Tutorial #3: Full Animated Icon Tutorial
Today, I'm going to show you how to do this
It might be a bit difficult for beginners so I'll try to be as detailed as possible. I'm using PSP 9 and AS3, other programs can be transferable as well. Things to remember in this tut:
#1. Always save your stills as PNG
#2. Your SHIFT key is your best friend
1. Crop and resize our pic into 100x100. Image taken from Gettyimages.com
2.Click Adjust-->Automatic Saturation Enhancement
Bias: More Colorful
Strength: Strong
Skintones Present: Off
3. Click Adjust-->Automatic Color Enhancement
Bias: Darker (so that the glow will be more noticeable)
Strength: Mild
Appearance:Bold
4. Click Adjust-->Softness-->Soft Focus
Focus: Softness: 64
Edge Importance: 20
Halo:Amount: 59
Halo Size: 13
Halo Visibility: 40
Scattered Light: Off or click on the dice to see different effects acording to preference.
You get this-->
5. Add brush, text and border. I use tiny text brush by Anica from LJ
Color: #620000. Rotation: 270. Opacity: 60 I apply the brush at the blank space on top of the candles.
Then, I type the word Beautiful in Rage Italic, Font Size: 22 Anti-Alias: Sharp Color: #620000 on top of the tiny text.
Next, I use a 1px size icon border brush in #62000 on the icon.
This is the result-->
6. Now, we come to a very important step, selecting the flames of the candles. Use Freehand Selection (Lasso Tool) and click on Dodge Brush.
The area must be slightly bigger than the exact position of the flames so that it will have that glowy look when animation is done. Important tip: Press on the SHIFT key on your keyboard when selecting the flames or click on the Mode and select Add. For more precise selection, enlarge your picture several times. When all of the flames have been selected. now we can start using the Dodge Brush.
Important tip: Do not run the brush too many times over the flames as it will be too bright and will not look glowy anymore. Use small sized brush for small areas and vice versa. Do not apply the brush on all of the flames. It won't look natural at all.
7. Dodge Brush Size: 6, Opacity 10. Apply brush few times on the flames randomly. Save as into a different file name. I use mine as candle_1. Undo or click back to remove the dodge brush or a simpler way would to click on the history to undo.
Make sure that your selection has not disappeared. Only undo the brush effect.
8. Repeat the steps with Opacity 20, Save As the image, Undo the effect and do it again with Opacity 30 and Save As your new image. Remove all effects, Undo the Selections and Save As the last image. Now you should have 4 images.
1.
2.
3.
4.
It doesn't look much now but wait till you animate them into an icon.
9. In Animation Shop 3, there is a nifty way to animate images without much hassle called the Animation Wizard
Click on that and these next steps:
Same size as the first image frame: ON
Transparent: ON
Yes, repeat the animation indefinitely: ON
20 sec per image
Add images: Click to open your 4 saved images. Please make sure that they have distinct names to avoid confusion.
10. You can fix the speed of the animation by clicking on Edit--> Select All of the images then Animation--> Frames Animation.
Your end result:
Happy trying!