Dive In To It Tutorial

 

{{Thanks Jane of jazzl for this tube}}

As most of you know, I really enjoy doing animations and although I am still learning, I have had many requests to do this tutorial, and I am happy to share what I have learned with you...so lets get going and make my Dive In To It....

First, download the zip file that is attached which contains the splash drops, pool and diver in it.

Open a new image in PSP 500X500 and copy and paste the diver as a new layer in it. Go to layers and duplicate the diver and X it closed. Name your layers Diver l and diver 2.  Copy and paste the pool as a new layer to your image...also X it closed.  (we will do a placement of pool and duplicate it later)

Now, using the lasso tool, cut away the legs as shown in the above image and copy and paste legs as a new image.  Go back to main graphic and delete legs from body...Deselect (so the "ants" disappear)

Your layer should look like above....Lasso/copy/paste as new image the motions lives from the graphic, then delete them from the main image.

As shown above rote the two images until they look something like the ones above. 

Make a copy of the image with the legs and paste them as a new layer on top of diver 2.  Once you have moved them around on top of the diver and you are happy with placement of legs, merge VISIBLE diver 2 with the legs.

As you can see we have a big gap in our diver and will need to fill this in.  I have found using the draw tool and clone tool is the best way to accomplish this.  Below are the setting I used. You may free hand, but I seem to have better control if I use point to point.  Be sure that you background color is closed before you start.

After you draw your line and clone in the rest of the bathing suit, copy and paste the motion lines , placing them approximately as shown in the image below.

It takes 5 divers to make this animation smooth, so with Diver 2 highlighted, duplicate Diver 2 three times.   (I always name the layers as I make them; helps me keep them straight.) 

Active all the layer except diver 5 and move them until the placement looks similar to above.  Close all layers except Diver 4 and the pool.Before merging Visible Diver 4 and the pool, make 4 copies of the pool layer and X the closed.

After merging diver 4 with the pool, Very carefully (being sure that Diver 4 is activated) erase the upper portion of the divers body leaving  a tiny portion of the body, trunks and legs sticking our of water as shown in above picture.....Use the softening tool with the settings shown above to soften the water line where the diver enters the water.  You are now ready to randomly add the splash drops to the image. 

Activate Diver 5 and pool.  Again place diver where only his feet are sticking out of the water and erase the rest of his body.  Again use the smudge tool with same setting to soften water line and again randomly add water splash drops to image.

At this point, I visibly merge each diver with a pool, being careful not to move any part of the images.....Be sure and rename them as you go.....

X our (close all the divers you should have 5) and activate the last pool.  With your favorite font, add your name where it sits in the middle of the pool and add the splash drops.  You should have something that looks like below.

The final step is to add a white background to each layer if you choose to.  I have found this prevents that ugly heavy black line that seems to attach itself to the animation in animation shop.

Be sure to name the layers as you do this and below is the correct placement of the layers.

You are now ready to save your image as PSP in a folder where it is easily located. 

Open animation.  I leave the frame speed set to 20 and change what I want later.  I also resized my animation to 75% of original in animation shop.  I set frame l to 30 and frame 6 to 50.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  Hopefully, if you do, I will write more.

Pat May