Make Blinkies with those New Shaeps

Flower Blinkie

Xero Sparkle Plugins HERE Scroll down a little and you will find it in the Single Plugins New Stuff and Updates.

A copy of PhotoImpact 30 day Free Trial

I used PhotoImpact 12 for this Tutorial.

After you have download the Flower Parts for the Blinkie, open the zip folder and copy or extract to a folder on your desktop.

You can use your own shapes that you make from my Blue Node Tutorial HERE

Open you PhotoImpact Programme.

This is really going to be 2 tuts in one. First part will deal with the blinkie and the second part with the shadow.

OK lets get started and don't forget to save often!!

Open the Flower Blinkie parts in your PI.

Hold down Ctrl and hit D Close off your original image. This is what your flower head part will look like.

The colour on the top 3 shape layers can be changed by going to Edit/Fill.

The next 4 flower head parts underneath the top 3 shape layers, can also have there colour changed by clicking on the Path Drawing Tool, then the colour box. At this stage they are also editable.

You will also note that the bottom 3 layers are slightly different shades of the same colour, this is how we achieve the blink. So if you do change the colour on these 3 layers, make them shades of the same colour that you have changed to.

Now we are going to deal with the top 3 shape layers.

Click on the very top layer and goto Effects/xero/Sparkles. Change the Main colour and the Highlights to white. Click on the box next to the Density Control and type 29. Click OK.

Click on the next layer down same as above, click on the little arrow or type 30 in the Density box. Click OK.

Next layer down same as above only change the number in the box to 31.

Save as a UFO.

Part 2

The Funky Shadow

Select the bottom flower head shape, right-click/Shadow and use these settings

Click OK.

Right-click/Split Shadow.

Goto your Layer Palette and select the shadow that has just been split from your image. Tap the right arrow on your key board a couple of times to move it out a bit.

This is entirely up to you where you have your shadow.

Goto your EP and click on fill/Gradient. I used G113 however there is a whole heap of fun in here with these, so play away and you will see what looks right for your image.

Give your flower stalk and pot plant a shadow as well; but be cautious about how far out from the image you have your shadow.

Re-save as a UFO with a slightly different file name. The reason for saving it with a new name is so that you can go back to your original file, if you want to change the colour or shape etc.

Open your GA and locate the file that you have just saved.

Make about 7 frames and arrange them like the screenshot below.

Darkest green shape open in frames 1, 5, 6 and 7.

Lightest coloured green shape open on frames 2 and 3.

Middle coloured green shape open on frame 4.

Now with the red xero shapes, frames 1 and 2 have the bottom red layer shape open.

Frames 3, 4 and 5 have the top red xero layer shape open.

Frames 6 and 7 have the middle red xero layer open.

Don't forget to close off the eyes of the green layers that are not being used in each frame this helps to lighten the kb's when you optimize your animation.

Frame 3 also has the eye of the bright yellow single layer closed off, this adds extra blink.

Select all the frames in your storyboard, then right-click and goto Frame Properties. Give your frames a speed value of 12.

Click on the preview tab to view your animation, if you are happy with it, save as a gif file. If not, click on your Edit tab and play with it some more.

This is how my blinkie is arranged. However it is entirely up to you on how you would like your blinkie to blink.

Below are examples of what I have done.

On both these flower-heads, I have changed the object property of the green layer in frame 3 to Addition in the merge mode.

You will notice that both flash differently, this is because they each have different colour shadow.

This blinkie below was made from shapes that my friend Dia made from my tut.

I made the inside colour black and had some fun with the border colour. Now if you make a blinkie this way remember to convert to image otherwise you will lose the border colour when you take it to GA to animate.

Thank you Dia!!!

Dia has a wonderful tutorial site HERE

Hope you all have had fun.

Please feel free to print this tutorial out for your own personal use, but do not copy it in any way to put on-line, pass out, or re-write and claim as your own.

Any resemblance to any other tutorial like this, is not intentional and is purely coincidental.

This tutorial was written on the 18th November 2008 and is therefore

Website and web set Design

Also created

Edna Munn