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Playful
Fireflies This tutorial assumes you are familiar with your version of PSP and know where your tools are located. Workspaces can differ, therefore the screenshots and directions for the location of the tools used may not be accurate in your workspace. If you have problems finding a particular tool, use the program's help file and type the tool name into the "find" window. I have created this tutorial in version 9. Supplies
Needed: Part 1: 1. Begin by creating a new image 100x100, 72dpi, 16mil colors, black background. We will delete the background later, but for now we need it to see our work. 2. Using the preset shape Ellipse, white foreground, stroke set to width 1, no fill, vector checked,
draw an oval shape 35x65. (You can see the dimensions at the bottom left of your screen.) 
3. Using the object selection tool handle, (not the deformation tool) rotate the oval approximately 36.2° to the right. (You can see the degree of rotation at the bottom right of your screen.)
4. Center in the canvas:
5. Create new raster layer and name it 1.
6. Grab your paintbrush tool with these settings:
7. Click once about the center of the canvas. 8. Go to Adjust/Blur/Guassian Blur and set the radius to 8. 9. Still using the paintbrush, change the size of to 5 and the hardness to 90, click once directly in the center of your blur. If you miss, undo (Edit/Undo) and try again. This is what it should look like:
10. Using the move tool, place your "dot" on the oval guide as shown below:
11. Right click on layer "1" on the layer palette and duplicate. Right click again and Rename the "copy of 1" layer to "2".
12. Using the move tool, drag the second "dot" on your canvas to the left a little taking care to place it on the oval guide as shown:
13. Now we want to repeat steps 11 & 12 naming each duplicated layer appropriately - 3,4,5 and so on. Take care to space the "dots" about the same distance from each other. 14. I ended up with 14 "dots". You may have more or less depending on your spacing. If you see that one of your "dots" is out of line and throwing things out of whack, change to the deformation tool and click each layer in the palette to find the one that needs adjusting. If you try to use the move tool at this point, you will find it near impossible to grab the correct dot that needs moving. In my case, layer 4 needed to be slightly closer to layer 3. You should now have something like this:
Your layer palette should now look similar to this:
15. Right click on "Vector 1" layer & choose Delete. 16. Right click on "Background" layer & choose Delete. SAVING FOR ANIMATION SHOP: 17. File/Save As... Give your image a name (I called mine pinkfirefly). IMPORTANT: If you are using
verion 8 or higher, click the options button. Under Version, set to PSP 7
compatible file. ***TIP ALERT*** Before doing a final save, you can go to Image ->Image Information and click on the "Creator Information" tab. In the description field, add the tutorial url (and other info, such as font used). Then save as a psp file. That information is saved along with the image. The next time you say (to yourself, of course...) "I wish I could remember where that tut is...", you will have the information available in the image itself. Cool, huh? Part 2: 1. Hold down the shift key and press the D key. Close the pinkfirefly image. We are now going to work on the green firefly and this part is very easy and very repetitive. 2. Activate layer 1 in the layer palette by clicking on it. Get your "Change to Target Brush":
3. Click once in the center of your canvas. 4. Activate layer 2 and repeat step 3. 5. Do this for each layer. When you are done, your "dots" should all be glowing green instead of pink. 6. Go to Image/Rotate/Free Rotate. Use the settings below:
7. Save your image as before with a different name. (I named mine - go figure - greenfirefly) ***TIP ALERT*** Before doing a final save, you can go to Image ->Image Information and click on the "Creator Information" tab. In the description field, add the tutorial url (and other info, such as font used). Then save as a psp file. That information is saved along with the image. The next time you say (to yourself, of course...) "I wish I could remember where that tut is...", you will have the information available in the image itself. Cool, huh? Part 3 (final step):Animating!!! 1. Launch Animation Shop. (Duh) 2. Open both of your firefly files you saved earlier. 3. On the pink firefly image, hold down the Shift and Alt keys and hit enter all at the same time. This is the shortcut to opening the Animation Properties dialog box. Set the tick at Opaque and leave Black as the color. Click ok. 4. Hold down CTRL key and press the A key. This selects all the frames. 5. Switch to the green firefly image, hold down the CTRL key and press the A key to select all frames, then hold down the Shift key and press the R key to reverse the order of the frames. 6. Hold down the CTRL key and press the C key to copy all the frames to the clipboard. 7. Switch back to your pink image. Hold down the CTRL key and press the E key. Notice that one green dot is sort of stuck to your pointer. It is waiting on you to place it in the image. Don't click until you have it where you want it. I chose to place it about the same position it was located from where I copied it. (The first frame of the green dot as a general guide.) It doesn't have to be exact, you just want to make sure that it doesn't run off the canvas. ;) If you don't like it's placement, Edit/Undo and CTRL + E to try again.
What you've just done is copied and pasted all the frames from one image into all the frames of the other image. Whenever you do this, be sure that all the images you want to combine have the same number of frames to avoid problems. 8. Minimize the green firefly image. We are done with it. 9. Making sure all of your frames are still selected (remember - CTRL +A) hold down the Alt key and press enter. Set the display time to 2. 10. View your handy work. Go to View/Animation. Running really fast huh? That is a good thing...we don't want too much attention on the bluntness of the dots in the center of the blur. Besides this fact, I've found that A.S. 3.10 will save the animation slower than the preview. Dunno why.... 11. Optimize! Optimization is extremely important in the final appearance of your animation. Go to File/Optimization Wizard. These are the settings I found best for this particular image:
Click OK. Click next, next, next, and finally finish. You should now have something like this:
Go to File/Save As... and name your animation as fireflyplay or something. That's it! You are done. But it's really plain, huh? Well, you could go back into PSP and make some other things to add to it. Go ahead, give it a try. You are only limited by your imagination. Oh, and the header of this page was done following these exact steps. But the animation has 40 layers because of it's size. It also used a heart shape and an oval shape. I also used a small heart paintbrush shape instead of a dot. Here is the same, with a new image of 14 layers of my name and a frame, pasted into the same animation from this tutorial:
See?? Imagination! ;)
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