Monday, September 10, 2012

Fall's Spell PTU Animated

Fall's Spell

This tutorial was written by me on September 9th, 2012. Any resemblance to any other tutorial or tag is unintentional and is pure coincidence. Please do not claim my work as your own and do not post to any other website, blog or forum without permission from me. It is written with the assumption that you have a working knowledge of PSP and its components. It was written for PSP 9.

I recommend that you read through this or any tutorial you are attempting before starting it so you will know what to expect and how to get organized.

As with any of my tutorials when a plugin is required, change only the settings I recommend and leave the others on the default settings.

What you will need to accomplish this tutorial is this hauntingly beautiful tube/scrap kit combo pack by Myriadelle and Ladyhawwk Designs which you can purchase at Creative Design Outlet HERE.  Please suppport the arts and do not use Myriadelle's tubes without a license and certainly do not share her tubes or this scrap kit.  Animation is by Lovey and you can download it HERE from her blog.  She has tons of fun animations on her blog and she shares them with us, please leave her some love when you download and tell her I sent you.  You'll need the brushes I supplied HERE.  Plugins are Alien Skin Eye Candy 58/Impact, Xero and Eye Candy 4000.  Font is called Ashley and I can't find it on the internet, so I uploaded it HERE.

Let's get started...

First we need to get your brushes into PSP for use.  It's just a coupe easy steps.  Open the files I provided into PSP.  They're in .png format, you can also use .jpegs.  For each brush go to File/Export/Custom Brush.  Name your brushes and click Ok and they're installed in PSP ready for use.

Now start a new 700 x 700 white image, we'll resize later.  Copy and paste frame 3 into your new canvas and resize it 75%.  Copy and paste Paper 15 below this frame layer, resize it 50% and then use your eraser tool to erase any areas of the paper outside the frame.

Now copy and paste the curtain element, element 49 over the frame layer and resize it 75%.  Place it slightly to the left of the frame.  Then copy and paste element 54, the book element, over the curtain, resize it 70% and use your Raster Deform tool to rotate it slightly to the left.  Go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Perspective Shadow and use these settings:


This plugin may require a little practice.  There are just a couple of important things to remember when shadowing is to attempt to make your shadows appear natural and to watch closely all the areas of whatever you're shadowing.  You can view all the areas by moving the little red box around at the top of the window of this plugin...

(You can tweak your shadows by moving the nodes around in the preview window. To move one node at a time hold down your CTRL key. You can move the whole shadow by holding down your right mouse button and clicking in the middle of the shadow.  It's very important to think about how a shadow would be cast realistically and how dark or how light it should be. This plugin is one of my favorites and one I use with nearly every single one of my tags.)

Now copy and paste element 23 over your book, resize it 40% and add the same perspective shadow you just used on the book...it should appear to be floating over the book.

Copy and paste element 18 below your book, duplicate it a couple times and move it around under the book...see my image as a reference for size and placement.  Give each one a fairly dark drop shadow.  Then copy and paste element 40 above those and give it a perspective shadow to give it more dimension, tweak your shadow a bit to make it more behind the flowers.  Then copy and paste the rest of your elements adding drop shadow and perspective shadows to the ones you want to have more dimension.

Copy and paste your tube, resize her to fit into your design and add a Perspective Shadow to her casting her shadow over the elements.  Once you have everything copied and pasted add a new Raster Layer above your background layer and name it brushes.  Apply the brushes I supplied in black and orange.  For each brush add a new layer and for the opposing sides mirror and flip the brushes so they're not symmetrically lined up.  Then on the top of the canvas above the element floating over the book add another new layer and apply the magic brush.

Once you have your design finished, we're going to merge some layers together before we add your name and copyright.  So, now hide all the layers from the frame down and then Merge/Visible the remaining layers.  Then hide the layers you just merged together, unhide the hidden ones and then Merge/Visible those layers so that now you have only two layers in your layer palette.

For your name once you've typed it go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Chrome and use these settings:


Now duplicate your name and then on the duplicated layer go to Adjust/Hue & Saturation/Colorize and use these settings:


Grab your Selection tool with a Feather of 50 and select the top portion of the orange colored name...hit delete a few times to expose the color beneath this layer.  Merged the two names together and add a drop shadow something like this...


Next, go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use these settings:


Add your copyright and then we'll animate.  Be sure that it is legal and legible.  For a neat and professional-looking copyright I use pixel, copy or ceriph fonts.  You can google and find literally hundreds of these fonts.  Most of them work best at size 6 with your antialias set to off...it prevents the font from pixelating.  Note:  for crisp edges on your fonts for your name, wordart, etc set your Antialias to Sharp.

Now, in your layer palette, hide your copyright, your name and the top merged layers then hold down CTRL + SHIFT + C to copy merged.  Open Animation Shop (AS) by going to File/Jasc Software Products/Launch Animation Shop.  Once it's open hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation.

Open the Lovey animation and note that it has 15 frames, therefore what you just pasted in AS must have the same amount of frames.  Click on the top of your newly pasted animation and go down to Duplicate Selected...repeat this as many times as you need to get 15 frames.  If you duplicate too many just click on the extra frames and hit delete on your keyboard.

Be sure that you are on the very first frame on both animations by sliding the bar at the bottom of each of them all the way over to the left.  Then go up to Edit/Select All so that all of your frames in both animations are selected.  It's important that you view Lovey's animation so you can see where it's going to be on your work.  It's slightly too large to fit into the frame, so resize it to about 400 Width...the length will automatically resize.  View the animation so you can get an idea of where you should drag it.  But first it's a good idea to make you a couple of extra copies in case you mess up on your drag.  You can do this by clicking on top of her animation and going to Copy and then hit CTRL + v a couple of times. Then carefully click on  first frame of Lovey's animation and drag it over into the first frame of your animation.  DO NOT LET GO...Here's an idea of about where the start of the animation should be...


Quite a ways to the right, but close to the middle of your frame.  Once you have it close to this area, let go of your mouse button and give it a few seconds to drag all of the frames over.  Check your work by going to View/Animation.  If you're not happy with your animation simply go to Edit/Undo Drag and start all over.

Once you're happy with your drag, go back to PSP, hide the bottom merged layers, unhide the top merged layers, your name and copyright and hold down CTRL + SHIFT + C to copy merged, then go back to AS and hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation.  We're going to drag this into our other work so we need 15 frames for this one as well, don't we?  So do as you did before, click on top of this and go down to Duplicate Selected enough times to get 15 frames.

Be sure you are on the first frame of both animations and all frames are selected, carefully drag this newly pasted animation into the image you've been working with taking care to place it in it's proper place..once you're there, let go of your mouse button.  Check your work, if you're happy with it, resize and save as a .gif and you're done.  (Be sure your Quality bar is set all the way to the top for the best quality graphics)

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and maybe learned something to help hone your skills. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have about any of my tutorials. And please let me know of broken links, etc. 

Blessings,


Trese

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