For this tutorial you will need:

Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop.
This version was written for PSP 9 but it can be done equally well in 7 or 8.

Bauhaus 93 Font
You can download this free font HERE. It's number 97.

The following caterpillar animation.
Right click and 'Save As'

Caterpillar from Animation Library

Open PSP then open a new image using the following settings:

Set your stoke colour to green and your fill colour to null (Null = no colour)

Click on your font tool and use the following settings:

Click on your canvas and type in your name when the text entry box appears.

Use the nodes on the vector box to make your text bigger.
You will now have this:

Go to the layer palette and right click on the vector layer. Click on Convert To Raster Layer.

Click on your magic wand and use the following settings:

Click inside each letter then go to Effects > 3D Effects > Cut out and use the following settings:

You will now have this:

Go to Edit > Copy

Now open Animation Shop and go to Edit > Paste > As New Animation.

Open a new canvas in Animation Shop using the following settings

We need to duplicate the new canvas so it has one extra frame than the caterpillar. The caterpillar has 24 frames so we need to duplicate the new canvas so it has 25 frames.
(The reason for this is so that we have a frame that only has the text in it, no caterpillar. We need this for when we take the sig into PSP and erase the parts of the caterpillar that aren't in the text.)

Now click on the caterpillar and press ctrl and a then ctrl and c to select all the frames and copy them.

Click on the new canvas and press ctrl and a then ctrl and e to paste them into the selected frames.

Position the caterpillar to the right of the canvas.

Now click on your text canvas and duplicate it so it has 25 frames.

Press ctrl and a then ctrl and c to select all the frames and copy them.

Click on the new canvas and press ctrl and a then ctrl and e to paste the text.

Position your name on the caterpillar as follows:

Ok, we now need to get rid of the parts of the caterpillar that aren't inside the letters.

We're going to do this in PSP.

To take it to PSP, press ctrl and a then ctrl and c to copy all the frames of the animation.

Go to PSP and press ctrl and v to paste the animation.

You will now have this:

It looks a mess because all the frames are stacked on top of each other.

Go to the layer palette and turn off the visibility of each layer except for the top layer (this should be the extra frame we made, the one with text only, no caterpillar)

Click on your magic wand tool and use the following settings:

Click anywhere on the canvas, outside of the text. Marching ants will appear around your text

Now click on the next layer down. Unhide it and hide the top layer so you can see what's on the layer you've selected.

If there is any part of the caterpillar that isn't inside your text,

press the delete key on your keyboard or click on the cut icon

Carry on going down the list of layers and deleting any parts of the caterpillar that aren't inside your letters.

Ok, now we need to add a white background to each frame so that when we open it in Animation Shop and save it, the optimizer won't ruin the text.

Click on the bottom layer then go to Layers > Add New Raster Layer

Move this layer under the bottom layer by clicking on it, keeping the mouse button pressed and dragging it under the bottom layer.

Flood fill this layer with white.

Now right click on the layer and duplicate it. Continue to duplicate this layer so you have 27 white layers.

Now drag a white layer under each of the original layers.

Turn off the visibility of every layer except the bottom 2 layers.

Right click on the bottom layer and go to Merge > Merge Visible

Turn off the visibility of the newly merged layer and turn on the visibility of the next frame 1 layer and the copy of raster 1 layer.

Merge > Merge Visible

Continue doing this until all frame 1 layers have been merged with a copy of raster 1 layer.

Unhide all layers and save as a PSP file.

Open the new PSP file in animation shop and using the crop tool, crop around the text.

Right click on the last frame and go to Frame Properties. Set the frame properties to 100.

Save and you're done :o)

I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial.

Tutorial written by Shell © 2005