Java - Convert character or string into a shape / area

Question

I'd like to be able to convert any character or string into a shape or area, so that I can draw that character in whatever size, style, effects etc. I like.

To be more specific, I'm going to draw it using parallax so that it is only clearly defined at a certain angle (which is why I can't use html or anything of that nature). I already have the parallax set up, I just need the shape.

So in short, public Shape convert(char c){...}.

Alternatively if you can think of another way of achieving this, please let me know.

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Just to give you a rough idea:

Answer 1

According to a previous answer, it seems you can manage this as follows (assuming this method is defined on a subclass of JPanel):

public Shape convert(char c) {
    Font f = getFont();
    // Optionally change font characteristics here
    // f = f.deriveFont(Font.BOLD, 70);

    FontRenderContext frc = getFontMetrics(f).getFontRenderContext();
    GlyphVector v = f.createGlyphVector(frc, new char[] { c });
    return v.getOutline();
}

It might be easier to declare the method to take a String argument, as you can pass a String as the second parameter to createGlyphVector() - plus this will likely be more efficient than converting each character individually if you need to do more than one.