It's SNOWING!   Animated snowflakes

Needed:
Paintshop Pro
Animation Shop

Requirements:
Completed Snowflake Tutorial by Pracken
Master Image saved from Snowflake Background Tut

This is a continuance of the Snowflake Background Tile tutorial. I am writing this at Pracken's request after I showed her the animation I did using her snowflake tut as a spring board.

Follow the Snowflake Background Tutorial until you have an arrangement of snowflakes on one layer and your gradient background layer. Save your work as master.pspimage.

Duplicate (Shift+D) the master image. Close your master and work from the duplicate image. You can modify the master in a number of ways later.

Make a new folder on your desktop for easy access. Name it Snowflake. You will make 5 PSP images to open in Animation Shop. Save your individual images in your new folder.

Open your History Palette by pressing F3. You will use it frequently to undo Merge Visible commands.

To create the first image, highlight the snowflake layer. Use the mover tool to drag the snowflakes toward the top of the canvas, so that part of the top snowflake is cut off at the top of the canvas.

Layers > Merge > Merge Visible

Save As: snowflake1.psp (Animation Shop file)

Look at your history palette and click on the eye next to Merge Visible to undo the merge.

Use your mover tool to drag the visible snowflakes down about 1/5 of the canvas height so there is a star's width of blank space at the top.

Layers > Merge > Merge Visible

Save as: snowflake2.psp

History palette > Undo Merge

Use the mover tool again to lower the snowflake layer on the canvas.

Layer > Duplicate.

Drag the top layer toward the top of the canvas, so that only the bottom flakes are visible and not overlapping the flakes in the layer below it.

You can move each slightly left or right so that the snowflakes aren't falling in a straight line as they move down the canvas.

Layers > Merge > Merge Visible

Save as: snowflake3.psp

History palette > Undo Merge

Move your two layers down again so the uppermost snowflakes on the bottom layer are visible and the snowflakes of the top layer are 3/4's or more in your view.

Layers > Merge > Merge Visible

Save as: snowflake4.psp

History palette > Undo Merge

Again, move both snowflake layers toward the bottom of the canvas. On the bottom layer, leave only the top half of the uppermost snowflake showing. Drag the snowflakes on the top layer down so that most of the flakes are in view.

Layers > Merge > Merge Visible

Save as: snowflake5.psp

Open Animation Shop

File > Animation Wizard
This is what you will see.

Select Same Size as the first image frame.
Click Next.

Screen Two:
Select Transparent. Click Next.

Screen Three:
Select Upper Left Corner and With the Canvas Color. Next.

Screen Four:
Select Yes, Repeat the Animation Indefinitely.
In the length of time box: 30 Next.

Screen Five:

Click on Add Image and browse to the folder where you saved your psp files. Double-click on snowflake1.psp. Repeat "Add Image" until you have all five psp images listed. (If you try to select them all at once, AniShop will load them out of order. You will have to rearrange the images so that they are listed in sequence using the Move Up/Move Down Buttons.

Screen Six. Click Finish.

Your images will open in Animation shop in a long file of linked frames.

View > Animation
This opens another window so you can see what your animation looks like with these settings.

View > Onionskin > Settings
Set your Onionskin to these settings.

Click OK.

View > Onionskin > Enabled.
Onionskin creates ghosts of the images in transition to make a smoother moving animation.

View > Preview in Web Browser

Screen One - Select the following settings:

Format: Animated Gif
Choose your webbrowser if you have multiple browsers to pick from.
Pick a background color. It doesn't matter what background color you pick. There are no transparencies in this ani.
Leave the rest of the settings the way they are.

Screen Two:

Slide the Quality vs Size slider all the way to the top.

Click Customize

Tab One:
Number of Colors: 255
Create Palette By: Optimized Octree
Reduce Colors By: Error Diffusion

Tab Two:
Select All the Options

Click OK to go back to Screen Two and Click Next.

Click Next through the rest of the screens to Finish.

Your webbrowser will open showing your animated gif. It will show you the file size and download times on different modem connections.

Return to Animation Shop and close the Preview in Webbrowser window box.

If you are satisfied with your animation, click save your animation as a gif file.

Enjoy your gently falling snow. I'd love to see the results.

vetch