Pygame Font Contest 2001

At the end of 2001, the pygame community ran a little contest. There were no prizes, no judges, but everyone was a winner! The idea was to create interesting (and reusable) effects for rendering text. This page is a summary of all the entries. There are two categories of entry, "Animated" and "Still Life". All entries have been added to the Pygame Code Repository, where you can get more information about an entry.

Still Life Entries

Crystal by Andrew Meier

Creates a crystalized looking bevel to text. It is a bit slow though, so it's best to precompute the results. The returned image comes without a colorkey or alpha. Easy to use.

Emboss / Cutout by Sherwyn Ramkissoon

Here are several examples of what the emboss entry can do. Requires Numeric. Actually comes with several effects that can be combined, like blur, edge, cutout, and emboss. A little trickier to use.

Drop Shadow by Pete Shinners

Drop shadow wasn't a real entry, but more of a skeleton example for people to start with. Nevertheless, it creates a neat quick effect. The resulting image comes properly colorkeyed, but is not antialiased. Easy to use.

Sinkblur by Brendan Becker

Creates a soft outward blurring effect by stamping transparent copies of the text at various sizes. No colorkey or alpha returned. It is easy to use, but can be tricky to find good sizes that work. Could also be easily animated by calling with different values.

Rainbow by Mike Mulchek

Even though the sample code is animated, this is more of a still effect. It includes a function that searches for each unique shape in the image and returns a Glyph object of the pixels it represents. It's actually a slow process, but can lead the way for some unique effects. Notice how it finds the "dots" as separate objects on the punctuation. A bit trickier to use.

Animated Entries

Linefill by David Clark

Looks like electricity strobing inside the text. By changing the colors used, you can create effects that look rather different. The text comes with an proper colorkey. Easy to use.

Progress by Pete Shinners

Makes text work like a progress bar. You can draw it at any percentage from 0 to 100. Even has a small highlight when finished. A possible idea for those "loading..." messages. Comes with a colorkey. Easy to use.

Skyscraper by Richard Jones

In our "complete applications" section comes Skyscraper. This takes a stream of text and renders it out in varoius stamping effects. It makes for a very mesmerising screensaver like effect. More effort needed to get it running in your own appliacation.

Static by David Clark

Text animates like a static video signal. The image doesn't come with a colorkey . Easy to use.

Wavey by Pete Shinners

Wavey was a sample entry that demonstrated an animated effect. Still, it makes a neat effect by wiggling text up and down. The image comes with a colorkey. Easy to use.