
\end{document}

enter image description here

At the cost of an additional argument, the echos can be scaled, as well

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{stackengine}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\def\MyText{not scary}
\newcommand\mytext[2][black]{\scalebox{#2}{\textcolor{#1}{\MyText}}}
This is 
\stackinset{c}{2ex}{c}{1.4ex}{\mytext[red!90]{.8}}{%
\stackinset{c}{-3ex}{c}{3.2ex}{\mytext[black!25]{.7}}{%
\stackinset{c}{-1ex}{c}{-1.7ex}{\mytext[black!40]{1.1}}{%
\mytext{1}%
}}}
text.
\end{document}

enter image description here

If you wanted the vertical extent eliminated, so as to run into vertically adjacent text, a \smash takes care of that:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{stackengine}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage[nopar]{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\def\MyText{not scary}
\newcommand\mytext[1][black]{\textcolor{#1}{\MyText}}
\lipsum[1]
This is 
\smash{%
\stackinset{c}{2ex}{c}{1.4ex}{\mytext[red!90]}{%
\stackinset{c}{-3ex}{c}{3.2ex}{\mytext[black!25]}{%
\stackinset{c}{-1ex}{c}{-1.7ex}{\mytext[black!40]}{%
\mytext%
}}}}
text.
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}

enter image description here

In ZothiqueDemo font:

enter image description here

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How is the effect (swash) achieved

It's a feature of the font. You can see the same thing with the Q in the 'swash' style of Minion Pro. Eg.,

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{MinionPro}
\begin{document}
\textsw{Queen}
\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] TikZ: Blurring Effect

The easiest way that I can think of to blur part of the matrix is to lower the opacity of every node in the matrix and then explicitly set the opacity of the nodes in the last column to 1. That could be achieved like this:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}

\usetikzlibrary{matrix}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{scope}
            \matrix (B) [matrix of nodes, ampersand replacement = \&,nodes={opacity=.5}]{
                {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {} \&  {BWT} \& {SA} \\
                \hline
                {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \&|[opacity=1]| {9} \\
                {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \&|[opacity=1]| {7} \\
                {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \&|[opacity=1]| {2} \\
                {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \&|[opacity=1]| {5} \\
                {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \&|[opacity=1]| {0} \\
                {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \&|[opacity=1]| {8} \\
                {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \&|[opacity=1]| {3} \\
                {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \&|[opacity=1]| {10} \\
                {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \&|[opacity=1]| {6} \\
                {u} \& {k} \& {l} \& {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \&|[opacity=1]| {1} \\
                {u} \& {k} \& {s} \& {k} \& {l} \& {a} \& {n} \& {k} \& {u} \& {k} \& {l} \&|[opacity=1]| {4} \\
            };
    \end{scope}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

I removed the positioning library, since that wasn't used anywhere. The result:

blurred matrix

It looks pretty bad (I am guessing due to the conversion to jpg), in the PDF it looks fine.

Edit: After the discussion in the comments, I agree with Jake's suggestion to make the distinction based on color instead of transparency. I only used transparency in the first place because I felt it was closer to a "blurred" look. I won't repeat the entire code here, you can remove the |[opacity=1]| additions in the last column and change the \matrix line to:

\matrix (B) [matrix of nodes, ampersand replacement = \&,nodes={color=gray},column 12/.style={nodes={color=black}},column 11/.style={nodes={color=black}}]{

The result:

blurring with colours

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How is the effect (swash) achieved

[Tex/LaTex] TikZ: Blurring Effect

Related Question