Sunday, October 7, 2012

Creepy Crawlies PTU Animated

Spiders in the night  creeping 'round the walls 
 Now you'll feel him  crawling over you 

Creepy crawly things  filling up your bed 
Soon you'll feel him  crawling through your brains 

You think he's there  beware his bite 
But when you look  the spider's not in sight 

Spiders reappear  taking peoples names 
Everything is  taken down insane 

There's no way out  and there's no key 
But here's a clue  the spider's really me 

You're written in his book  the spider won't forget 
You won't forget  the spiders in the night 

The end is going night  Itsy witsy friends 
The spiders disappearing  from the night 

You think he's gone  you think he's dead 
There's no escape  the spider's in your head 

All the spiders in the night  all the spiders in the night 
All the spiders in the night

This tutorial was written by me on October 7th, 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 really cute Artist Bundle Pack by Maryline Cazenave and Ladyhawwk Designs HERE.  Please support the arts and do not use Maryline's tubes without a license and please do not share her tubes or this kit.  Plugins are Penta, Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact and Eye Candy 4000.  Font is called Addams and can be downloaded HERE.

NOTE:  THIS TUTORIAL HAS A LOT OF FRAMES AND TAKES A LOT OF PATIENCE, BUT IS SIMPLE TO DO.

Having said that, let's get started...

First start a 700 x 700 new white image which we will resize in the end.  Copy and paste frame 5 into your new canvas and move it slightly to the top.  Give it a slight drop shadow.  Beneath this frame draw a black circle with your preset tool.  Copy and paste paper 16 above your black circle and set the blend mode to Hard Light and reduce to Opacity to 60% then go to Effects/Plugins/Penta/Jeans and use these settings:



Next, copy and paste element 25 above your paper layer, move it to the left of your frame and use your eraser tool to erase any of this element outside your frame.  Duplicate and mirror it...then duplicate again and move this layer to the right of left of the first one of these and then duplicate and mirror once more...merge these four elements together just to keep your palette simple.  Then on top of these little doodles copy and paste element 45, resize it 75% and then rotate it to the right 45% and give it a slight drop shadow.  Use your eraser tool to erase any of the ribbon outside the frame.


Now copy and paste element 47 above your frame and duplicate it several times and make it a few different sizes and scatter them randomly around your frame at the bottom...see my image as a reference for size and placement.  You can use your Raster Deform tool for precise sizing, rotating and moving.

Now copy and paste your tube on the top of your working canvas, resize it about 90% and copy and paste the remaining elements into your work.  See my image for size and placement of the remaining elements.  Don't forget drop shadows and for the elements you want to have more of a dimension use a Perspective Shadow by going 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 let's set up for animating.  Start by drawing a small dark grey circle on the orange dots on your frame...see illustration:




Convert to a Raster Layer...

Now select the large spider at the top, add a new Raster Layer and draw a black circle with your Selection tool set on circle with a 2% feather and set on Add on each of its eyes and flood fill with black until eyes are covered...



Next select your tube layer, add a new Raster Layer.  Grab your Lasso tool (Freehand Selection tool) and draw around the cats eyes, flood fill with the dark grey close to the eyes...




Add your name and copyright and we'll animate and finish up.  For your name to stand out give it a slight drop shadow and then go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use these settings:



For your copyright, first make sure it is legal and legible.  I use a copy, pixel or Ceriph font for mine.  You can google and find literally hundreds of these fonts.  Most work best at size 6 with your Antialias set to off.  Note:  for crisp edges on your regular fonts set your Antialias to Sharp.  What I done for my copyright here is use the light orange color in the pumpkin and added a Corona with a darker color in the pumpkin.

Now open Animation Shop (AS) by going to File/Jasc Software Products/Launch Animation Shop.  Go back to PSP...be sure you can see the cat's and the Spider's eyes by hiding the circles you drew for their eyes in your layer palette.  And the grey circle you drew for the orange dots on your frame should be shown on the very first dot from the flower-type element...


Now hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged and go to AS and hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation.  Go back to PSP, move the grey dot to the next orange dot and hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged and go back to AS and this time hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit L to paste after current frame.  Go back to PSP and move the dot up to the next orange dot..repeat this process all around your frame where the orange dots are exposed in your design.  Be sure to allow 'movement time' for the dots that are not exposed.  Where the area around the dots turn to black, draw you a new black circle to cover these.

For every fifth dot I closed the spider's eyes by unhiding the dots over its eyes, and for every seventh dot I unhid the dots on my cat's eyes.  You can use any numbers you like, the more dots you allow for, the slower the blinking on each.  And once you have all your exposed dots done, add a few frames for the blinking and movement of the dots.  This will take you awhile to do and there will be quite a lot of frames.  I ended up with 77 frames on mine.

Once you have all this done, check your work by going to View/Animation.  If you're happy with it, resize and save as a .gif and you're done.  If you're planning on making tags for other people, it would be a really good idea to make you a template first and then add the names to it later.  You do this by leaving off any names and following the steps above.  To add names later, just type your name, add it's drop shadow and Corona, then click on top of your canvas and go down to Copy and then go to AS and hit CTRL + v to paste it.  Duplicate the name as many times as you have frames by clicking on top of the name and going to Duplicate Selected and then drag the name into the animation.  Be sure your slider bar at the bottom is all the way to the left and you have all the frames selected by going to Edit/Select All on both.

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

Blessings,

Trese

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