Basic Animation

ok another tutorial on how to make a basic animation...this is good for people who want to get to know the usage of Image Ready or want to add some animations to their signatures. In this tutorial we will be adding a shine effect to a text layer (it can be used for other things too...like visors, glasses, swords or anything, but for those it has some different steps)

1.) open up the signature you want to add the animation to you text with. This is the one i made to demonstrate this tut.



2.) once you have your text, you need to have the layer "rasterized" for this to work, you can do this by right-clicking the text layer and selecting "rasterize layer" if you are using CS2 then you need to right click -> group into smart objects, then right click again -> rasterize layer. In the above image the text layer has already been rasterized, and the text layer above it is my backup (also made not visible)

Note: once this layer is rasterized you cannot change the text again, that is why i made a backup of the text layer before hand.

3.) with the new rasterized layer you then create a new layer and then you need to create a basic gradient, make sure your colors are set up correctly for this (so you dont end up with a black gradient instead of a white one) make sure the gradient layer is above the rasterized text layer.



4.) with the gradient layer positions above the text layer, you then select the gradient layer and press ctrl+g to group it with the text layer below it (if you are using CS2, then you need to use ctrl+alt+g) then change the blending mode of the graadient layer to "lighten" (the blending mode is the drop down option right beside the opacity drop down option in the layer window) then you can move the gradient around and you will notice the black has disappeared and the gradient only appears on the text!



This is the last step you need to do in photoshop, we now need to transfer over to Image Ready for the final stages, you can do this by clicking the button at the bottom of your tool pallete (the button looks like a document with an arrow pointing to another document with some feathers or something on it)

5.) once in Image Ready you can now easily animate the signature with the new glare/shine effect. Take the gradient layer and position it on the far left of the text (make sure it isnt on the text, make it just out of sight), once the gradient is out of sight on the left side, then click the "duplicate frame" button in the frames window (i have my cursor over it in the next picutre)



6.) now you should have 2 frames in the frame window, what you will need to do is change the second frame you created to this:

With the second frame you need to select the gradient layer and move it to the right side this time also making it so the gradient is out of sight, then you simply press the "tween" button in order to finish the animation, set the number of frames to whatever you want (i say somewhere from 10 - 20) and then select ok, this will then create several frames in between the 2 original frames you have that move the gradient for you to create the animation.



Then you can press the play button in the frames window to see what the animation looks like, that way you can find out if you need more or less frames. Then you simply go file -> save optomized as... and save it and your done!! here is my final result:



i also stated there was more steps when doing the visors etc of graphics, and i am going to explain that now.

in order for you to provide an animation like this to only a specific postion (the visor for example) you need to use your selection tool or in some cases the magic wand tool to select ONLY the area you want animated, you then copy that and paste it as a new layer, then you group the gradient layer with that layer using the ctrl+alt+g so that only the visor shines and not the rest of teh signature.

i am also going to state another simple use for this animation type, which does not require you to make a gradient or anything, simply when in image ready set the opacity of your text layer to 0 for the first frame and on the second frame make the opacity 100, then tween....once tweened you then create a duplicate of the 100 opacity layer and make the copied layer back to 0 opacity and tween again, with this it will create a fade effect for text, first tween makes the text fade in, the second makes it fade back to 0, then the animation restarts again. (look at my red/disturbed signature because the face in the hood uses that simple animation)

wow kool guide.....

i luv u man imma make this happen

ok umm 3 problems 1 i cant get my name str8 cuz its upside down n backwards 2 do u think i can get a white background into transparant as u can c it aint transparent 3 i wanna make it shiney lol plz help

ya thx ill work on it rite now c ppl told me to add text after everytin was made so it dont come upside down n backwards well thx anyways man imma c if it works with wat u told me

when i try to make a gradient, it just covers the whole layer, wtf?

oh yeah, shit, lol.
the sig i was making was a different color gradient to yours, i got kinda confused.
anyways, totally awesome effect.

edit: there, done.

how do you get those text? in gravity

It won;t move man -

WHICH VERSION ON photoshop do u have *sry caps on* i got cs2 cuz mine looks diff from urs