Not your average chick tutorial

Supplies:
Paintshop Pro (I use V9)
Animation Shop
2 or 3 tubes of choice, mine are from art by ElectronicRainbow
and are used with permission, ER has not revoked previous permissions, she is just not giving out new ones.
Font of choice, mine is Peinaud
Dingfont Swish Buttons for the shape
Brushes of choice
dsb flux
Greg's Factory Output Filters Vol 1
You should have some working knowledge of PSP.

Open a blank canvas, 600x500px and floodfill with white.
Activate your text tool and find swish buttons, set your background colour to black, foreground to nil, create as vector. With text size 72 type in a lower case n, make a carriage return and type in another, repeat until you have 4 in all. Place to the left of your canvas and convert to raster layer. Duplicate that layer and move it to the right, clear of the first. Hide that layer, we'll get back to it. Duplicate the shapes on the left again and mirror them. Hide your white layer and merge the two outer shapes visible.

Unhide your white layer again. Make the layer you just merged active, selections/select all/float/defloat. Set your foreground to gradient and pick one that matches your tube colours. I set mine to linear, angle 135, repeats 2, invert checked. Flood fill your selections. Deselect. Add a dropshadow of V minus5, H minus5, opacity 57, blur 6.93, black.

Unhide the swirly layer you hid before, place it next to the left border, duplicate and mirror it. Hide all other layers and merge these two visible. Selections/select all/float/defloat, floodfill these selctions with the same gradient, I changed the angle to 45 and unchecked the invert. Deselect and add the same dropshadow as before. Change the opacity to 36. I then played with some filters. I used dsb flux bubbles with the default settings. And Greg's Factory Output Filters Vol 1, BlowOut, also the default setting. Have some fun with yours.

Add a new raster layer, and pick two colours that compliment your tubes. Load your brushes. The right click will give you the background colour, the left click will give you your foreground colour. Click all over with different brushes, try not to go beyond the limits of the outer swirls or the top or bottom, it will look chopped off. When you're happy, hide the layer with outer swirly shapes, rename it shape. Merge all other layers visible and move them to the bottom.

Now you can add your tubes, resize and place as you desire. Same dropshadow as above. Hide all other layers amd merge your tubes visible. You should now have 3 layers, resize to 75%, all layers checked. Canvas size 500x400. Add a new layer and send to the bottom, Floodfill with white. Selections/select all/modify/contract by 6, invert and floodfill with black. Selections/modify/expand by 3. Effects/ Art media effects/brushstrokes. I used the preset 'more sticks'.Hide the tubes and shape layer and merge the frame and background visible.

Make the bottom layer active and add credits to the artist and yourself. Also add any quotes you would like to have at the side. Merge those with the background layer only. Rename your layers: bottom one to bg, middle one should be shape and the top one top.
Duplicate all 3 layers twice. Hide all the layers but the one called shape, make that active.

Effects/dsb flux/bright noise, set to intensity 30 and mix. Click ok. Hide that layer. Unhide and make copy of shape active, Effects/dsb flux/bright noise, hit mix once and ok. Hide the layer.
Unhide and make copy 2 of shape active, Effects/dsb flux/bright noise, hit mix once and ok. Hide the layer.

Unhide bg, shape and top, merge visible, hide that layer.
Unhide copies bg, shape and top, merge visible, hide that layer.
Unhide 2nd copies bg, shape and top, merge visible.
Now would be a good time to save a template, just name it and save as a pspfile to your templates folder.

Make sure the top layer is active and select your text tool, create as vector.
Set your foreground to white, width 2, and your background to black. Place your name and convert to rasterlayer. Set the opacity to 74. Duplicate twice and merge each layer with one of the ones with your tubes as before. Unhide all layers and save as a psp7 compatible pspfile in your creations folder, no need to name it especially.

Open Animation Shop, and use the animation wizard to open your psp file. I set my speed to 14. If you want to adjust yours go to edit/select all and then animation/frame properties and change the number. The higher the number the slower the animation. Play it, like it, save it ;o)

This tutorial was created August 26, 2006 and is the sole property of ooh...babelicious. Similarity to other tutorials is purely coincidental. Do not copy this or any of my tutorials, or any part of my tutorials, to another site unless you have express permission from me to do so. If you want to share, send the URL, do not direct link or offer on your site. Give credit where credit is due. Do not script this tutorial and offer to others.