Tea Time PTU Animated

Tea Time

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

- Thich Nat Hahn -

This tutorial was written by me on October 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 the stunning art of Jennifer Janesko which you can purchase at Creative Design Outlet HERE.  This gorgeous kit called Turquoise by Rena Designs which you can purchase at Digital Crea HERE.  Please support the arts and do not use Jennifer's tubes without a license and certainly do not share her tubes or this kit. You will need the brush I have included HERE.  Plugins are Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact, Eye Candy 4000, Toadies and Xero.  Font is AL Fantasy Type you can get HERE.

Let's get started...

First we need to get your brushes into PSP for use.  It's just a couple 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 brush and click Ok and it's installed in PSP ready for use.

Start a new 700 x 700 white image which we will resize in the end.  Copy and paste your frame, element 40, into your new canvas and resize it 20%.  Go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Illustrator and use these settings:

Add a slight drop shadow then copy and paste paper of choice beneath your frame.  I used paper 9.  Resize it 10% and center it beneath your frame.  Use your eraser to clear any of the paper outside the frame.  Then on your frame add a Perspective Shadow or depth 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 duplicate your frame and on the original layer go to Effects/Plugins/Toadies/Blast 'em and use these settings:

Then go to Effects/Plugins/Toadies/Blur 'em and use these settings:

Now above the paper layer copy and paste the clock element, element 36.  Resize it 23% and set the Blend mode to Multiply.

Now copy and paste your tube above the clock layer, fit her nicely inside the frame and then duplicate and drag the duplicate above the frame layer.  Delete the bottom of her to make her appear to have her head sticking out of the top of the frame.

Next copy and paste element 70, the bow, on top of your frame.  Resize it 25% and then use your Raster Deform tool to rotate it slightly to the right.  Add a drop shadow and then copy and paste element 29 beneath the bow layer, resize it 15% and then flip it and give it a drop shadow.  Copy and paste your flower elements around these two elements, making an arrangement.  It doesn't have to look exactly like mine.  One thing I think to remember about flowers, foliage, etc. is that nature doesn't grow symmetrically, it's wild and unpredictable, place your elements accordingly.  And remember you can always use your Raster Deform tool for precise sizing and rotating.  I wanted some of the flowers to match the blue on the tube a little better so I colorized them...You can do this by going to Adjust/Hue & Saturation/Colorize and use these settings:

Don't forget your drop shadows on these.

For the plates in the background I used the same Illustrator effect and duplicated each and applied the same Blast 'em and Blur 'em effects as I did for my frame.

Add a new Raster Layer above your background layer and apply the floral brush.  Add a new layer for each time you apply the brush so you can tweak them with your Raster Deform tool if needed.

Copy and paste and resize your cups in front of the gift element.  Once you have it placed don't move it again and duplicate it twice for a total of three cup layers.  Hide the two top layers and select the original cup layer in your layer palette.  Grab your Selection tool and select the top part of the cup like this...(note the settings for your Selection tool at the top of this illustration)

NOw go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Smoke and use these settings:

Hide this layer and then unhide and select the middle layer and go to Effects/Smoke and use the same settings only hit the Random Seed button once.  Repeat this process for the last layer.

Now add your name, add a slight drop shadow.  For crisp edges with your font set your Antialias to Sharp.  Then add your copyright and we'll animate.  Make sure your copyright is legal and legible...For a neat and professional looking copyright I use a pixel, ceriph or copy font, you can google and find literally hundreds of these fonts.  Most work best at size six with your antialias set to off.

Now open Animation Shop (AS) by going to File/Jasc Software Products/Launch Animation Shop and then go back to PSP.  Hide the two top cup layers and be sure the original cup layer is showing and hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged and go to AS.  In AS hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation.  Go back to PSP and hide the original cup layer, unhide the middle cup layer and hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged and go back to AS.  This time hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit L to paste after current frame.  Repeat this for the last cup layer.

You should have three frames in your animation.  Select all the frames by going to Edit/Select All then go to Animation/Frame Properties and set the speed to 15 to slow it down a bit.  The higher that number the slower the animation speed will be.  Resize to fit your preferences or needs, save as a .gif and you're done.

I'm happy you tried my tutorial, thanks.  I hope you had fun with it and maybe even learned something to hone your skills.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns about any of my tutorials.

Blessings,

Trese