Tutorial for the Fishing Eagle

Tessa's Tutorial© by Tessa

Done by Tessa

Needed: Paint Shop Pro , I did this with Paint Shop Pro9 but

Supplies here, Fishing.zip

Step 1: Open a 500 x 500 image in PSP. Open the scenery image in your PSP and delete the watermark layer Duplicate *shift D* the remaining picture and close the original. You should have one layer of the scenery. Copy this picture and paste as new layer on your 500 x 500 new image.

Step 2: Use the “Rectangle” or “Free Hand” selection tool and select the lake area. Be careful not to go to close to shore line. Copy and re-paste as a new layer (mine was pasted 4 times) until your graphic has all lake towards the bottom. Use your smudge tool and smudge the Mountains that are showing in your lake area down into the lake more to make a longer reflection in the lake area. Smudge straight down. When you do the following step your mountains should reflect into the lake area with the jiggle effect on them. Watch your preview box. While it is selected go to Eye Candy and choose jiggle. Play with the jiggle settings until you’re happy with the jiggle effect and reflection of the mountains in the water. You’re looking for a softer smoother jiggle if you want the reflection effects to show up better. Once your jiggle is satisfactory DESELECT and then you’re going to duplicate this background layer 21 times or so if you want the animation as I have it. Less if you want less, more if you’re doing a bigger more elaborate graphic. It should look something like this. SAVE

Step 3: Open your Eagle pictures in your PSP and decide on which ones you want to use. There are 2 different colors and different angles of flying and swooping etc. Remember you will be rotating and flipping the images as well. For my graphic I chose the darker gray / black eagles. Close out the eagles you’re not going to use. If you want the tubes save them for your future use. Think for a couple of minutes on your motion that you would like in your animation. Choose the eagles that will fit your imagined fishing scene.

Step 4: Now you should have roughly 21 background layers to work with. Close them all except layer 1. Take the smaller eagle and start on the bottom layer (Layer 1). Size your eagle so it’s fairly small in one of the corners of your picture. Resize the eagle if necessary. When you’re satisfied with the placement close off the background layer. Highlight your eagle layer and duplicate this layer once. Highlight your duplicate of this layer and go to Image Mirror then image Flip. It should look opposite of the eagle you started with. If not, Flip and Mirror until it does. You may also have to rotate it to make it reflect right at this point. Start with a low rotate free rotate # like 15. Rotate as necessary. Open the background layer. Place the mirrored flipped eagle underneath the original eagle in the lake are below it. Right click on the 2nd eagle layer and go to properties. Make the opacity around 43 %. This should make the eagle appear to reflect on the lake. See image Palette image. When satisfied with placement Merge Visible then Label LAYER 1

Step 5: Take the same eagle picture used in Step 4 and duplicate it 4-6 times. Repeat the Steps in 4 above for these 4 to 6 layers. Resize your graphics as needed for your placements of your eagles. Bring each eagle forward just a bit in each picture to make it look like its flying at you. When you have each of these layers merged into one layer apiece, close them all off.

Step 6: Open a new background layer. At this point you should have 4-6 Layers labled 1-6. Label this new background as Layer 7. Open your next progressive eagle picture. Mine is a different wing span. make this eagle reflect on each of the layers you need it on and merge them one by one as you did on the first eagle. Continue on this way until you are happy with the number of frames and eagle pictures.  

Step 7: The object is to make the eagle fly and swoop down to pick the fish out of the water. When you get to the last eagle down by the water with his claws you should have one frame left to add the fish coming out of the water too. Add this tube and resize to the eagle’s claws according to your sizing in the graphic. When you are all done your palette should look something like this. Your fish layer will also be reflected before you merge. If you look close at the bottom of this graphic you can just barely see the fish reflection.

add your name and watermark