Mermaid - FTU

This tutorial was written by me on 04/20/2014 and assumes you have working knowledge of PSP. Any simularities to other tuts is purely coincidental and not done on purpose.

For this tut you will need:

PSP - I use version X3 but most versions will do

Animation Shop
Tube of choice - I'm using the artwork of Amy Brown. You can buy it from CDO
Do not use this tube without purchasing a license first.
04/18 Scrap Friday Grab Bag Freebie, scroll to bottom of page

Font of choice, I used Miss Le Gatees

Eye Candy 3.0 HSB Noise

Eye Candy 4000 Gradient Glow or any other filter with a gradient glow

Let's begin, remember to save often.

Open a new image 600 x 600, do NOT flood fill with a color, we'll fix that later. Open frame 1 from your grab bag scraps. Copy and paste as a new layer, resize 70%, all layers unchecked.

Open paper of choice, I used paper 6. Copy and paste as a new layer. Resize 55% and move below the frame layer. Activate the frame, click inside with your magic wand, expand by 6. Invert selection, activate the paper layer and press delete. Deselect. Give the frame a drop shadow of 0, 0, 80, 5.

Copy your tube and paste as a new layer. Make sure this layer is at the top of your layer palette. Give her a drop shadow of -3, 3, 60, 10, shadow on a new layer checked. Activate the tube layer again and repeat the drop shadow at 1, -1, 30, 5, again with the shadow on a new layer. Shadow 2 should be active, merge down one time.

Activate the tube layer again, and hide all layers except the tube. We're going to do some selecting so be sure to save your progress.

Zoom in about 500% and click on your freehand selection tool, set to point to point. Mode set to add, feather and smoothing at 0. We're going to select around the mermaid tail, start by selecting around the parts that are easy to get:

Now we're going to select around the harder parts, just carefully go along the lines, you can undo if you need to:

Once you have the entire tale selected, promote selection to layer. Deselect and duplicate this layer 2 times for a total of 3. Rename them from the bottom up as Tail 1, Tail 2 and Tail 3.

Activate the Tail 1 layer and go to Eye Candy 3.0, HSB Noise, apply the settings below:

Activate Tail 2, apply the filter again but change the random seed to 50. Repeat the filter on Tail 3 and change the random seed to 80.

Unhide the frame and tube shadow layers. Activate the tube shadow layer and click on your crop tool, crop layer opaque but make sure you don't crop off any part of the frame. I had to drag the bottom node down a bit to keep from cutting it off.

If you're going to resize your tag, do it now. I resized 90%, all layers checked.

Now hide all layers except the paper and frame layer. Activate the frame layer and duplicate, move the duplicate down below the original frame and hide the original frame layer. Lower the opacity on the duplicate frame to 40. Copy merged and paste as a new image in Animation Shop.

Click Effects, Insert Image Effect. Select Underwater and click on Customize, use these settings:

Click ok twice. The effect has now been applied. Delete the first and last frames in your animation. You should now have 9 frames. Scroll to the beginning and activate frame 1. Select all and minimize for now.

Back to psp. Hide the frame duplicate layer and the paper layer. And unhide all other layers except Tail 2 and Tail 3. Activate the top layer in your palette. Add your artist copyright, license info and tagger's mark.

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

Then a simple white gradient glow with the glow width at 3:

Then give your name a drop shadow, I used -2, 2, 60, 10. Make sure you uncheck the shadow on a new layer box.

Now make sure these layers are hidden: Tail 2, Tail 3, the duplicate frame and the paper layer. The rest all need to be visible. Copy merged and paste as a new animation in AS. Back to psp, hide Tail 1 and unhide Tail 2. Copy merged and paste AFTER current frame in AS. Back to psp, hide Tail 2 and unhide Tail 3. Copy merged and paste AFTER current frame in AS.

You'll now have 3 frames. Click on frame 1 and select all. Copy, click on frame 3 and paste AFTER current frame. Click on frame 6 and paste AFTER current frame again. You should now have 9 frames. Scroll back and click on frame 1. Select all.

Unminimize your previous animation you made with the underwater effect. Frame 1 should be active and all frames selected. So now you're going to click on the first frame of your animation with the tube and text and drag it onto the first frame of the animation with the water effect. Line up the frame so it sits on top of the one with the lowered opacity and release the mouse button to drop into place. All 9 frames should of moved over to the exact location. If not, then undo and try again.

While all frames are still selected, press Alt Enter to bring up the frame properties box. Change the speed to 17. Then press Shift Alt Enter to bring up the animation properties box. Click on Opaque and change the color to white. Click ok and now your animation has a white background.

Save your tag and congrats, you're done!