Animating Your Name

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OK so far you have probable all tried the chalk board tutorial and put your names on them. So now lets animate it for yours and your friends viewing pleasure.

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There's a few things to keep in mind while your doing this.

1) There's at least 2 ways of doing this, My way and everyone else's. I do mine backwards as you will see.

2) You also need to keep in mind the longer the name the more pics and time your going to need.

3) And last is how many times your going to move your chalk across each letter.

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SO lets start with the basic's.

Each letter has many placements of a chalk when writing it. Take the T for example there is 3 to 4 places when animating it to place the chalk.

You can skip #3 if you want.

1 2 3 4

So you can see a name can take lots of pic for one animation.

Note: Now some people take shortcuts by only using #'s 1 & 4 to animate there's, It does work, but it all depends on how much detail you want yours to have.

So lets look at another couple of letters.

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So now that you got the basic's lets try a name.

1) Write your name in full on a new layer of the tag or transparent image making sure it will have extra room on the sides to place your writing instrument, or in the case of the chalk board no extra room needed.

Note: I keep a copy of the chalk board in layers in psp format so I can move the chalk and change it's color when I need to.

2) Now with that done select your chalk and move it to the last place on the last letter.

3) Now merge visible and copy it and paste as new image then minimize it.

4) Then hit undo so its back to layers and now move your chalk to the next location back on the latter. Then using your erase tool erase only the last half of that letter.

I'm just going to do the name so you can see more detail.

5) Now merge visible and copy, then past as new image and minimize.

6) Now redo steps 1 - 4 and go through and move your chalk to each spot on each letter and erase each part of each one until you reach the front.

Remember to save a copy of each step as you go!!!

7) Now that you have all that done open animation shop.

Now what your going to do is go back and forth from PSP and Animation Shop.

8) Now in psp open the first copy you minimized and resize it if its to large and copy it. Then go to animation shop and right click and paste as new animation.

9) Now go back to psp and open and resize the next copy you saved. Then go back to Animation Shop and go to edit + paste + paste as new frame or use the shortcut (Ctrl + L).

10) Now do this for each copy until you reach the front where your chalk is laying on the try.

11) Save your animation in animation shop and click yes or next on all the box's that come up in the save process.

And there you have it.

If you have any trouble Please let me know so I can try and help you through it.

Copyright © 2000 by GandlfDrgn, all rights reserved