Creating a Font
One main feature of TitleCardMaker is the ability to customize the fonts used on title cards. This can provide an extra level of style and cohesion to your server, but is also completely optional if you like the default fonts used on all the cards.
There are two classifications of fonts in TCM - named and un-named. Named
fonts are created in the Font
page within TCM; while
un-named fonts can be added directly to a Series or Episode. Aside from that,
the only differences between these two are that named fonts can use custom
font files and character replacements in addition to metrics like font size,
spacing, etc.; while unnamed fonts can only adjust metrics.
For this tutorial we'll create be creating a named font for Better Call Saul
that look like this (in particular the font used for the title text Nacho
):
-
Navigate to the font page by clicking
Fonts
from the side navigation bar. -
Create a new font by clicking the
button. -
Expand the created font by clicking the accordion called "Custom Font".
-
Rename the font "Better Call Saul"
-
In the "Title Color" field, put
#FFFF61
.Colors
TitleCardMaker (through ImageMagick) supports multiple styles of colors. The above color is an RGB Hexcode, but is equivalent to the following:
rgb(255, 255, 97)
- meaning Red Green Bluergba(255, 255, 97, 0%)
- meaning Red Green Blue Alphahsl(60, 100%, 69%)
- meaning Hue Saturation Lightness
And if this color had a "name" - like
yellow
- we could use that as well.You can use an online tool like this to switch between the color types.
MacOS Color Picker
If you are on MacOS, there is a very useful built-in color "picker". You can access this by opening
Digital Color Meter
from Spotlight. It will show you the RGB values of any pixel on screen, and these can be directly entered into anrgb()
color code. -
In the "Text Case" dropdown, select
Source
.What does this mean?
The text case is what case to apply to the title text. E.g. uppercase, lowercase, etc. The source case tells TCM to take the title directly as it comes from the episode data source (the actual title) and to not modify it.
-
Download this font.
-
In the "Font" file input, click
Browse
(or your Browser equivalent) and then select the file you just downloaded. -
Click
to save your changes and upload the file.The Font File
Behind the scenes, TCM will download the font file you just uploaded, and store it internally (in your asset directory) - so you can now delete it from your downloads folder without breaking its link to TCM.
Custom Font Created
You have successfully created a custom named font for use later in the tutorial.
Although we did not use a majority of these font customizations, this is largely due to the specific font file we're using. Some fonts require a lot more tinkering to get the perfect look. All of the available options are described here.