📱 HOW TO: Phone - Text messages

[Apes]

There’s a lot of ideas to show texting on the phone! Here’s a few!

INT. CELLPHONE - DAY
Or any phone background/overlay you have.
In the art catalog, you can find a cell phone background, you just need to place your characters offscreen or use NARRATOR bubble

Example scripts:
Note: I’ve changed the position of the speech bubble. More about how to move them or change the size HERE

Character name bubbles:
INT. CELLPHONE - DAY
&CHARACTER stands screen left in zone 2
&CHARACTER1 stands screen left in zone 2
@speechbubble is 161 371 to 100% with tail_top_right
CHARACTER
Hi!
CHARACTER1
Hi… who are you?

Narrator bubbles
INT. CELLPHONE - DAY
@speechbubble is 161 371 to 100%
NARRATOR (CHARACTER)
Hi!
NARRATOR (CHARACTER1)
Hi… who are you?

Extra tip: Make choices!
For example:
NARRATOR
New message
choice
“Open new message”{
CHARACTER
Hi!
choice
“Reply”{
CHARACTER1
Hi… who are you?
}
}

iPhone screen with messages

Fake Text Message | Make Fake Text Conversation

Great site where you can put all the messages! Then just UPLOAD this as a background. Make sure you delete service information and delete iMessage from the bottom, otherwise, it won’t get approved!

format phonetext
NOTE: This is not officially out and it was the time that it wasn’t working! So be careful using this!

Commands:

set format phonetext
     CHARACTER 
    Hi! How are you?
    CHARACTER1 
    Hi... who are you?

This is working like speech bubbles you have to tap on the screen for another message to show up.
If you want your character to be in the blue box you need to set up the main character in the character creation, at the bottom, if you leave this empty all the bubbles will be grey.

@Dara.Amarie

Just wanted to add that for the phonetext format, use @CHARACTER left or @CHARACTER right to determine whose texts you want to show up on which side of the screen.

To come back to the normal display just type:

set format cinematic (for full character display)

set format spotlight (for box character display)

Your own work

You can make, find, create, your own message bubbles and use it as an overlay.

Here, for example, my friend @Daisy_W draw me bubbles (which are overlays as well) and I just use transparent text overlays and upload them. More about overlay animations HERE

[Kayla_episode1]

omg this is so freaking help fun i have been waiting for this!!!

[lanafrazer_episode]

Bookmarking!

[Jayl]

Bookmarking

[DazzledSnowFlake]

Thank you so much!

[JannahJackson]

The phone text format works alright for me.

[Apes]

It does now but it was the time that it wasn’t working.

[Jeremy]

Super helpful. Pinned!

[EpisodeApril]

THANK YOOOOUUUUU for making this post!

[Epiiuser_Queen]

I ushally do NARRATOR (CHARACTER) whenever I do dis bc I am lazy lol

[Funbuns]

The fake iMessage thingy won’t let me put it into my story because it’s not 640 pixels wide and 1136 pixels tall so what do I do?

[Apes]

you need to resize the image

[Funbuns]

Thank you so much!

[gossip.episode]

For the text formating how to end it, because it just uses all the speech after that as text messages now? Any help would be awesome, also my main character is set to lexi but she’s still talking in the grey

[haemi]

I was having trouble with it myself. I think I might have got it working, so how I seemed to “fix” mine was by adding both my conversing characters to the scene and just having them stand outside the view of the camera. Before I didn’t have them in there, but after adding them, it seemed to work fine and my main character was talking with the blue bubbles. Hope this helps!

Here’s also a screenshot of my script if it helps any.

[gossip.episode]

Tysm, that worked xx

[gossip.episode]

mc thing still wont work for me but ty for helping xx

[Apes]

@Apes

This is working like speech bubbles you have to tap on the screen for another message to show up.
If you want your character to be in the blue box you need to set up the main character in the character creation, at the bottom, if you leave this empty all the bubbles will be grey.

[Kimberlove_98]

I put “set format cinematic” but it doesn’t go back to the normal scene plus the speech bubbles go way higher…??