//PS: simple blinking animation
Here's a tutorial for a very simple blinking animation.
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Great for beginners that aren't very good/familiar with ImageReady yet ;)
Find and crop your base... sharpen (Filters ---> Sharpen ---> Sharpen) if you need to. This picture is of some Emily The Strange cats.
Add text/brushes of your choice.
Now, select a color that matches your subject's skin tone... here it's obviously just black because the cats are black. Use a small round brush to color out your subject's eyes. For an actual flesh and blood person, you might find it more difficult to make this look natural, but it's do-able.
Because there are multiple cats in this picture, I blacked out each cat's eyes in turn and saved each frame in ImageReady (open in ImageReady, hit "File," then "Save Optimised As" to save as an optimised file). MAKE SURE you save one frame of the eyes OPEN, as well. So, for this project, I have 4 frames: one with all the cats' eyes open, and one of each cat's eyes closed (blacked out).
Now for animation. Open all of your frames in ImageReady. The frame with the eyes open is going to be your base (first) frame. Select one of the other frames (I went with the cat in the middle), and hit the little black arrow on the side of your animation bar. A pop-up menu should appear. Select "Copy Frame." Now select your base frame (the one with the eyes open), and hit the arrow again, but this time, choose "Paste Frame" from the menu. Another pop-up will come up with a few different options. Choose "Paste After Selection." This will cause the frame with the cat's eyes closed to be pasted on the animation bar after the frame with the eyes open. Use this method to alternate between pasting one frame with the eyes open, then one with eyes closed, then open, then one with a different cat's eyes closed, etc.
This part is optional, but it mixes things up a bit. For the last cat (the one on the right), I pasted that frame once, then pasted one with eyes open, then pasted that same frame again. That way, I could make it look like that cat blinks twice in a row.
Below is a screenshot of the animation bar with all the frames posted as I wanted them to be. Notice how they alternate eyes open, eyes closed, etc.
Under each frame, you'll notice it says "0 sec." This is the time before the animation switches to the next frame. I don't want my cats to blink that fast, because it will just look like a blur and not like they're actually blinking. Also, I want them to have their eyes open longer than they're closed. So, I changed the time settings as follows: Frame 1 (2 seconds), Frame 2 (0.1 second), Frame 3 (2 seconds), Frame 4 (0.1 second), Frame 5 (1 second), Frame 6 (0.1 second), Frame 7 (0.2 second), and Frame 8 (0.1 second).
If you look at the screenshot above, you'll see the times on each frame as I had them set. Also, this is important: in the bottom left-hand corner, there's another little pop-down menu which determines how many times the animation will loop. MAKE SURE it says "Forever" and not "Once." If it says "once," then the animation will only play once, and then won't play again. That would be sad.
And here it is, the finished product. Have some fun :)
Great for beginners that aren't very good/familiar with ImageReady yet ;)
Find and crop your base... sharpen (Filters ---> Sharpen ---> Sharpen) if you need to. This picture is of some Emily The Strange cats.
Add text/brushes of your choice.
Now, select a color that matches your subject's skin tone... here it's obviously just black because the cats are black. Use a small round brush to color out your subject's eyes. For an actual flesh and blood person, you might find it more difficult to make this look natural, but it's do-able.
Because there are multiple cats in this picture, I blacked out each cat's eyes in turn and saved each frame in ImageReady (open in ImageReady, hit "File," then "Save Optimised As" to save as an optimised file). MAKE SURE you save one frame of the eyes OPEN, as well. So, for this project, I have 4 frames: one with all the cats' eyes open, and one of each cat's eyes closed (blacked out).
Now for animation. Open all of your frames in ImageReady. The frame with the eyes open is going to be your base (first) frame. Select one of the other frames (I went with the cat in the middle), and hit the little black arrow on the side of your animation bar. A pop-up menu should appear. Select "Copy Frame." Now select your base frame (the one with the eyes open), and hit the arrow again, but this time, choose "Paste Frame" from the menu. Another pop-up will come up with a few different options. Choose "Paste After Selection." This will cause the frame with the cat's eyes closed to be pasted on the animation bar after the frame with the eyes open. Use this method to alternate between pasting one frame with the eyes open, then one with eyes closed, then open, then one with a different cat's eyes closed, etc.
This part is optional, but it mixes things up a bit. For the last cat (the one on the right), I pasted that frame once, then pasted one with eyes open, then pasted that same frame again. That way, I could make it look like that cat blinks twice in a row.
Below is a screenshot of the animation bar with all the frames posted as I wanted them to be. Notice how they alternate eyes open, eyes closed, etc.
Under each frame, you'll notice it says "0 sec." This is the time before the animation switches to the next frame. I don't want my cats to blink that fast, because it will just look like a blur and not like they're actually blinking. Also, I want them to have their eyes open longer than they're closed. So, I changed the time settings as follows: Frame 1 (2 seconds), Frame 2 (0.1 second), Frame 3 (2 seconds), Frame 4 (0.1 second), Frame 5 (1 second), Frame 6 (0.1 second), Frame 7 (0.2 second), and Frame 8 (0.1 second).
If you look at the screenshot above, you'll see the times on each frame as I had them set. Also, this is important: in the bottom left-hand corner, there's another little pop-down menu which determines how many times the animation will loop. MAKE SURE it says "Forever" and not "Once." If it says "once," then the animation will only play once, and then won't play again. That would be sad.
And here it is, the finished product. Have some fun :)