Hi there!
I've never posted to this community before, and I don't know if this is helpful or anybody has posted this same technique already, but I thought I'd give it a try. Also, english is not my first language, so please forgive me if anything in my description might sound strange ;)
I recently discovered some tricks to save a lot of time when making so-called "mini-movie icons" (which I did not invent or something, I just saw them on several journals and stole the idea like everyone else, hehe).
I use Paintshop Pro 6 to cut and edit my pictures, and Animation Shop to animate them.
Let's say you want to make a mini-movie icon with a certain base picture and a small animated part somewhere on that base. First, you'll have to select a background picture of course, complete with text or frame or whatever you want on it. Then, you'll have to make or find pictures or screencaps that will become your animation. If you make the caps yourself, you'll have to cut them all to the same size.
You do not have to resize them one by one! Just click the "Animation Wizard" in AnimationShop, select all the pics you want for the animated part, no matter what size they are; set them into the right order and make an animation out of it. Then resize the whole animation to whatever size you want by clicking "Animation" and then "Resize Animation", and all the frames will be resized.
Also, you do not have to make a combined pic of the base and every animation frame. Let's say your animation has 17 frames. Open your base picture as a new animation and duplicate the frame until you have 17 frames. I recommend you select the base pic, rightclick, choose "copy", then rightclick again and choose "paste as new frame". Now select both frames and do the whole procedure again. This way, the number of frames duplicates with every step and you'll have your 17 frames in no time.
You should now have two animations before you: one containing the moving part of the mini-movie icon, and the other containing the same number of frames, which are all filled with the base picture. Now you should select all frames in both animations. Then you click onto the first frame of the "moving part animation", and simply drag it into the first frame of the "base part animation". Drag it into the exact place where you want it, then let go - voila! You'll have base and mini animation neatly combined.
Now all that is left is to save the animation (if you have a lot of different frames or a big moving part you might have to reduce the quality to stay under the 40k limit).
Hope this was new and helpful to somebody! =)
I've never posted to this community before, and I don't know if this is helpful or anybody has posted this same technique already, but I thought I'd give it a try. Also, english is not my first language, so please forgive me if anything in my description might sound strange ;)
I recently discovered some tricks to save a lot of time when making so-called "mini-movie icons" (which I did not invent or something, I just saw them on several journals and stole the idea like everyone else, hehe).
I use Paintshop Pro 6 to cut and edit my pictures, and Animation Shop to animate them.
Let's say you want to make a mini-movie icon with a certain base picture and a small animated part somewhere on that base. First, you'll have to select a background picture of course, complete with text or frame or whatever you want on it. Then, you'll have to make or find pictures or screencaps that will become your animation. If you make the caps yourself, you'll have to cut them all to the same size.
You do not have to resize them one by one! Just click the "Animation Wizard" in AnimationShop, select all the pics you want for the animated part, no matter what size they are; set them into the right order and make an animation out of it. Then resize the whole animation to whatever size you want by clicking "Animation" and then "Resize Animation", and all the frames will be resized.
Also, you do not have to make a combined pic of the base and every animation frame. Let's say your animation has 17 frames. Open your base picture as a new animation and duplicate the frame until you have 17 frames. I recommend you select the base pic, rightclick, choose "copy", then rightclick again and choose "paste as new frame". Now select both frames and do the whole procedure again. This way, the number of frames duplicates with every step and you'll have your 17 frames in no time.
You should now have two animations before you: one containing the moving part of the mini-movie icon, and the other containing the same number of frames, which are all filled with the base picture. Now you should select all frames in both animations. Then you click onto the first frame of the "moving part animation", and simply drag it into the first frame of the "base part animation". Drag it into the exact place where you want it, then let go - voila! You'll have base and mini animation neatly combined.
Now all that is left is to save the animation (if you have a lot of different frames or a big moving part you might have to reduce the quality to stay under the 40k limit).
Hope this was new and helpful to somebody! =)