Demonstrating Opacity and Logo settings in Doodly.

Logos and Opacity

This article explains and demonstrates best practices for creating a watermarked logo throughout the entire doodle.

What is Opacity?

This refers to the transparency level of an image. A low percentage of transparency or opacity means the image will provide a greater ability to see the layers behind the image.

What is a Watermark?

This is a fancy word for an image with a lower percentage of transparency.

Best Location for Logos

Typically in the corners of the video are the best location for the logo but that highly depends on the video hosting platform and whether they already have a logo placement option.

YouTube, for example, allows for a logo or subscribe button to be added throughout all slides of the video. The placement for this addition is in the lower right corner of the video so placing a watermarked company logo in the lower right corner of the video is not a good design because the two logos will overlap each other.

Logo Placement

There are several methods in which to accomplish this task. This article will go over 4 of the best practices in Doodly.

Note: Don’t manually align the logo on every scene using the grid. This method doesn’t work well and is not a good practice.

1. Scene to Scene Copy and Paste:
This is the one item that works flawlessly in Doodly. Using this method will allow the image asset to be placed in the exact spot every time.
We have an entire article written about it. Beginner Skill Level Doodly Tutorial #6: Copy and Paste

2. Scene Duplication:
We can use the scene duplicating method within Doodly to allow for an exact placement of the image asset from scene to scene.

3. Templating:
By creating a 10 or more scene duplication template we can ensure we always have the logo in the correct location inside our doodles.
Beginner Skill Level Doodly Tutorial #2: Doodly and Personal Templates

4. Background Integration:
Using a consistent custom background and creating a background image with the logo already in place will ensure the logo is always in the correct location on every scene and we don’t have to concern ourselves with opacity.

Note: Logo placement is not the only thing to be concerned with when using logos within Doodly. We need to think about size, opacity levels, layer location and settings, scene transitions, asset placement, and Erase Mode.

Size:

Keeping the logo around 250px X 250px is a good non-distracting size. It will also work well with Intermediate Skill Level Doodly Tutorial #6: Aligning Assets

Opacity Level:

A logo at 20% to 40% tends to not be distracting away from the message of the doodle.

Layer Location and Settings:

Unless we are using an image asset as a background, the logo layer must always be the first layer in each of the subsequent scenes after the initial scene.

Typically the duration and delay settings in each subsequent scene are set to 0/0. This allows the logo to just appear on the next scene without being drawn in or fading in on every scene. If we are using assets above the logo layer then we should have every asset prior to the logo also set to a 0 duration and 0 delay for each subsequent scene after the initial introduction of the asset.

Scene Transitions:

Unless we are using a custom background image, the scene transitions may produce an undesired effect of the logo leaving the canvas and then immediately appearing back or fading back into the canvas. We can combat this by setting our video settings to none or creating our own masked fading transition for all assets except for the logo.

Asset Placement:

Placing the location of the logo on the first layer means that other assets can be placed on top of the asset. Be careful of covering up your logo with other assets as that may produce and undesired appearance of your logo.

Erase Mode:

When using a logo as an asset and not a background image, it is best to disable erase mode so a portion of the logo doesn’t accidentally get erased.