Dragon Whisper - Animated Forum Tag

This tutorial was written by me on 11/08/2014 and assumes you have working knowledge of PSP. Any similarities 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

Tube of choice - I'm using the artwork of JM Leotti.

You can purchase this tube at CDO. Do not use this tube without purchasing a license first.

 Forum template 69 by Spawn

Animation Shop

Font of choice, I used Gaheris Demo

Filters used:

Mura Meister Copies
DBS Flux Bright Noise
Greg's Factory Output II Pool Shadow
Xero Porcelain
Eye Candy 4000 Gradient Glow

Let's begin, don't forget to save often.

Open forum template, duplicate and close original. Delete credits layer.

Copy your tube and paste as a new layer. Resize if needed, I resized mine 75%. Arrange where you like it. Mine is cut off on one side so I moved her over to the right so the cut portion doesn't show. Move your tube layer under your border layer.

Activate the main background layer. Copy and paste your tube again. Apply Mura Meister Copies, Wallpaper Rotate at default settings. Now I wanted more green showing on mine in the area opposite the main tube so I clicked undo and reapplied again till I got something I liked. So this is optional for you, depending on your tube.

Apply a Radial blur with these settings, and rename this layer Blur when done:

Activate the black lines layer. Add a new raster layer and flood fill with a medium color from your tube. I chose #353f2d.

Activate the black lines layer again. Select all, float, defloat and invert. Activate the flood filled layer and press delete. Deselect. You can now delete the original black lines layer. Or what I do is just delete what's on that layer and merge the flood filled layer down onto the now blank layer so it's still labeled properly.

Ok we're going to rearrange some layers here to make things a bit simpler. Click on the Top Light Twirl layer and bring it down in the layer palette so it's above the Bottom Light Twirl layer. Merge down and rename Light Twirl.

Now click on the Top Dark Twirl layer, bring it down in your layer palette so it's on top of the Bottom Dark Twirl layer. Again, merge down and rename Dark Twirl.

Finally repeat this same thing with the twirl dots layers.

Now activate your Dark Twirl layer. Select all, float, defloat. Add a new raster layer and flood fill with a color from your tube. I chose #687b53. Deselect. You can now delete the original dark twirl layer.

Repeat this same step on the light twirl layer using a lighter (or darker if you want) color from your tube. I used #949c63. Don't forget to delete the original layer when you're done. Apply DBS Flux Bright Noise at 30%, Mix selected.

You can change the color of the twirl dots but I opted to keep them black.

Now we're going to add some drop shadows. Activate your black lines layer again. Give it a slight drop shadow of 0, 0, 50. 5. Your Light Twirl layer is going to be a bit darker at 0, 0, 60, 10. And then finally a light drop shadow again on the dark twirl layer. I used, 0,0, 30, 5.

Now we're going to go down and activate our Blur layer. Duplicate this layer twice for a total of 3 layers. Rename them from the bottom as Blur 1, Blur 2 and Blur 3.

Activate the blur 1 layer and apply Greg's Factory Output II, Pool Shadow with default settings EXCEPT change the Center to 90, Intensity to 100 and the Lightness to 120.

Activate blur 2 and repeat the filter but change the Center to 130. Repeat with the blur 3 layer and the Center at 180. Hide the blur 2 and 3 layers for now.

Now activate your main tube layer. Apply Xero, Porcelain at default but change the blue slider to 0. Give your tube an overall drop shadow at 0, 0, 80, 15.

Activate your border layer. Select all. Add a new raster layer and flood will with black. Keep selected. Contract selection by 1. Fill with your dark color you used for the black lines. Contract by 2. Fill with black again. Contract by 1 and press delete. Deselect.

Activate the original border layer again. Select all, flood fill black. Contract by 4, press delete and deselect. Give this layer a gaussian blur at 3.

Add your copyright, license info and tagger's mark.

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

Then I gave it a gradient glow using these settings, with the glow width at 3:

And then finally a drop shadow, I used -2, 2, 50, 5.

Now to animate. If you choose to skip this step you can just merge all now and save as a jpg. Otherwise, continue.

Make sure that your blur 2 and blur 3 layers are still hidden. Copy merged and paste as a new animation in AS.

Go back to PSP, unhide blur 2, copy merged and this time in AS paste AFTER current frame. Easy way to do this is to press Ctrl Shift L.

Back to PSP again, unhide blur 3, copy merged and in AS, paste after current frame.

So you should now have 3 frames. Click on frame 1. Select all. Press alt enter to bring up the frame properties box. Change the speed to 20.

Save your tag and congrats, you're done!