Autumn Leaves

Supplies Needed

Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop

Tube of choice . I used a lovely tube from the work of Lindsey Cormier. Lindsey's work is licensed through MPT and Licenses and Tubes may be purchased here .

Leaf tubes. My tube came with leaves as a separate layer. Alternately you can use the leaves that come with your Paint Shop Pro.

Gabee Mask 13 . Thanks for sharing your gorgeous masks Gabee. You can download the mask Here

Font of choice. I used Constanza which is a pay font, but any nice script font would look good.

Remember to save your work often as you go through the tutorial, and if you want to name your layers please do so. The only layers I will number in the tutorial are the layers which will form the animation.

Open a new image 600 x 600 pixels at 72dpi resolution. We will crop and resize later. Flood fill this layer white. Add a new raster layer and flood fill with a nice autumn colour from your tube. I used #A65636. Find your Gabee Mask 13 and apply:-

Apply the mask and then Merge Group. Then go to Effects, Texture Weave with the following settings:-

Gap Size 1, Width 5, Opacity 2, Weave and Gap Colour a lighter shade of your mask colour, fill gaps ticked.

You should now have something like this:-

Add your tube as a new layer and resize and position as required. Add a drop shadow of choice. I used Eye Candy 5 Impact at the Drop Shadow Lowest Settings.

Duplicate your tube layer, and on the original add a Motion Blur with the following settings:-

Angle 47, Strength 100. Change the Blend Mode of this layer to Overlay, or one which matches your tube best. Move this layer slightly to the right so it looks like your tube has just moved into its position.

Now we are going to add the leaves. This will be done on several layer so that we can get the animated effect of the leaves falling.

Copy and paste your first set of leaves and position them at the top left of the mask, between the mask layer and the bottom tube layer. Now duplicate the layer and move the leaves so that they are slightly lower and to the right. Continue duplicating and positioning until you have something like this:-

Mine took 5 layers to get to the above look. Close off all the leaf layers apart from your first one.Your layers palette should now look something like this:-

Now rename the leaf layer 1 -5 (0r whatever your last number is) from the bottom up .

Add your name with your font of choice and apply a drop shadow . I used the same drop shadow as I did on my tube.

Now crop any excess white from your image and resize to suit your needs. remember to sharpen your layers after resizing to help maintain the pixel quality.

Now add your copyright and any license number and your taggers mark.

At this point if you haven't saved your image as you went along, save it now as a psp image in layers so that if you wish to add further names to the tag you can come back to it.

We are now ready to animate the tag.

With your background layer active, right click on your image and Copy Merged:-

Take your image to Animation Shop and Paste As a new Image by right clicking into the workspace.

Go back to Paintshop, close off layer 1 and open Layer 2. take this to Animation Shop, Right click into your first frame and then Past After Current Frame:-

Continue to paste each of your layers into animation Shop in this way until all your leaf layers have been added.

Now click into Frame 1 press Ctrl A to select all frames, then right click and choose Frame Properties. Change the Display Time to 25:-

Click into the last frame to select just that frame and change the Frame Properties of that frame to 100.

Now run your Optimization Wizard and save your file as a gif.

If you have any queries on this tutorial , please contact me. I would also love to see your results.

This Tutorial was written in July 2010 by Helen Peachey, and the concept of the tutorial is copyrighted.
Please feel free to LINK to the tutorial and/or print it out for your personal use,
but please do not copy it in any way to put online, pass out or re-write without permission.
The image you create using this tutorial is for you to do what you wish except for monetary gains or for merchandising.
© Peachies Designs and Tutorials. Any Resemblance to another tutorial is purely coincidental.