Animation TUT (Beginners)

[Eclipse]

Okay, shortythugsta's tut disappeared, and considering he made me what i am today, i shall make this in his honor.

1.) Ok n00bs, listen up, this is what you do.
First, make sure you download adobe photoshop, go to www.adobe.com and download the free trial of photoshop CS2, you will only have it for 30 days, but there are ways to work around this

2.) Anyways, once you download photoshop, the next step---is a sprite sheet, sprite sheets are needed to make animations, so get one. XD. this is the one i shall be using today http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ries/sora2.gif

3.) open up photoshop and click file>>new... at the top. select your sig dimensions....i use 350x150 almost all the time. some people think that's big, but i like it. But for now, let's just use 200x100. it should look like this http://www.files.bz/files/3294/blah.bmp

4.) once it's made, open up your sprite sheet click file>>open and open it up.

5.) now, take out one single picture of the sprite (basically just pick one of those sora's) and take the rectangular lasso in the toolbox on the side and lasso around the sprite you pick, once it is selected, hold control + c on your keyboard to copy that....then go back to your 200x100 document, and paste sora there. it should look like this

6.)I want to explain something before we get down to the good stuff, the little box to the bottom right is your layer selection box, it has the layers that you have, right now you should have a background layer, and the layer with the sora sprite on it. the eyes next to them represent if they are visible, if you want a layer to be invisible, just click the eye to get rid of it/or click it again to make it appear. if you make the background layer invisible you will notice that sora has a white background, that's becasue you copied him from the sprite sheet with the white background. we want to get rid of that white background behind him, so grab the magic eraser. to do this click and hold on the icon that is 6 icons down from the first column...it looks like an eraser...if you drag your mouse to the side you will see there are eraser options, choose the one that says magic eraser. Take the eraser and point it at the white background to get rid of it

7.) now you have a sora sprite, but we wanna make it move. grab another sprite on your sprite sheet.....and copy and paste it on the 200x100 document like the other one, and put the layer should appear on top of your old one. take the magic eraser and erase the background like before. do this repeatedly with sprites until you have let's say sora swinging his keyblade....or sora walking...with each sprite frame representing a split second of movement. it should look pretty weird, with all the sora layers behind the current one. be sure to line the layers up with eachother!! or it could get pretty jumpy. this is what it should look like
now you want to put these frames together to make it one image that moves...

8.) you need to transfer your file to adobe imageready. don't worry, you get this permanent, and free program once you download photoshop. click the icon at the bottom of the tooblox on the right that has a piece of paper with an arrow pointing to a feather. if you hold your mouse over it it should say "edit in imageready"...click that

9.) now that we are in imageready it looks like photoshop, but there is a weird box at the bottom. that's where you make the frames of your animation...the little split seconds of movement...go to the frame box where it says frame 1 i think, and click the little post it note at the bottom near the trashcan. that will make a new frame....make one for every layer you have. for every frame, choose which layers you want appearing. it should look like this http://www.files.bz/files/3294/blah4.bmp. if you want to change the speed at which the frames change...click on the little thing under the frame that says 0 sec. and adjust it to how long you want the frame to appear. i always use 0.1 sec. cuz that is a good interval.

10.) if you click the litte play button..iti should play it, and that is how an animation looks like.

11.) at the top click file save as..to save your project. but to save it as an image...one that you can upload to the internet for everyone to see, you have to click save optimized as....and save it. =D it will be a GIF which is used for animations.

12.) now go to www.imageshack.us or www.photobucket.com to upload your image to the internet, it should look like this in the end http://www.files.bz/files/3294/test.gif

13.) now show your animation off to the world!! once your skills improve, and you get the hang of this, you will be able to do more things. one more tip though..if you want to merge more than one layer to make it ONE layer, in photoshop right click the layer and click merge visible and it will merge any visible layers into one. Experiment around with effects and things...if you click on liquify in the filter option...you can make a ripple effect....or a gaussian blurr will blur the screen...and framenting under pixelate will make things break up. hope this helps!! this is for all the n00bs out there, use it well!! =D

[*twilight_riku*]

well shortys was effects ... STO was the one that made the beginners thread

[Eclipse]

oh ........ but shorty got me started anyway. XD

[Hiei-chan]

thanx twilightsoulkey this helped a lot