We will be using Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8, and Animation Shop 3 in tandem to create this Tag.
This is an example of the tag we will be creating, and I will show you step by step how to get this effect:
The first step you will need to do is find an image that you would like to use.
The Google search bar, Yahoo search bar, or even sites like www.deviantart.com are good resources to find images.
Please, when you finish an image, make sure (unless you create it yourself, or use a photograph) that you give credit to the image creator if its known.
Here is the "Raw" image that we will use for this tutorial:
Vampire_Knight___Kaname_by_kyrn
deviantart.com
Now, you will need to open your paint shop (8, in this case) and your animation shop.
Open your image, and get ready to begin.
The first step will be to crop your image to the size and shape you want it. I cropped the image so that it looks like this:
Now, we are getting closer. But the image is still way too large to use as a Tag. You need to resize it to 300 wide by 400 tall for this tutorial. You will have an image now that looks like this:
Next, we will need to create a new image that is a solid colour, like a real dark, navy blue would work well with this image. So, create your new dark blue image 400 wide (yes, not 300 wide, 400 wide) and 400 tall. You want it 400 wide, so that you have room to put your name. For this tutorial, we will put our name on the left side of the image, but I will go into that shortly. For now, just create your dark navy blue image 400 tall by 400 wide.
Once you have your new dark blue image, copy your newly resized image and paste it into the new dark blue background image. Once you have it pasted in, you can use the crosshairs tool to move it and align it to the right hand side. You should end up with something like this:
Now, we will begin work on creating the animation. I am going to add a simple animation; my name changing colour, like I have some posted on my page.
To make thing simpler, I usually rotate my image 90 degrees to clockwise. You will end up with something similar to this:
(To get to rotate, go to image, then rotate. Choose 90 degrees clockwise.)
Now, you will need to create, individually, the different "cells" of the animation.
You will create each cell individually, for each shift in colour. Go to your Font (text) tool, and bring it up. Click in the dark blue section, and type in your name. I chose this font, and I will start with white, and gradually shift through light blue, to blue, to dark blue, then will end up with black. I will use Five total cells to get this effect. Some of the Cells I will use twice, but I will go into that later as well.
To get the different colour fonts for each one of your frames, you simply change the colour in the colour palette while your font box is opened.
Then when you have a different coloured font, copy merged them and paste as new image. You should wind up with five different cells, each one with a different coloured name. Below, you will see examples of my five different coloured Cells.
This is my first frame, the one with white text:
light blue:
blue:
dark blue:
and finally black:
Now, the fun begins. Open up your animation shop.
Next, create a new animation, as shown in the image below:
Now go to Animation, Insert Frames, chose Empty, and it will bring up a box. It will ask you how many frames you want. Choose to insert 7 more frames (or cells) into the animation. You need to insert seven, because you want your animation to go from white, gradually through black, then from black, gradually back to white.
The white and the black frames (or cells) will only have to be used once in the animation, but the three shades of blue will have to be used more than once, but I will get into that later.
Now that you have a new animation set up, with all the frames you need, click on the very first cell of the animation. Now, go to your paint shop program, and copy your frame with the white font. Next, go back to animation shop, and right click on your frame. Chose Paste, then insert into selected frame. You will have an outcome similar to this:
Next, just repeat these steps for each additional frame, up until black. When you get to black, you will notice that you still have some frames left blank. Don't worry about that for right this second. I will, again, address that question in a moment.
You should now have something like this:
Now that you have your animation made all the way up to the black frame, you will need to go in the reverse order of your frames. What I mean by that, is the very next frame after the black frame, you will add the darkest blue frame. Then, the blue frame, then the light blue frame. You won't need to add the black frame again, or the white frame either, since your animation will automatically loop on it's own.
After adding the three blue frames, in the opposite order going from the darkest blue to the lightest blue, you will have something like this:
Now that we are almost all done, you may realize that we forgot to rotate our panels back to upright! Oooops! Now, your thinking that all our energy is wasted. No problem, animation shop has a tool that will rotate your entire animation:
Rotate it 90 degrees to the left, and voila! there you go. Go ahead and save your animation, and you are done.
Your animation should look like this:
Just click next, until you see "finish" and there you go, your animated tag.
Adding your comment:
