Colour Animated Sinedots Tutorial PSP 7 This tutorial was created July 14th 2002©Copyright Artwork by EssexGirl please do not copy it, or put it anywhere else without my written permission. *NOTE* Sometimes the links for filters change, it's difficult (and a lot of work) to keep changing them on individual pages, so I have created a page with links to filters and programs that I have used in my tutorials. That way it is easier for me, because when there are changes I will only have one page to update and hopefully better for you, because I'm less likely to miss a page out when doing the updates :) You will find links to filters/programs used in this tutorial Here the link will open in a new window Filters and programs used in this tutorial :- Paint Shop Pro Dragonfly's Sinedots II Silver...from Flaming Pear's sextet(optional) Materials :- There is a text file included in the zip, if you don't know where to place the items. My sg_buckles.cfg a zip file is Here some images have been made smaller to shorten file size

Step 1. Open a new Image 200 x 300 transparent and flood fill with a dark colour, the colour isn't important as it can be changed before animating if you want to do so. Add a new layer Go to Effects...Plugins...Dragonfly...Sinedots... Open the sg_buckles.cfg and choose the buckle3 preset If you are new to sinedots and don't know how to open the .cfg file click HERE for more information Some presets use different 'blend' settings and it is important for this tutorial to make sure that the blend in the sinedots setting is set to 'screen' like this:-

Step 2. Go to Effects...Geometric Effects... Perspective Vertical...difference = minus 100 Go to Image...Rotate... Tick the 'all layers' box and rotate 90° right Your whole image will be turned sideways

Step 3. Go to Image...Canvas Size... Tick the centre image horizontally and vertically boxes and change the canvas size to 400 x 400 Make your background layer active and flood fill with the dark colour that you are using then make the sinedots layer active again.

Step 4. Go to Effects...Reflection Effects...Rotating Mirror... Horizontal offset=0 Vertical Offset=0 Rotation Angle=233 Your image should look like this

Step 5. Go to Image...Resize... Make sure that the 'all layers' box in NOT ticked and resize the layer to 80% then go to Effects...Sharpen...and Sharpen... The sinedots image needs to be moved to the lower left with the point at the centre of the image. To make it easy to pinpoint the centre I turned on the grid and changed the grid and guide properies to 100 horizontal and vertical and colour to red (these are listed under 'View') Use the mover tool to reposition the image. The grid can then be turned off.

Step 6. Go to Layers...Duplicate... Image...Flip...then Image...Mirror...

Step 7. Turn off the visibility of the background layer by opening the layers palette and clicking the glasses Go to Layers...Merge...Merge Visible... Duplicate the merged layer (layers, duplicate) Go to Image...Rotate... Make sure that the 'all layers' box is NOT ticked (we ticked it for the last rotation so you will have to untick it) and rotate by 90 ° any direction. Merge visible again, then turn the visibility of the background layer back on.

Step 8. Duplicate the merged layer, then go to Image...Rotate...this time change the rotation to 45° any direction. This layer will need sharpening after the rotation so go to Effects...Sharpen...and Sharpen... No merging this time.

Step 9. I resized my image at this point, before making the frames for the animation. It's up to you whether you do this, it depends how large you want the animation to be. Image...Resize...Tick the 'all layers' box. Resize the image to 300 x 300 Both of the sinedots layers will need sharpening, so Go to Effects...Sharpen...and Sharpen, then repeat the sharpening on the other sinedots layer.

Step 10. If you want to change your background colour, make that layer active and flood fill with your choice. I added my border before making the animation frames so that it would be exactly alike on each one. If you don't want a border around your animation you can omit the rest of this step. Make the background layer active. Go to Selections...Select All...then Selections...Modify...Contract... contract by 10 pixels. Go to Selections...Invert... I applied Flaming Pear's 'Silver' (effects, plugins, Flaming Pear, Silver) I just hit the random dice a few times, until I found s setting that I liked. If you prefer you can use another program like Eye Candy or SuperBladePro, or just flood fill with a colour and add an inner bevel

Step 11. Hold down the shift key and hit D 3 times. You now have 4 identical images, each with a background layer and two sinedots layers. Each of the sinedots layers needs to be coloured seperately, so make one of the sinedots layers active. My current favourite colouring method for sinedots, is to lock the transparency of the layer by clicking off the red X of the padlock, as shown in the following screenshot, then flood filling with the chosen colour, or gradient. Any transparent areas in the layer are protected from the flood fill. Repeat this for each sinedots layer The choice of colours is up to you. You can use plain colours, gradients, patterns, or a mixture and you can either stick to a colour scheme (eg reds and yellows) or a variety. Do some experimenting to find combinations that appeal to you. We will save them in psp format, so that the colours can be changed if you don't like the result when we try the animation out in Animation Shop, or if you want to make another one in different colours.

Step 12. When you are ready save your images in psp format naming them something like 'frames 1, 2, 3 and 4 These were my frames

Step 13. Open up Animation shop For this animation the layers need to be merged into single frames, so look under File...Preferences...General Program preferences... On the 'Layered Files' tab use these settings You can change back to your usual preference when you finish this tutorial. Click on the animation wizard in the top left corner These are the options to select on the windows that follow 'same size as the first frame', click next 'transparent', click next 'centred in the frame', and 'canvas colour', click next. Yes to repeat indefinitely and 40 in the time box, (if you want the changes in colour to be faster or slower you can adjust the number lower to make the animation faster and higher to make it slower). Click next. Click on add image and navigate to where you put your four images. Select each one, or hold down the Ctrl key and select them all, but click them in reverse order if you do it this way. click next. Click 'finish' To see the animation working go to View...Animation

Step 14. If you like your result save it using the default settings. If you want to change the colours you can open your 4 images again and try some different variations.

You can get lots of variations try with a different sinedots preset, or change the settings on the rotating mirror. For the following example I used the 'buckle2' preset (which is included in the .cfg), in step 2 I rotated the image to the 'left' instead of 'right' and used plain and gradient flood fills in red, white and blue.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thankyou to my great testers To see my other tutorials click Here

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