Man Trouble Tutorial

All the supplies you will need can be downloaded here.

You will also need Animation Shop & Squirlz Water Reflections 2.

Plug Ins Needed For This Tutorial

DBS Flux - Linear Transmission -  here

FM Tile Tools - Blend Emboss - here

Xero - Mistifier - here

Adjust Variations - here

Graphics Plus - Cross Shadow - here

Alien Skin Impact - Bevel - here

Simple - Top Left Mirror - here 

Man Trouble Tutorial

Open up all the materials and place them in the right places. Font to fonts, gradient to gradients,
images to psp file and so on. This tutorial was written for PSP 9.

1. Open a transparent image 740 x 580.

2. Go into your material properties and bring up the materials palette.

3. Foreground color #000000 or choose your own

4. Background color #375f70 or choose your own

5. Materials Palette - make a gradient with your two colors - Settings - Angle - 45, Repeats - 5,
Style - Radial.

6. Flood fill your transparent image with your gradient color.

7. Effects - DB Flux - Linear Transmission - Settings - Slice Size - 5, Offset - 5, Blend - 50,
Direction - Vertical.

8. Effects - FM Tile Tools - Blend Emboss - Settings - Default

9. Open image 1 - dream - man trouble - Edit - copy and paste as a new layer.
Opacity - 100 - Move to the left side of the background. Blend Mode - Normal

10. Layers - Duplicate Layer - Blend Mode - Multiply - Opacity - 100

11. layers - Merge Down

12. Effects - FM Tile Tools - Blend Emboss - Settings - Default

13. Layers - Duplicate Layer

14. Image - Mirror

15. Open image 2 - suzi - man trouble - Edit - copy and paste as a new layer.
Opacity - 100 - Move to the center of the background. Blend Mode - Normal

16. Effects - FM Tile Tools - Blend Emboss - Settings - Default

17. Layers Palette - Move image 2 under image 1 and the duplicate in your layers palette

18. Layers - New Raster Layer

19. Flood fill your layer with your #000000 color or choose your own color. Blend Mode - Soft Light,
Opacity - 70

20. Layers - Merge All Flat

21. Open image 3 - sbg - man trouble - Edit - copy and paste as a new layer.
Opacity - 100 - Move to the left side of the background. Blend Mode - Normal

22. Freehand Selection Tool - Settings - Selection - Freehand, Mode - Replace, Feather - 30,
Smoothing - 0, Check - Anti-Alias.

23. Run Freehand tool around a light area. hit the delete key. keep doing this until you
eliminate all the light areas and are satisfied with the look you have achieved.

24. Open image 4 - sbg - man trouble - Edit - copy and paste as a new layer.
Opacity - 100 - Move to the left center side of the background. Blend Mode - Normal

25. Freehand Selection Tool - Settings - Selection - Freehand, Mode - Replace, Feather - 30,
Smoothing - 0, Check - Anti-Alias.

26. Run Freehand tool around a light area. hit the delete key. keep doing this until you
eliminate all the light areas and are satisfied with the look you have achieved.

27. Layers Palette - Move image 4 under image 3 and center in your layers palette.

28. Open image 5 - suzi - man trouble - Edit - copy and paste as a new layer.
Opacity - 100 - Move to the left center side of the background. Blend Mode - Normal

29. Freehand Selection Tool - Settings - Selection - Freehand, Mode - Replace, Feather - 30,
Smoothing - 0, Check - Anti-Alias.

30. Run Freehand tool around a light area. hit the delete key. keep doing this until you
eliminate all the light areas and are satisfied with the look you have achieved.

31. Layers Palette - Highlight your back ground layer and close it by clicking on the eye and
a red x should appear. Your background should disappear.

32. Layers Palette - Highlight the top layer.

33. Layers - Merge All Visible - you should have all your tubes on one layer.

34. Effects - Drop Shadow - Settings - Vertical - 1, Horizontal - 1, Opacity - 100, Blur - 1, Color - Black

35. Effects - Xero - Mistifier - Settings - Haziness - 130, Strength - 130, Red Mist - 255,
Green Mist - 255 - Blue Mist - 255. - Repeat.

36. Selections - Select All - Modify - Contract - 50 - Selections - Invert

37. Layers - New Raster Layer

38. Flood fill with sbg border pattern or choose your own color or pattern

39. Effects - Drop Shadow - Settings - Vertical - -1, Horizontal - -1, Opacity - 100, Blur - 1, Color - Black -
Effects - Drop Shadow - Settings - Vertical - 1, Horizontal - 1, Opacity - 100, Blur - 1, Color - Black

40. Effects - FM Tile Tools - Blend Emboss - Settings - Default

41. Effects - Adjust Variations - click on darker once.

42. Effects - Graphics Plus - Cross Shadow - Default Settings

43. Effects - Alien Skin Impact - Bevel - Factory Settings

44. Effects - FM Tile Tools - Blend Emboss - Settings - Default

45. Selections - Select None.

46. Open image 6 - sbg corner - man trouble. Edit - copy - paste as new layer.
Move into left upper corner.

47. Effects - Drop Shadow - Settings - Vertical - 1, Horizontal - 1, Opacity - 100, Blur - 1, Color - Black
Adjust - Sharpness - Sharpen

48. Effects - Simple filter - Top Left Mirror.

49.To add your name go to font - ScriptissimoForteSwirls - size 16 - stroke 0 - anti-alias - smooth. Use the color
or pattern or gradient of your choice. Effects - 3D effects - drop shadow - settings: vertical 1 - horizontal 1 -
opacity 100 - blur 1 - color black. You can also use the text tool and add your own text. I used
ScriptissimoForteSwirls font but you can use whatever font you prefer. Color - sbg - silver pattern - man trouble.

50. Position your name in the bottom right area where you would like to have it. Adjust - Sharpness -
Sharpen.

51. Layers - duplicate

52. Layers Palette - Highlight your back ground layer and close it by clicking on the eye and
a red x should appear. Your background should disappear.

53. Layers Palette - Highlight the top layer.

54. Layers - Merge All Visible - you should have all your tubes on one layer.

55. Layers Palette - Highlight your background layer and open it.

56. Edit - Copy and paste your background layer as a new image and save it as a jpeg. Remember
what you name it. This will be the image you open in Squirlz.

57. Open your Squirlz Water Reflections 2 program. Included in the materials is a MS Word Dream
Blends group exercise for this program. This is what you will follow to use Squirlz. It has pictures of
each step.

58. Click on the green envelope, locate where you saved your background jpeg and click on it. Load
your jpeg into Squirlz.

59. Click on the outline and then click on begin.

60. Outline around all the water and then when you are finished, right click once.

61. Click on outline again and then click on smooth.

62. Click on the red Y.

63. It will bring up a new window. Check rain/snow and ring ripples. Click Okay.

64. Click on the yellow arrow to check your animation. Click on the yellow arrow again to stop
your animation.

65. To customize the ripples click on the rings.

66. It will bring up a new window where you can customize your rings. These are the settings I
used but you can customize and experiment until you get the effect you want. Settings - No. of
Ripples - 28, Ripple Height - 50, Ripple Width - 6, Ripple Speed - 50, Ripple Decay - 2, No of
Crests - 2, Perspective - 50, Blur - 0, Texture - 0, Transparency - 0, Wave Contrast - 50. Close.

67. To customize the rain click on the rain.

68. It will bring up a new window where you can customize your rain. These are the settings I
used but you can customize and experiment until you get the effect you want. Settings - No. of
Raindrops/Snowflakes - 2002, Length - 74, Brightness - 180, Softness - 100, Depth of Field - 10,
Width - 2, Speed - 1, Transparency - 50, Direction Variation - 0, Direction - 214. Close

69. Click on the yellow arrow to check your animation. Click on the yellow arrow again to stop
your animation.

70. Once you are satisfied with your animation click on gif.

71. A new window will open up. Click on okay.

72. Choose a name for your animation and click on save.

73. Another new window will pop up. Do not change the frame rate. Click on okay.

74. Another window will pop up. Let it build your animation.

75. The final window will pop up once the animation is built. Click on okay. You are
finished with the Squirlz program.

76. Open up your Animation Shop program and bring up your saved animation from the
Squirlz program.

77. Go back into PSP and in your layers palette highlight your merged layer above your background
layer. Edit and copy your merged layer and go back into your animation shop.

78. Click on edit, scroll down and select all.

79. Click on edit, Scroll down to propagate paste and then scroll up to paste into selected frame.
Left click on your mouse once to hold the paste in place.

80. To check on your animation click on the little filmstrip. Close your animation when you are done.

81. Click on animation scroll down and click on cull animation.

82. A new window will come up. It should say remove 1 frame for every 2 frames, 20 candidate
frames, 10 frames will be removed by this operation, 10 frames will remain after this operation.
Click on okay.

83. To check on your animation click on the little filmstrip. Close your animation when you are done.

84. To slow down your animation, click on animation and scroll down to frame properties.

85. A new window will pop up. For this tut I chose a setting of 30 but you can set this wherever
you would like it to be. Click on okay when you are done.

86. Check your animation again with the little filmstrip.

87. Once you are satisfied with your animation, go to file, scroll down to save as and click on it.

88. Name your animation and click on save. I will usually add something to the name so I don't
replace the animation saved from Squirlz just in case.

89. A new window will pop up. Click on next.

90. A new window will pop up. Click on next.

91. A new window will pop up. Click on next.

92. A new window will pop up. Click on finish. make sure you pay attention to the optimized file
size because yahoo will not allow stationary or files larger than 1 mb.

93. If you need to make your optimized file smaller still, you will need to repeat steps 81 through
92 again.

94. If you are finally satisfied with the outcome, you are finished in your Animation Shop.

95. You are now all done.

 

Credits
 
 
Mists by Sabrina Buck Graphics
 
Mists & Tubes by Suzi Sgai - ArtInfinity Tubes
 
Song Credit
Song is Talking To Myself by Patricia Conroy.

Created March 13, 2007

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© Sabrina Buck Graphics 2005 - 2008. All Rights Reserved.