Saturday, September 28, 2013

FTU Tut - Pumpkin's Bane


This tutorial was written on 09/27/2013 and assumes you have working knowledge of PSP. Any simularities to other tuts is purely coincidental and not done on purpose.

For this tutorial you will need:
PSP - I use X3 but most versions will do
Animation Shop
Eye Candy 4000 Gradient Glow
Tube of choice, I used the art of Tiffany Toland-Scott
You can purchase this tube at CDO. Do not use without purchasing a license first.
Freebie Cluster available on the CDO Designer blog
Font of choice, I used AcroterionJF

Open a new image 800 x 800. Flood fill white. Copy your cluster and paste as a new layer. I chose to mirror my cluster but this is optional. Now the grass is a bit sparce on one side. So using your selection tool, draw a selection around the grass like so:


Promote selection to layer and mirror. Use your Move tool to move the grass back over so it sits on top of the part that's a bit thin and move this layer down. Merge visible. It should now look something like this:


Give the cluster a slight drop shadow of -1, 2, 50, 5. Make sure the Vertical is negative 1 so the cluster doesn't look like it's floating.

Copy your tube and paste as a new layer. Resize if needed. I resized mine down 90%, all layers unchecked.

Move this layer under the cluster layer and arrange where desired. Your going want it to look like the cat and pumpkins are sitting in the grass. Once you're satisfied with the placement, move it back up again for now.

Use your freehand selection tool to select any areas that you want to sit on top of the cluster. I chose the leaves:


Promote selection to layer. Then click on the original tube layer and press delete. Deselect. Move your main tube layer under the cluster now and give it a drop shadow of -3, 2, 60, 10.

Activate the promoted layer and give it a drop shadow of 2, 2, 50, 5.

Now hide the white background layer and copy merged. Paste back onto your workspace as a new layer. Duplicate and mirror. Move the two layers so they're closer together and with the duplicate active, merge down. Give it a radial blur with these settings:


Move this layer to just above the white layer. Now use your raster deform tool to drag the nodes in so the blur is only slightly bigger then the cluster. Then activate your crop tool and crop layers opaque. Now resize the whole thing down if desired cause it is rather huge. I resized mine 70%, all layers checked.

Activate the top layer in your palette which should be the promoted selection. Add your copyright, license and tagger's mark. If using this same cluster be sure to include Scraps by Hungry Hill in your credits.

Add your name using colors from your tube. Give it an inner bevel of choice, I used:


Then give your name a slight gradient glow. This is what I used, the color is #eddac9:


Then a drop shadow of -2, 2, 50, 5.

To Animate:

Open your animation in AS, if you resized your tag down, you'll need to resize the animation too. I resized mine 80%.

Back to psp, hide the top 4 layers in your palette. Should be your name, the credits layer, the promoted selection and the cluster. The tube, the blur and the white background should be the only thing visible. Lower the opacity for the time being on the tube to 30%. You just want to be able to barely see it.

Copy merged and paste as a new animation in AS. Now you're going to need to make the same number of frames as the animation. My animation has 26 frames, so press ctrl shift L repeatedly until you have the required number of frames.

Scroll back and click on frame 1. Select all. Now activate your animation, make sure the first frame is active and select all on it also. Click and drag the first frame of your animation onto the first frame of your tag. All the other frames will drag along with it and place in the proper places. If you don't like the placement, undo on both and try again. I placed mine so the little orange dot on the left is above the left side of the small pumpkin:


When you're happy with placement then go back to psp. Return the opacity on the tube to 100% again and go to Layers, View and click on Invert. But then make sure you unhide the tube layer again. So now all layers should show but the blur and white background should be hidden.

Copy merged and paste as a new animation in AS. Make sure your Propagate Paste is enabled. If you're unsure there's an icon on the tool bar or you can go to Edit, Propagate Paste. Now with your existing animation that you added the sparkles to, should still be all selected. Click on your single frame and drag onto the first frame of your animation, lining the kitty up so it matches. The propagate paste will then place the same image in all frames. If you mess up you can undo and try again.

Save your tag and congrats, you're done!

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