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| Jiggle-Bouncing Ball Animation Tutorial with PSP7 This tutorial will focus on creating an animation involving a bouncing ball using Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop.
Paint Shop Pro and Animation must work hand in hand to create/edit animations. We use Paint Shop Pro to create the foundation of an animation (or the blue print of an animation as I call it  ). Animation Shop serves to be the "playground" where we build the animation into in it's final form.
I do expect users whom are reading this tutorial to have some experience with these programs and has a good understanding as to how these programs work, as well as some fundamentals on how to create/edit animations. (I will, however, guide you through some of the process to reassure that you are on the right track).
And I also expect you to exercise patience Patience is Key!
Let's fire up Paint Shop Pro!
Begin by creating a perspective ball. Here I have created one at 104x104.
In my opinion, the ball at this size would suffice throughout the entire exercise. You may choose a different size if you so wish. Once you have completed creating a rather simple ball, go ahead and copy it. This serves to be your reference.
Open a new window at 600x600 with a White Background. (I start with a large window due to the fact that I am more comfortable having more space to around with).
Here we going forth with a 6 frame drop of the ball.
Go ahead and paste your copied ball as a new layer 6 times onto the your new window.
Name your layers. We are going to work with a rather large number of layers in this exercise. Being able to name and identify your layers would help prevent confusion as to what each layer contains.
Begin by lining up the balls as shown in the image below:
Does this image look familiar? Does the word "Physics" come into mind? Yes, the image you see above (the image you are now creating) is a visual description of a falling object. When an object falls, it accelerates in the process. Notice how the ball separates farther and farther apart in each layer. As you can see, I am going forth with some realism in the construction of the animation. In this case, the animation is definitely going to consist of some drop shadows to define the location of the ball.
Create a new layer above the white background and name it "manual drop shadow." Be certain that this layer is highlighted in your layers palette. Now with the selection tool (use ellipse as the selection type), and create an elliptical selection just as the base of the bottom ball (as shown in the image below):
Make use of good judgement to determine how large you want the selection to be. In this particular image, I have dragged out a selection at a size of 150x30
Feather the selection to 1 pixel. Now select the Flood Fill tool, choose Black (R:0 B:0 G:0) as the foreground/background color (doesn't matter which). With blend mode and match mode both set to Normal and with Opacity set to 100%, go on and flood fill the elliptical selection.
Your image should look like this:
As you can see, we have created a unique drop shadow for the ball. This is how it's done manually (hence the name of the layer ).
Now go on duplicate the "manual drop shadow" layer 4 times. Set the opacity of the these layers to 80%, 60%, 40%, and 20% respectively.
Now go to your resize menu and un-check "Resize all layers."
We are only going to resize individual layers. Otherwise, the entire image would be resized.
Now I ask of you to resize each of the duplicated layers of the shadow to 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% of their original size in correspondence with the set opacities of those layers.
Meaning, resize the layer that was set at 80% opacity to 80% of it's size.
Resize the layer set at 60% to 60% of it's size and e.t.c.
Your layers palette should look something like this:
Looks good so far? Cool!
We have now completed the foundation of the animation.
Now it's time to build the animation in our playground
Go on and open Animation Shop.
What we are going to do now is export our work onto animation simply by copying and pasting.
Let's begin. (I'll be working backwards a tab bit, so bear with me)
In Paint Shop Pro, go to your layers palette and turn off all active layers except your background, the "Bottom Ball - Bottom" and the Full Opaque elliptical drop shadow.
Note: Background remains active throughout this tutorial.
Both your design and layers palette should look something like this:
Cool so far? Great
Now go to Edit and click Copy Merged.
What this does is copy your design to your clipboard as if the overall image was merged all together.
Now flip into Animation Shop. Paste the copied image As a new animation in Animation Shop.
All right! We got one frame in there Let's keep to it! 
Now flip back into PSP. In your layers palette, turn off both the full opaque drop shadow layer and the bottom most ball layer. Now activate the next shadow layer that was set at 80% and the layer of the ball that is second closest to the ground.
Both your layers palette and design should look like this:
Now Copy Merge again and paste as the Next Frame in the current animation in Animation Shop.
Now flip back to PSP. Once again, turn off your all your layers except for the background. And activate the next shadow layer with the opacity set at 60% and the ball layer that is 3rd closest to the ground.
Once again, both your layers palette and image should look like this:
So far so good? Awesome
Now Copy Merge the image and paste it after the second frame in Animation Shop. (By now, you should get into some sort of rhythm in the process. Since you are basically going back and forth between the applications, changing layers, and copying and pasting).
Now flip back into PSP and turn off the current shadow and ball layers. Activate the next drop shadow layer (Opacity 40%) and the ball layer that is 4th closest to the ground.
Both layers palette and image should like this:
Everything's OK? Cool Copy Merge again and paste the image as the next frame in Animation Shop.
Flipping back into PSP, turn off both current ball and shadow layers. Activate the next shadow layer (20% opacity) and the ball layer 5th closest to the ground.
Both Layer palette and image should look like this:
Copy Merge the image and paste it as the next frame in Animation Shop.
Flip back into PSP. Turn off current ball and shadow layers. Hmmm we don't have anymore drop shadow layers to turn off. That's great! We're only left with the ball layer which is our "Top" ball Go ahead and activate that layer.
And Copy Merge and paste it as the next frame in Animation Shop.
OK, we are now going to edit the animation just a tad bit. Due to the fact that I worked backwards in the process of building the animation, the animation currently is in a backward sequence as well in that the ball would seem to "fall" upwards instead of downwards (Although, this won't be a factor at all when the animation is totally complete. For now we're just making things easier). Select the entire animation and reverse the order of the frames. (The function is called Reverse Frames under "Animation." The shortcut key is Shift+R).
Now your animation should look like this.
Looks like it's normal now does it? Cool
Now our next mission is to create that little bounce effect you often see in cartoons.
Lets get to it!
Flip back into PSP and turn off the current ball layer. Reactivate the Full Opaque Drop Shadow layer and the ball layer that is on the ground. Make sure the specific ball layer is highlight in the layers palette. Select the Deformation tool.
Nodes are now placed upon the ball as shown below:
Go ahead and drag the top sided node downward to make the ball squished. Then Apply the changes.
Your image should look like this:
Now Copy Merge and paste as the next frame in Animation.
So far so good? Cool
Flip back into PSP and undo the edit from the use of the deformation tool. Click the Deformation tool again and drag the top sided node downward much more farther than your the first time you dragged it.
It should look something like this, far more squished then your first one.
Cool Now Copy Merge again and paste as the next frame in Animation Shop.
In animation shop, go on and duplicate frame #6 (Where the ball is in contact with the ground)
And drag the duplicated frame end the end of the animated sequence. (Or you can also just copy frame #6 and just past after frame #8).
Now flip back into PSP and turn off current ball and shadow layer. Reactivate the shadow layer set at 80% and the ball layer that is 2nd closest to the ground. Make sure the specific ball layer is highlight in the layers palette. Click on the Deformation tool.
And drag the bottom sided node downward far enough to warp the ball. And Apply the changes
Now Copy Merge and paste it as the next frame in animation shop.
Now flip back into PSP (are you getting tired of hearing that? ) and turn off the current ball and shadow layer. Reactivate the shadow layer set at 40% and the ball layer that is 3rd closest to the ground. Click the Deformation tool.
And drag the bottom sided node downward slightly.
Now Copy Merge and paste as the next frame in animation shop.
We are pretty much near the end. Instead of going back into PSP and copy paste to finish off the animation (which you are free to do so), it'd be easier and quicker to just scroll back at the beginning of the animation and copy/paste the needed frames.
Scroll the animation back to the beginning. Select frames 1-3 and copy it to your clipboard.
Paste these frames at the end of the animation.
It's a tad bit out of order isn't it? Not a problem.
As these three frames are still selected, reverse the order of the frames. That should pretty much fix it all up
You are now Done! From here you can edit the animation to your desire. Resize it, chop it, e.t.c Do whatever you want with it
Overall, this is what your end result should look like.
Total Time Taken to complete the project: 7 minutes, 24 seconds.
It should take you at least 5-20 minutes to get the job done. And it shouldn't take more than 30 minutes (unless you are spicing things up a bit in process or something ).
This concludes the Jiggle-Bouncing Ball Animation Tutorial.
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•·.·´¯`·.·•Meteor Dive•·.·´¯`·.·•
[text was edited by author 2002-09-13 18:43:04] | |
| WoW!!! Excellent tutorial, I'm so glad I saw it in the forum. I would have really hated to miss this one. So how did I do? Um, took me a little bit longer, about 25 minutes..
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thegrinch "the price of mortality is death." | |
| said by thegrinch:
WoW!!! Excellent tutorial, I'm so glad I saw it in the forum. I would have really hated to miss this one. So how did I do? Um, took me a little bit longer, about 25 minutes..
Excellent Job Grinch! Looks Perfect! It does take time. Patience is key when it comes to creating art, in my opinion at least
Once again, a job well done Grinch
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•·.·´¯`·.·•Meteor Dive•·.·´¯`·.·• | |
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