Mojo Fairy PTU

Mojo Fairy

This tutorial was written by me on September 5th, 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 magical kit-tube pack by Ladyhawwk Designs which you can purchase at Creative Design Outlet HERE.  It includes the stunning art of Kurama Phoenix.  Plugins are Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact, Eye Candy 4000 and Xero.  Animation is by Lovey which you can find for download HERE on her blog along with tons of other fun anis.  Thanks hun for the use of these amazing animations.  Brushes I have supplied HERE.  I got these brushes in one of my groups some time ago...if these are your creations please inform me so I can give you credit here. Font is Lovers Quarrel and can be found HERE.

Let's do this, ready?

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 in the end.  Now draw several rectangles into your new canvas...should look like this:

Hide you background layer and merge visible to merge these rectangles together.  Now copy and paste your paper over this.  I used paper9.  Resize the paper 75% and center it over the rectangles...select the merged rectangles in your layer palette and grab your magic wand and select each rectangle.  In your layer palette select the paper layer and go to Selections/Invert and then hit delete to erase any of the paper outside the rectangles.  Then set the blend mode to Hard Light on the paper layer and decrease the opacity to 70%.

Now select the rectangles layer and go to Selections/Select All/Selections/Float/Selections/Defloat and then add a new Raster Layer on the top of your Canvas.  With your foreground color set to white begin to randomly apply the circular brush into the selection.  I thought it was way cool that the brush is exaclty the brush Kurama used in her art.  Once you have your brushes like you want them...deselect by going to Selections/Select none...then for a slight glow on your brushes go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use these settings....

At this point, hide your background layer and merge visible, unhide your background layer and then duplicate the layers you just merged together.  On the original layer you just duplicated go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Perspective Shadow and use these settings:

You'll notice the reflection is down a bit from your merged layers, you want it touching, so on the layer you just applied the reflection to use your selection tool and select the part above the reflection and hit delete to get rid of it and then drag the reflection up to meet your work.  If you find when you drag it up that it doesn't line up quite right...use your Raster Deform tool to drag in the sides until it fits.

Note:  if you're finding your work is getting too close to the edges of your canvas simply resize your canvas to give you more room.  This is done by going to Image/Canvas size and use these settings:

You can always resize in the end....

So that the reflection doesn't look so sharply cut off grab your Selection tool set on Ellipse with about a 70% feather and select small areas around the sharp edges  and hit delete a time or two to soften the edges.

Now begin copying and pasting the elements you wish to use into your canvas.  You can use my image as a reference for size and placement.  I find it best to use the Raster Deform tool for precise sizing and it eliminates distortion or pixelization that occurs at times when resizing in percentages depending how large or how small you go.  For the elements you want to have more dimension use a perspective shadow....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.)

Sometimes with a darker canvas I like to make my elements have a darker, richer appearance...I do this by going to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Radiance and use something like these settings:

For the tube in the mirror-type element, this are the steps I took...copy and paste the mirror-looking element over your paper layered rectangles, resize to fit and then paste the close up of the tube over that.  Lower the opacity of the tube so you can see through it to see the edges of the mirror.  Grab your Selection tool with about a 90% feather and select areas outside and to the edge of the mirror and hit delete...it fits the tube into the mirror and softens the edges. Leave the opacity down to about 70% of the tube and set the blend mode to Hard Light.

Copy and paste your tube onto the top of your Canvas, resize her about 90% to fit nicely into your work.  Go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and apply the same Corona as before only increase your Width to about 8 and the opacity to 80%.  Then on your rectangle background work copy and paste element 21 towards the bottom of your tube (see my image), duplicate and mirror it, erase any of the element outside rectangle 'frame.'  Set the blend mode to Screen.

For the background which appears like a mask, add a new Raster Layer above your background layer and use the other brush I supplied, add a couple of different colors...

Once you have your work like you want it, hide your background layer and merge Visible.  You should now have two layers.  On the merged layer use your Raster Deform tool to drag the edges down and in...be sure you do this evenly, as evenly as possible so you don't distort your work.  Resize a little and then go to  Image/Canvas Size and set your Canvas to the size you want it...I went down to 650 x 650.  You can always undo and redo until you have your work fitting nicely into your canvas.  I personally like to have an ample amount of negative space around my work, I think it frames it nicely.

Add your name, give it a slight drop shadow and then add your Copyright.  For a neat and professional-looking copyright I use pixel, ceriph or copy fonts.  You can google and find hundreds of these fonts.  Most of these fonts work best at size 6 with your antialias set to off...note:  for crisp edges on your fonts for your name, wordart, etc set your Antialias to sharp.

Now we are going to add the animation...Really easy animation to add here.  Open Animation Shop ( File/Jasc Software/Animation Shop) in PSP hold down CTRL + SHIFT + C to copy merged and go over to Animation Shop and hit CTRL + v to copy a new animation.  Open your Lovey animation into AS and note that it has 22 frames, so the image we are going to put this animation into must have 22 frames as well.  Therefore on the image you pasted into Animation Shop click and Duplicate Selected as many times as you need to get 22 frames.  If you duplicate too many times, simply click on a frame and hit delete to delete it.

On both the animation you just created and on Lovey's animation be sure you are at the beginning of each by sliding the bar at the bottom all the way to the left.  Also select all the frames on both...Edit/Select All.

Now on the very first frame of Lovey's animation click into it and drag it into the very first frame of your animation...do not let go of your mouse until you have the animation where you want it.  Sometimes you can't see what you're dragging, so it's sort of a hit and miss situation...that's why you should make several copies of the animation you're dragging just in case you need it.  If you miss your drag just undo it...Edit/Undo drag and then drag it in again.

Resize and save as a .gif and you're done.

Thank you for trying my tutorial, I hope you had fun and maybe learned something to hone your PSP skills.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have about any of my tutorials and please let me know of any broken links, etc.

Blessings,

Trese