Floatie Tag

This tut was written in psp 8 but can be done in other versions too.

Supplies:

Floatie of choice here

Font of choice (pick a nice fat one that will show the floatie well)

Animation Shop

If you're new to making tags with floaties pick one with a small amount of frames. The more frames the harder the tag. For this tut I'm going to use a floatie that has only 5 frames.

1. Let's start by opening your floatie up in AS. Press ctrl a to select all frames. Ctrl c to copy. Minimize that animation with the floatie. Go to psp and ctrl v to paste as a new image. Now you'll see all the frames at once and it'll look kinda like this, with your layer palette looking like this too.

2. Now the bottom layer in your layer palette is frame 1. Starting from the second layer and working your way up, rename each layer so that they're all properly labeled like this. When done, hide all layers except frame 1 by clicking on the eye next to each layer in the layer palette. Make sure frame 1 is selected.

3. Now in psp open up a new 500 x 300 transparent workspace. Click on your text tool and select your font. Create as vector. Size will depend on the size of your name but you want it big enough so that you can see a good part of the floatie inside each letter. Stroke 1. Select your foreground color from your floatie, leave the background null.

4. Click inside your workspace and type your name. If you need to make it bigger, highlight your name in the text entry box and change the size. Click apply when done. Go up to objects, align and click on center in canvas. Now click on the vector nodes (corners of the box around the text) and stretch your name out and up to make it even fatter. Align to center of canvas again when done. And convert to raster. Rename text. You should have something like this.

5. Select your magic wand and with mode set to add, tolerance and feather at 0. Click inside each letter to select them. You might need to hold down your shift key to keep them all selected at once. Add a new raster layer, name this layer fill. Select your flood fill tool. Change foreground color to white and click inside each of the letters, until they're all filled. Leave selected. Go to effects, 3D effects, inner bevel and use these settings.

6. Again keep selected and move the fill layer under the text layer. Activate the text layer by clicking on it in your layer palette. Then add a new raster layer, name it frame 1.

7. Click on your foreground box. Click on the pattern tab and find the floatie pattern. Should be at the top of the drop down box. Angle 0, scale 100. Click ok.

8. Again with the flood fill tool, click inside each letter till each one has the floatie inside. Do not deselect. You need the marching ants around your letters until we're all done adding each floatie layer.

9. Now go to your image with all the floatie layers, hide frame 1 and unhide frame 2. This time make sure you activate frame 2.

10. Go back to your workspace with your name. Make sure top layer in palette is activated. Add a new raster layer and name this one frame 2. Repeat steps 7 and 8, but make sure you don't select the same pattern you used before cause it will still be in the pattern selector. You'll notice both patterns do not look the same.

11. Again go back to your floatie image and hide frame 2 and unhide frame 3. And again as before, activate frame 3.

12. Back again to your workspace, add a new raster layer, name it frame 3. And repeat steps 7 and 8 again making sure you select the next floatie pattern and not the one before it. Repeat all of these steps until you have all of your floatie layers filled on your text. It will look something like this. Yup it looks a mess but it will all come out right in the end.

13. Once you have all your floatie frames filled into your text, you may now deselect. Your layer palette should look something like this. Keep in mind you might have more or less layers depending on how many frames your floatie has that you picked out.

14. Click on your raster 1 layer and flood fill white. Add a new raster layer and add your watermark. Click on your fill layer and go to effects, 3d effects and add a drop shadow, 0, 0, 60, 8.

15. Now click on your crop tool and drag your crop box around your name but don't get too close so you cut off your watermark or the shadow. Double click inside the box to crop.

16. Now in your layer palette. Hide all frame layers but the first one, leave the other layers unhidden. So it looks like this.

17. Make sure an unhidden layer is activated. Press ctrl shift c to copy merged. This copies all the visible layers as if you had merged them all together. Go to AS and ctrl v to paste as a new animation. Drag out the sides of the animation frame so you can see all frames that are available.

18. Go back to psp. Hide frame 1 and unhide frame 2. Again press ctrl shift c to copy merged. Go to AS and this time press ctrl shift L to paste AFTER current frame.

19. Repeat step 18 until you have all of your frames copied over to AS.

20. Unminimize your original floatie animation. Click on the first frame of your animation with your name. Press ctrl a to select all frames. Take note if the speed of the floatie is anything different then what the speed of your tag is. The default speed in AS is 10. The animation I chose has a speed of 20. Now press alt enter to bring up the frame properties box. Enter in the same number that is on the original floatie. Click ok when done.

21. Play your animation to see how it looks. Save your tag and congrats, you did it!

©Queina 2006. All rights reserved. Any simularities to any other tutorials is purely coincidental.