The Witch in the Woods PTU Animated

The Witch in the Woods

Double, double toil and trouble;  Fire burn and cauldron bubble.  Eye of new, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

MacBeth by Shakespeare

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 this spooky kit by Amy which you can purchase from her blog HERE, it's called Witchy 2.  This awesome witch by Ida Larsen.  You can purchase Ida's tubes at Dreamscape Imaging HERE.  Please support the arts and do not use Ida's tubes without a license and certainly do not share her tubes or this kit.  You'll also need the background brush I supplied HERE.  Plugins are Eye Candy 4000, Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Nature & Impact and Xero.  Font is Rapture Heavenly which you can download HERE.

Let's do this...

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 the moon element into your new canvas and resize it 125% then go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Mistifier and use these settings:

Then go to Adjust/Hue & Saturation/Colorize and use these settings:

Copy and paste the Bushel element above the moon element and duplicate it three times, each time you duplicate resize 75% and place them in your canvas something like this...

Next copy and paste the tree on top of your canvas and resize it 75%, then copy and paste your spellbook on top of the tree.  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.)

Using my image as a reference for size and placement copy and paste the rest of the elements and your tube into your working canvas.  You can use your Raster Deform tool for precise sizing and rotating.  

On your tube, the bushes and the spellbook go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Radiance and use these settings:

Give your elements drop shadows and for the ones you want more dimensional use the same Perspective Shadow as you used on your spellbook.

Add a new Raster Layer above your background layer and apply the brush I supplied several times to create a background.

Once you have your Cauldron where you want it duplicate it twice for a total of three layers and do not move them at all.  Hide the top two cauldron layers and select the original cauldron layer and use your Selection tool to select the top of the cauldron something like this...(note the settings)

Now go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Nature/Smoke and use these settings:

Basic tab

Color & Lighting tab

Hide the original layer, unhide and select the middle layer in your layer palette and go to Effects/Smoke and add the same settings only hitting the Random Seed button once.  Repeat this process for the last cauldron layer.

Now, once you have the two candles where you want them, merge them together and duplicate twice for a total of three candle layers.  Hide the top two and select the original candle layer in your layer palette.  Using your Selection tool select a small part above the wicks for your flames something like this...

Then go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Nature/Fire and use these settings:

Hide this layer and unhide and select the middle layer and go to Effects/Fire and use the same settings only hitting the Random Seed button once.  Repeat the process for the remaining candle layer.

Add your name and add a slight drop shadow then go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use these settings:

Add your copyright taking care that it 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.  NOTE: for crisp edges on your regular fonts, set your antialias to Sharp.  

Now let's animate...

First open Animation Shop (AS) by going to Edit/Jasc Software Products/Launch Animation Shop and then go back to PSP.

On your candle and cauldron layers hide the two top layers and hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged.  Go to AS and hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation. Back to PSP, hide the original candle and cauldron layers, unhide the middle layers of each and hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged...back to AS this time hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit L to paste after current frame.  Repeat for the remaining candle and cauldron layers.

Resize at this point to fit your preferences or needs and then go to Edit/Select All, Animation/Frame Properties and change the animation speed to 15.  (The higher the number the slower the animation will be.)  Go to View/Animation to check your work.  If you're satisfied 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