Effects Brushes: Real-Time Lighting in Vector

The three Effects brushes in Brinimate use a technique that no other brush category employs: native shadowBlur rendering. This Canvas2D API feature blurs the shadow of a stroke, creating a soft light emission that genuinely looks like a light source — not a filter, not an import, rendered live by the browser GPU.

🌟 Neon — The Club Sign

Technical profile: opacity: 92%, widthFactor: 1, shadowBlur: 2.5×width, shadowOpacity: 85%, tension: 0.4

The Neon brush renders a crisp core stroke with a wide, bright glow halo. The shadow (glow) color matches the stroke color exactly, and at 2.5× the stroke width, it creates the visual impression of a real neon tube: a bright center with a broad luminous aura.

Best for:

Cyberpunk city signs and text.
Sci-fi interface animations with glowing UI elements.
Title cards and logo reveals using glowing text.
Night scene light sources: street lamps, screens, car headlights.

The black background trick: On a white canvas, Neon reads as a bright colored stroke. Place your canvas background fill to a very dark color and the Neon strokes immediately transform into convincing luminous signs. The same vector objects, completely different atmosphere.

Text + Neon combination (from the manual): Draw text objects, then layer Neon brush strokes along the letter forms for a stunning glowing text animation effect. Use the tween to animate the glow pulsing in and out by varying stroke width.

✨ Glow — The Soft Light Source

Technical profile: opacity: 75%, widthFactor: 1.5, shadowBlur: 5×width, shadowOpacity: 60%

Glow is wider and softer than Neon. With a 5× shadow blur (double Neon’s), it creates a broad, gentle luminous halo rather than a tight neon tube. The reduced opacity (75%) and shadow opacity (60%) make it less harsh — it blends more naturally with the surrounding scene.

Best for:

Magical auras around characters or objects.
Soft sparkle effects for fairy or fantasy scenes.
Sunrise/sunset light spill on landscape elements.
Energy effects: power-up glows, force fields, magical circles.

The “goddess” technique: Draw a character outline in Normal/white. Use the Glow brush to add a thick outer glow stroked along the same outline. The original Normal stroke provides the crisp structure; the Glow adds the divine emanation.

💎 Sparkles (Glitter) — Scattered Light Points

Technical profile: opacity: 90%, widthFactor: 0.4, dash: [0, w*3.5], shadowBlur: 1.5×width, shadowOpacity: 100%

Sparkles are mechanically the most interesting Effects brush. It uses a dash pattern of [0, w*3.5] — a zero-length segment with a very large gap. This means the stroke renders as individual isolated points spaced along the path, not as a continuous line at all.

Each point is very small (0.4× width), has 100% shadowOpacity, and a sharp shadowBlur — creating the impression of a tiny source of bright light at each point. Drag across the canvas and you get a trail of sparkling light dots.

Best for:

Magical effects: fairy dust, spell casting, pixie trails.
Glitter and confetti animations.
Star fields and space nebula backgrounds.
Celebration effects: fireworks embers, sparkler trails.

The sparkle fountain technique:

Draw several Sparkle strokes curving upward from a center point.
Apply motion tweens to animate them rising and fading (reduce opacity via override).
Loop the animation.
Result: A continuous magical fountain of sparkling light — the kind used in logo reveals and app splash screens.

💡 Pro Tip — Layering All Three Effects: The most impressive Effects-brush compositions use all three in concert:

Sparkles as the outermost scattered energy.

Glow as a mid-range soft aura.

Neon as the crisp core element.

Think of it as a real-world light source: the tungsten filament (Neon) → the illuminated glass envelope (Glow) → the light scatter across the room (Sparkles). Three concentric layers of the same color with different bloom characteristics. Try this with electric blue on a dark background for a stunning electric effect.