Mini-Movie
Icon Tutorial
This tutorial
is for Jasc Paintshop Pro and Animation Shop. (Screencaps are from PSP8, but
it also works in PSP7)
This tutroial
is aimed at people who have a basic knowledge of how Paintshop Pro and Animation
Shop work.
For this tutorial,
we're going to create an animated icon, called a "Mini-Movie" icon.
This will be the final result:
Firstly, we need
the animation. This is one I made using screencaps from Monty Python and The
Holy Grail:
You need to make
sure your animations are small enough to fit inside the icon. This one is
55x44. You also need to make sure you dont have too many frames - this animation
contains 10 frames - the max is usually around 15.
Now you need
to prepare it for use in your icon. Create a new animation in Animation Shop,
100x100 with a light opaque background. Duplicate the frames several times
until you have the same amount of frames as your original animation (in this
case, 10). It should look something like this:
Now, select all
the frames in your original animation.
And copy &
paste them into the new animation.
Place them in
the area you want the animation to be in the icon. I'm placing it in the bottom
right hand corner.
Save it as minimovieanimation.gif.
It will look like this:
Keep it open
in Animation Shop, since you will be needing it shortly.
Now, you've got
your animation. Now you need to make the actual icon. Firstly, open Paintshop
Pro, and create a 100x100 file. You can put whatever you like in it. This
is what I'm going to use:
Now, we dont
want to add any text just yet, incase we accidently put text where the minimovie
is going to go. So, we copy and paste one frame of our animation into Paintshop
Pro as a new layer on our icon. Delete the opaque surrounding. This is to
make sure the animation frame is positioned in the correct place. It should
look like this:
Now we can add
some text to the background. Make sure you create all your text on a different
layer to the mini-movie frame.
Now make the
layer containing the animation frame invisible, by clicking on the eye next
to the layer on the layer palette. When it has a red cross through it, it's
invisible.
And save the
image as 'minimoviebase' either in GIF or PNG format.
Make the layer
visible again by clicking the eye once more.
Now, using the
selection tool ( )
with the following settings:
Create a selection
around the movie frame. Make sure you select inside the frame slightly, rather
than outside of it.
Before you release
the selection:
After you release
the selection:
Now make the
layer containing the animation frame invisible again.
Now, delete the
selected areas in the layers beneath it, until it looks like this:
Deselect the
image. Your icon frame is pretty much finished! Copy the merged image.
And paste it
into Animation Shop as a new animation.
Again, duplicate
the icon to the same number of frames as is in the animation - 10 in this
case.
Now, select all
frames in both animations. Copy the frames in the animation containing the
icon 'frame', and paste them into minimovieanimation.gif. This may take a
few attempts before you get it right - you can always hit Edit>Undo if
you make a mistake. If you've done it correctly, it should look like this:
If you want,
you can keep it like that! It will look like this:
Or, you can edit
it, and make the movie fade in and out of the image.
Open minimoviebase.gif/png,
and copy it. Paste it into your minimovie animation before the first frame.
Now, you need
to use the Fade Transition Effect.
Now, you only
want one a one frame fade, mainly due to size restrictions (you need to keep
the icon below 40k in order to use it on Livejournal). So, use the following
settings:
Click OK. The
animation should look like this, now:
Repeat the process
at the end of the tutorial. Make sure you've got the frame before the base
frame selected when you insert the image transition! Delete the last frame
(the base frame at the end of the animation).
Make sure all
the frames are set to 15/100th of a second. Do this by selecting all the frames
in the animation, and hitting Alt+Enter. Then input 15 into the box that pops
up.This depends on how fast you want the animation to run - the faster you
want it, the lower the number - the slower you want it, the higher the number.
But you dont
want the first base frame to just be shown for 15/100th of a second. Deselect
the rest of the frames, so you've only got the first frame selected, and then
hit Alt+Enter again. Input a larger number - somewhere between 70 and 120.
Save it. The
finished animation will look like this:
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