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Animated Birthday Card with falling Confetti
For this tutorial you will need download zip and open on your PSP desktop then export the different graphics as tubes. Right click and save to your hard drive then open up in your PSP program. Lets get started. We are constructing a card here that will consist of at least 8 or nine different "frames" for the animation. We will be making the main segments of the frames first then blending them together to create the finished animation. 1. Open new image 350 x 350 transparent. Add layer. Flood fill the background with a color of you choice. Now you can decorate the background with any design or words you would like. We used "Happy Birthday on plain white spelled out in clouds. Add layer. Use the elephant from the tube you downloaded earlier, resized to 175%. Use a perspective shadow from Eye Candy 3 with these settings.
Now you should have your front page complete. Ours looks like this.
Okay go to Layers/Merge/Merge Visible and minimize page 1 on your desktop. Now on to the second page....
1. New image 350x350. Add layer. Make the background The way you would like it to look. You can use the Happy Birthday clouds in here they are included in the zip at the top. Add layer. Select your Picture tube. Change the tube to the Birthday Cake tube and tube in a cake (we included two cakes so you can choose the one you like. Position the cake in the middle towards the bottom. Add layer. Position the elephant on the right side as shown, Go to Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow and apply these settings.
Copy the elephant, paste as new layer, mirror, then place on the left side as shown. 2. New Layer. Copy the elephant again and reduce in size aproximately 75%. Place this layer BEHIND the larger elephant. Take this elephant that's reduced and copy, paste as new layer, mirror and place BEHIND the larger elephant as shown above. Now, we're having a party! 3. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are making a Birthday Card for Connie, so use the text as shown above. Always put each section of text on it's own layer!......... Get creative with how you fill the text or what font you use.
Now go to Layers/Merge/Merge Visible and minimize this on your desktop. Now we are going to make a sealed envelope that the card will pop out of. 1. Open a new image 400x400. You can leave the background transparent if you like or you can decorate it. Grab your preset shapes tool with these settings:
Set your foreground and background color to white or whatever color or design you would like to use. Draw out a long rectangle that almost covers the lower half of your canvas. When you are happy with it go to Layers/Convert to Raster Layer. Now go to Effects/Plug Ins/ Eye Candy 3 and apply these settings. Distance =1.5 Blur= 8.50 Opacity = 95 Angle=315 Keep Original Image checked Color of the shadow you can use black or any color that sets off your graphics choose dark colors though light ones will make it look wrong. 2. Select your preset shapes again same settings and colors as before. This time draw out a rectangle covering about 3/4 of the first rectangle. 3. Now click on your object selector tool, right click on the canvas and choose node edit. Don't worry this is VERY simple! 4. Now grab the bottom left hand node and pull it into the center. Then grab the right hand one and pull it into the center overlapping the little nodes like this.
5. Now when you are happy with this then convert to a raster. Again go to Effects/Plug Ins/Eyecandy 3 and apply the same cutout you used for the first part of the envelope. 6. Now Add a new layer. You are going to add a "seal" to the front of the envelope so you can use preset shapes again or you can use a ding or whatever you like. I am using the multipointed star in the preset shapes. 7. Draw or type a seal on the point of the envelope. You can decorate your seal anyway you like. I used drew out the star and then went to Effects/Texture/Sculpture and used the default Gold settings.
8. Okay now we are ready to animate this :). Our first frame is this envelope just as it is. Now for animations I always save them in PSP format so if I need to change anything I can. So save this first picture as 1bdcard.psp. 9. Now after you have saved it. Click on the triangle part of of the envelope in your layer pallette to activate this layer. Go to Image/Flip and it will open the envelope up. Now with the seal layer go to Image Flip and then drag this layer behind the triangle part of the envelope. 10. Now open up your layer palette and activate the base part of the envelope. Now with your Lasso tool set like this
Draw a triangular shaped opening in the envelope where the card is going to sit. like this
Now with your lasso tool still selected click on the base envelope and it will select the envelope with the triangle opening still in tact. Go to Effects/3D effects/Drop Shadow and apply a drop shadow with these settings. Vertical and Horizontal =1 Blur =5 Opacity =70 Color = black apply the drop shadow. DO NOT SELECT.... LEAVE THIS SELECTED THROUGH THIS NEXT STEP. 11. Open up your first page you did of the front of your card. Now go to Edit/Copy (CTRL C) and then activate your envelope image and go to Edit/Paste/Paste as new layer. with your deformation tool put the card into the envelope peaking out about half way. It's going to look weird through this step but click on your deformation tool. Now using the nodes slide the card just slightly smaller then the envelope width and then position it so that it isn't quite to the top of the triangle of the envelope like this
Now apply the deformation and then hit delete. This will crop out the card where it's inside the envelope. Now drag this to the top of the layer pile and rename the layer card1. Save this as 2bdcard.psp
12. Okay now activate your card 1 layer and delete this layer. Now Copy your first card again and paste as a new layer. Again click your deformation tool and position and reshape the card like this.
Now go to Selections Float when the card is selected go to Add a new layer and name this card 2. Now select your second card image and Edit/Copy. Then on the new layer choose paste into selection and then select none. Now pull this layer underneath the first card layer. 13. Now activate your card 1 layer go to Effects/3D effects/dropshadow. and apply the same drop shadow that we used before except pull the opacity to about 60-65. Activate card 2 layer and apply the same drop shadow. This is the third frame so go ahead and save as 3bdcard.psp 14. Okay let's simplify the layers now. Turn off all the layers but the envelope base, triangle and stamp (make sure the stamp is under the triangle layer) and go to Layers/Merge/Merge visible rename this "envelope. 15. Now you should have "layer 1, envelope, card2 and card 1 all in that order. 16. Activate card 1 and again select your deformation tool. Grab the middle node on the right hand side and push card 1 back about 1/3 of the way across card 2. Now holding down your shift key grab the top node of the right hand side and pull it up and out slightly. Now holding down your shift key grab the bottom node and pull it up and out slightly also like this.
Apply the deformation and then save this as 5bdcard.psp. 17. Now again click on the deformation tool and pull card 1 back even further back until about 3/4 of the card 2 layer is showing. If it needs more dimension hold down your shift key again and pull those up a bit.
Apply the deformation and save this as 6bdcard.psp 18. Now on card 1 layer this time go to Image/ mirror. Position the card so that the left edges of the card meet (You might have to use your deformation tool to match these). The left part of your card is going to be off the canvas but that is okay. Now when you have these matched up go to Selections/Select All. Select your magic wand and click in the card. Now flood fill this white or any other contrasting color so that it looks like the inside of the card. Now apply the same drop shadow to this layer as we did before.
Save this as 7bdcard.psp 19. Okay now hit Shift D 2 or 3 times depending on how much animation you would like to do on the inside of the card. 20. Now decorate the card in steps. We did flickering candles and confetti falling. So we added two new layers and on the first one we put spark tubes over the fire on the candles and in the confetti layer we covered the whole card in confetti. Save as 8 bdcard.psp 21. Now on the second image we made the confetti fall some and didn't put any confetti over the top working we also used the deformation tool on the flame layer to move the sparks on the flames slightly to the left. Save as 9bdcard.psp 22. Now on the third image we put the confetti even lower and moved the sparks on the flames slightly to the right so they would appear to be flickering. Save as 10bdcard.psp. 23. Feel free to animate however you want to do this. Have fun and just do what you like! 24. Open up your animation shop. 25. Click on Animation Wizard. 26. Now a box will pop up so let's get going on the boxes. On the first box click on same size as previous image and then hit next. On the second box click transparent background and hit next. On the third box hit centered in frame and with the canvas color and then hit next. On the fourth box repeat indefinitely and enter a 25 in the box. On the fifth box is where you load your files. I saved all mine in a folder for easy loading. Click on Add Image. To select multiple files at a time click on your first file and then holding down your CTRL key click on every file you want on your animation. This will highlight multiple files at once. If all your files are one right after eachother you can click on the first one and then hold down your shift key and click on the last one. This will select everything between those two files in your folder. Make sure when you get them into the box that you put them in order like this. You do this by highlighting the file in the box and use the move up or move down buttons.
Click on next. On the sixth box click on finish and animation shop will build your animation for you. Now when it's has all the frames up and out then you can adjust the time on each frame (We set the third frame to display for 50/100's of a second instead of 25). When you are happy Save your animation and you are done :). Thanks for playing with us... T-Storm
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