In The Crow's Nest PTU Animated

"Pity is not your forte.

Calmly you ache up there

pinned aloft in your crow's nest

my speechless pirate!"

Adrienne Rich

This tutorial was written by me on February 26th, 2013. 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 absolutely stunning tube by the very talented Dark Yarrow which you can purchase at Dreamscape Imaging HERE.  The kit is by Gothic Inspirations called Fallen Angel, rocking kit which you can purchase at her store HERE.  Please support the arts and don't share Dark's tubes without a license and certainly do not share her tubes or this kit. Plugins are Xero, Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact and Xenofex 2.  The mask is one of mine and can be found through the links on the left side, it's Trese Mask 0092, the font is Good Vibrations Script and can be found HERE.

Let's do it...

Begin by starting a new 700 x 700 white image which we will resize in the end.  Add a new Raster Layer, flood fill with black and resize it 90%.  Apply Trese Mask0092, merge the group together.

Now copy and paste frame 2 over your mask and resize it 80% as well.  Now go to Effects/Plugins/Xero/Radiance and use these settings:

Now add a slight drop shadow something like this...

Now, below your frame copy and paste your tube...also resize her by 80%...then duplicate position her at the bottom of the frame where she appears to be laying on the frame...see my image for reference...and drag the duplicate to the top of your frame...use your eraser brush to erase her foot and her gown all the way to the edge of her leg propped up.

Now 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.)

You will most likely have a little distortion when you shadow the tube as it has parts of it erased and the shadow is showing weird...easy fix.  Grab your Selection tool set on Rectangle with about a 10% feather and select a small area around the shadow and hit delete a few times....problem solved.

Next, copy and paste paper 3 above your mask, resize it about 70%, then use your eraser to get rid of any of the paper outside the frame...

Now copy and paste the Bling element above your frame, resize it 60%, using my image as a reference place it to the right of the middle of the mask...duplicate and mirror, then merge the two layers together.  Add the same drop shadow as above only changing the offsets to 2 and your Blur to 7, okay it's not the same settings, sue me.   Duplicate twice for a total of three layers.  Hide the two top layers and select the original layer and go to Effects/Plugins/Xenofex 2/Constellation and use these settings:

Select the middle layer and go to Effects/Constellation and use the same settings only hitting the Random Seed once....repeat for the last layer. DO NOT MOVE THESE LAYERS OR YOUR ANIMATION WILL END UP DISTORTED.

Using my image as a reference copy and paste the remaining elements into your working canvas.  I use my Raster Deform tool for precise sizing.  If this tool is used carefully it prevents a lot of the distortion caused by resizing in percentages depending how large or how small you go.  Don't forget your drop shadows.

Now add your name and copyright...for the name I used a chrome effect, go to Effects/Plugins/Alien Skin Eye Candy 5/Impact/Chrome and use these settings:

Now for the fun part...let's animate...simple animation.  Open Animation Shop (AS) by going to File/Jasc Software Products/Launch Animation Shop and then go back to PSP.

For the Bling elements, the top two should be hidden already since you didn't unhide them and the original should be visible.  With that being said, hold down your CTRL + SHIFT and hit C to copy merged and go over to AS and hit CTRL + v to paste new animation.  Back to PSP, hide the original bling layer and unhide the middle bling layer, 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 bling layer.  In AS you should now have three frames, one for each bling layer, right?  Check you animation by going to View/Animation and if you're satisfied, resize and save as a .gif and you're done.  NOTE: for maximum animation the bar in the very first save window for Quality should be slid all the way up.

Thanks for trying my tutorial, I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something to hone your PSP skills.  Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions about any of my tutorials and please let me know of broken links, etc.

Blessings,

Trese