How To Create A Neon Effect In Procreate - Procreate Tips

Hello everyone and welcome back to another tutorial here on Ghost Paper. And for this one, we're actually going to build this neon marquee effect here on Procreate 5. So if you want to learn how to actually create a quick neon typography effect here on Procreate 5, make sure to follow all of these steps in this video. So let's start. First, we're going to create a new file here and I'm just going to set it to a screen size on my iPad Pro. So just make sure to set this to any screen size of your iPad, just really to create a new canvas. So now I'm just going to drop a very dark color here first and create a new layer, set the new layer with a white swatch. And now we're going to go into the actions menu, into the add mode, and we're going to add a text. Make sure to hit the caps lock and we're going to type our word, in this case, neon. Go into edit style, make sure we're going to use Futura at bold. Now let's make it as big as possible. I'm just going to make some space here, go back into edit text, make sure that it's all in one sentence, in one line. And now we're going to go into canvas, turn on our drawing assist, and I'm going to go into the edit drawing guides, just so you can see the drawing guides, because it's always really, really hard to see that with the video for the camera to be able to capture that. Now I'm just going to center our text, just like so. And we're going to go back. Actually, you can do this with the scale itself. I'm just going to scale this up just a bit, back to centered. And finally, we're going to click on edit text just one more time because I forgot to do some kerning. So we're just going to tighten this up just a bit. Here we go. So this was or is our first layer. And now we're going to go back into the layers panel. We're going to duplicate our typography effect. And now we're going to go into edit text once again. But now we're going to set any color. So for now, let's just set any color that you want. In this case, I'm going to set this blue color right here, go back into edit text, and now we're going to click on the outline icon. And now we have two versions of our typography component. We have an outline version and we have a fill of our type. So now we're going to create a new layer. And once again, select any color. So I'm just going to set this red here. And now we're going to select a studio brush. So the studio brush I have here saved on my favorites, but basically is a monoline kind of brush, which no pressure and no tapering. And what we're going to create with this studio brush are basically the lines that run inside the neon letters. So I'm just going to set first the shapes of each letter, something like this. So I'm just going to roughly make something here just for the purposes of this tutorial. I'm not going to be too precious about the location of the shapes. All right. And the last one for the letter E. And now for the letter O, we're just going to do one of these open gaps, which is something very common to see on neon letters. So this is something actually quite useful. Try to research neon letters on Google if you're doing a different kind of word. And if that word actually, for you to actually build the lights or the neon tubes that go inside the letters, make sure to do a little bit of research on how do they actually work in real life so that when you're building your illustration, it looks as convincing as possible. So in fact, instead of me doing this letter right here, I'm actually going to just do a quick selection and copy and paste the first letter that we just created. Now I'm going to pinch to merge. And now we have our lights as one layer. So I'm going to create one more layer. And once again, we're going to set any color because right now we're just building the shapes. We're still going to use a Studio Pen, but now we're going to go much smaller than whatever the first value we've used to create our first set of lights. So now I'm just going to go. In fact, I think it's actually easier if I just go with a white color because that's what we're going to eventually use for this element. So just make sure to select a white color and I'll draw at the very center of each line, just like so here. Okay, let's just keep going. And once again, guys, I'm not really worried about color because the first step here is that we are creating the shapes of this effect. Okay, going into the letter O, which is a little bit tricky, but try to make the best here. So I'm just going to do this and okay, something like this. And now final letter, I'll probably just draw it. All right. So now we have the base layers, which is the blue outline, the white fill. We have the light layers, which are our light tubes. And now we have all of the elements to start creating this effect. So for the background, I'm actually going to use a very dark blue. I'm going to throw that in there. For our base layer, I'm going to actually rasterize. Oops, just click rasterize type. I'm going to click on the layer, hit select. And with the blue that we actually want, I'm going to click on the layer once again, select fill. I'm actually using the same blue as the background, but you will see that actually everything will blend really nicely. So now on our outline layer, I'm going to rasterize once again. And I think in terms of color, yeah, I'm probably going to use this other blue here. So I'm going to hit the select button. And then once again, fill right here. And now for our neon tubes, I'm actually going to go with the pink. So first layer, hit select. Once again, go back in the layer, hit fill. And now we have colors kind of set up here. So now this is what we're going to do. On the very topmost layer, the white outlines, we're going to make a duplicate, go into the adjustments menu. And we're going to be doing a lot of Gaussian blur to a lot of these layers here. So the very first one, we're going to set somewhere around 4%. Now on the other layer, the other white layer, we're going to go back into adjustments, Gaussian blur, and set somewhere around, once again, 4%. So on the first or the bottom white outline layer, we're going to set the blend mode to overlay. And on the top white outline layer, we're going to set it to add and bring the opacity to about 80%. Now, once again, we're going to do the same thing with the pink and probably different blend modes. But we're going to make a copy of the pink outline layers. First one, back into adjustments, Gaussian blur, add a little bit of Gaussian blur, I'm going to say about 9%. And second layer, once again, back into Gaussian blur, and set it about, I would say, 3%. Now on the first pink layer, I just want to see what add looks like, probably going to keep as add, and about 80%. So now on our outline layer for the neon word, so the light blue right here, we're going to duplicate. And at the bottom of the outline layer, we're going to hit select, find a very dark color. Once again, going to that layer, hit fill. And now we're going to drag this to the bottom right a little bit, just a little bit. And we're going to hit the Gaussian blur. So now we're adding a really nice kind of inner shadow effect to the letters. So now that we've dropped this way, we actually have to use the eraser brush and actually erase the parts that are kind of bleeding outside the letters. So I'm just going to go quickly, like kind of clean this up here. Okay, just like that. All right. And for this layer, we're going to set to multiply and just bring down the opacity, I would say about 35%. Now with the bottom pink outline layer, we're going to duplicate, select the bottom layer, hit select, go back into the layers, click fill with that very dark color. And we're going to, as well, bring this to the bottom right, something like that. We're going to set this to multiply, bring down opacity to about 45%, and adjustments layer, Gaussian blur, we're going to blur this as well. Just give it a little bit of drop shadows, just like that. And probably bring down the opacity just a little bit more, something around from 35% to 45% is totally okay. I might actually test a little bit more of Gaussian blur. So probably in total, somewhere around 9% Gaussian blur. All right. So now on our blue outline layer, we're going to click and select the new layer and set the layer as clipping mask, select a white color. And again, with the studio brush, we're just going to draw some details, kind of like some highlights here and there on these letters. Just doing some effects here. Okay. All right. Just something like this. So now that we have this kind of a detail layer on the letters, we're also going to go into Gaussian blur and we're going to blur this effect a little bit, I would say about 9% once again. And we're just giving a nice sheen to the metallic edge of these blue outlines. So now we're going to set this to probably add and bring the opacity to about 75% to 80%. Okay. And now finally, we're going to click once again on our pink outline layer, set this at the very top and probably set this to add or screen. I'm not sure just yet, but we're going to add a lot of Gaussian blur. So yes, I'm probably going to keep as add and just a lot of Gaussian blur. And that's just giving that final light effect. That's really broad, really open kind of pink light effect for the neon letters. And just one last thing that you may actually want to do is to select the bottom layer, which is the solid kind of type that we actually painted the same color as our outline, as our background, sorry, make a duplicate. Once again, hit select, we're going to choose a very dark color, go back into the layers, click fill layer. And now that we have a black kind of neon typography set underneath everything, we're going to go into the Gaussian blur and just add quite a bit of blur here. And it's funny, but this effect kind of also happens in a lot of the neon kind of typography effects or just any sort of light that you emit. And there is a back plate in our case here, the neon has kind of like a back plate with these bottom layers. And that's just like a little bit of shadow that's actually being cast, is being projected to the background. So now we're going to probably set this to multiply, bring down the opacity to about 70%. And here we've actually added with that, we've added a little bit of depth to this illustration by doing that. All right. So I believe that does it for this effect, guys. I hope it was actually as clear as possible to follow these steps in order to be able to create a neon typography effect here on Procreate 5. If this video was helpful for you, a like would be super appreciated, as well as make sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell notification icon, so you don't miss any tips and tricks, tutorials, and speed paint videos. And that is all for you to become a better digital illustrator. Now, if you are interested in learning a little bit more about how to create some cool typography in Procreate 5, make sure to watch the video that is on the right side of the screen right here, as this is something that may actually interest you. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you on the next one. Ciao.