Saturday, November 17, 2012

1-800 Snow Flake Babe PTU Animated

They say that every snowflake is different, if that were true, how could the world go on?  How could we ever get up off our knees?  How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

Jeanette Winterson


This tutorial was written by me on November 18th, 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.

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 gorgeous tube by Jessica Dougherty, 33-2, which you can purchase along with the tube that inspired the kit by Ladyhawwk Designs at Creative Design Outlet HERE.  Please support the arts and do not use Jessica's tubes without a license and please do not share her tubes or this kit. Mask I have included HERE.  I got this mask in one of my groups some time ago, if this is your mask, please let me know so I can give you credit here.  Plugins include Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact, Eye Candy 4000, and Xenofex 2.  Font is called Base Christmas and can be found HERE.

Let's begin...

First start a new 700 x 700 white image which we'll resize later.  Copy and paste Ele5, the star element, into your new canvas.  Resize it 75% the flip it and rotate it slightly to the left.  The star is a bit on the pink side and we want to make it more red to match the tube...Go to Adjust/Hue & Saturation/Colorize and use these settings:




Then duplicate and mirror, duplicate and flip.  For the star on the top right, resize it 85% more.  Arrange the stars together like mine in my image.  Then on each go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Corona and use these settings:




You can then give each a slight drop shadow and merge them all together.  Copy and paste paper 3 above your background layer and resize it 50%.  Use your eraser tool and erase any of the paper outside the middle of the stars.

Next, above your background layer copy and paste the large snowflake, Ele11.  Resize it 75%, duplicate it a couple times and arrange the flakes underneath the stars...see my image.   Merge all of the snowflake layers together.  Then on the top of your layer palette copy and paste Ele11 again and resize it 50%, then use your Raster Deform tool to resize more.  You can use this tool for precise sizing.  Make five of these flakes in varying sizes and arrange them spread out over the stars.  Give each a fairly dark drop shadow.  Do not give drop shadows to the flakes beneath the stars at this point.

Next copy and paste Ele18 over these flakes.  Using my image as a reference copy and paste the remaining elements into your work.  You can always use your Raster Deform tool for precise sizing and rotating, etc.

Add a new Raster Layer above your background layer and flood fill with black and apply your mask.  You will notice there are flakes on the edges that appear to look like chrome when you apply your mask, use your Selection tool with about a 75 feather and select these areas and hit delete to get rid of them.  Then duplicate your mask a few times and arrange it beneath your work...I used a couple different sizes for varying sizes of flakes.  

Now copy and paste your tube on the top of your canvas and let's give her a good shadow to pull her forward.  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.)


At this point go ahead and add your copyright taking care that it is legal and legible.  For a neat and professional-looking copyright I use a pixel font.  You can Google and find literally hundreds of these fonts.  Most work best with your Antialias set to off.  NOTE:  For crisp edges with your normal fonts, set your Antialias to Sharp.  Sometimes on the pixel fonts you can up the size in certain situations, such as on a curve, and set the Antialias to Sharp and it looks good.  You just have to experiment.

Now, duplicate the large flakes below the stars twice.  For a total of three of these larger snowflake layers.  Hide the two top layers, select the original layer and go to Effects/Plugins/Xenofex 2/Constellation and use these settings:


Hide the original layer, unhide and select the middle layer and go to Effects/Constellation and use the same settings only hitting the Random Seed button once...repeat for the last layer.  Hide the last layer and unhide the original layer.

If you wish, you can add drop shadows to each layer now....I did to make them stand out more.

On the top of your canvas add your name and duplicate it.  On the duplicate add a slight drop shadow and then select the original name layer and go to Effects/Plugins/Eye Candy 4000/Gradient Glow and use these settings:



In the Color Tab select Fat. Duplicate this layer twice, hide the two duplicates and go back to the original...go to Effects/Plugins/Xenofex 2/Constellation and use these settings:



Hide the original layer, unhide and select the middle layer...go to Effects/Constellation and use the same settings only hitting the Random Seed button once...repeat for the last layer.  Hide the two top layers and unhide the original layer.

Now open Animation Shop (AS), and we'll animate and finish up.   Once AS is open go back to PSP and hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged...back to AS and hit CTRL + v to paste a new animation.  Go back to PSP, hide the original layer of the snowflakes you applied the Constellation effect  and unhide the middle layer...hide the original name layer with the Constellation effect and unhide the middle layer.  Hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged and go over to AS.  This time hold down CTRL + SHIFT and hit L to paste after current frame...repeat the process for the last layers with the Constellation effects.  Check your work...View/Animation...if you're happy with it, resize to suit your preferences or needs and save as a .gif and you're done.

Thank you for trying my tutorial, I so hope you had fun with it and maybe even learned something to hone your PSP skills.  Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or issues with any of my tutorials.

Blessings,

Trese

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