The first step is to add some color. Our text is supposed to look somewhat bloody, so we'll have the replicator pick point colors from a bloody-colored gradient. But rather than manually creating the gradient, you're going to download a gradient preset and add it to your Library.

Adding the preset file

1. Click here to download the preset file, named 'Bloody.zip'.
2. Unzip the file (if it doesn't happen automatically), giving you 'Bloody.motn'.
3. In the Finder, go to your home directory and then go into Library/Application Support/Motion/Library/Gradients and drop the preset file into it. Again, we are going into the Library directory inside your home directory, not the Library directory at your root hard-drive level.
4. Switch back to Motion (no need to restart).

Any presets that you create end up in one of those Motion/Library folders, and now we've just manually added a preset that came from elsewhere (this website). This is one way that you can share presets with other users.

Now that we've got our preset installed, it should appear in the gradient presets popup in the Inspector.

Colorize the replicator

1. With the replicator selected, view the Replicator tab of the Inspector.
2. Set the Color Mode to 'Pick From Range'.
3. Click on the gradient preset button
   
   and choose 'Bloody' from the menu.

Our replicator will now select the point colors from this blood-themed gradient, giving us a variety of red tones.

To finish off our styling, we will employ a couple of filters: Extrude for depth, and Indent for highlighting. The Extrude filter will grab the edge pixel values of our text-blobs and give them some depth while fading them to near-black. The Indent filter will add some specular highlights to the blobs, making them look wet and a bit more convincing.

There is one little stumbling block for us to avoid, though: we might want to animate the replicator, and doing so would probably change its size. Since the Extrude filter's direction and depth is relative to the size of the object, the effect would change as the replicator is animated. What's our solution? We turn on Fixed Resolution for the parent layer and apply the filters to the layer, instead of to the replicator. If any part of this paragraph is even slightly confusing, please read the Nuts & Bolts: Fixed Resolution article for a full explanation.

Enable Fixed Resolution

1. Select the parent layer of the replicator.
2. Go to the Inspector and view the Layer tab.
3. Enable the Fixed Resolution checkbox.

Apply the Extrude filter

1. Select the parent layer of the replicator.
2. From the 'Add Filter' toolbar menu or the Library, select the Stylize->Extrude filter.
3. Go to the Inspector and view the Filters tab.
4. Set the Distance to 14.

Apply the Indent filter

1. Select the parent layer of the replicator.
2. From the 'Add Filter' toolbar menu or the Library, select the Stylize->Indent filter.
3. Go to the Inspector and view the Filters tab.
4. Set the Brightness to 0.4.
5. Set the Ambient to 0.3.

And there we have our bloody, blobby text:

And this technique is infinitely tweakable. By changing the size or shape of the replicator source, the number of points, the color gradient or other settings, we can achieve a variety of looks. The relationship between the 'PAIN' text object and the replicator is dynamic: changing the font settings will update the text look of the blobs.

We could also animate the replicator. Applying a Random Motion simulation behavior would cause the individual blobs to start drifting around. And if you were to combine that with the Repel behavior techniques from the Behaviors: Faking Collision tutorial, you might get something like this:

Consider the possibilities! You could use attractors to slowly draw away the blobs in little clumps. You could swirl them up into a vortex. You could even render them drifting away and then reverse it, resulting in a clip that has the blobs slowly drawing together, forming words. The only caveat is to be patient with performance: running long simulations on hundreds of objects (800, in this case) is very CPU-intensive. Motion may have to occasionally pause and think.

I hope this has inspired you to experiment with the replicator's Image pattern type. Good luck, and have fun!