Adding Text To An Animation

For this tutorial you will need:

PSP & Animation Shop 3 - You can download a free trial of both programs HERE
An animation of your choice. I got mine from CandyBar Dolls Animated Graphics.

Open PSP and open a new canvas. Use the following settings. I always have my canvas big so I have plenty of room.

Set your foreground and background colour boxes to colours of your choice.

Click on your text tool and use the following settings:

Click on your canvas and when the text entry box opens, type in your text. Click ok.

Add an inner bevel to your text. (The screenshot is the inner bevel settings in PSP 9. You can adjust them to the way you want your inner bevel effect, no matter what version of PSP you're using)

Go to Selections > Select None

Now go to Edit > Copy

Open Animation shop and go to Edit > Paste as new animation or click on the Paste as new animation icon

Your text will be cropped when you paste into Animation Shop. You can close your text in PSP as we don't need it anymore.

Open your animation and check how many frames it has. You can do this by scrolling through all the frames till you get to the last frame...the number of the frame is beneath it, or, you can look at the bottom right of the screen and it tells you how many frames the animation has.

You need to duplicate your text so it has the same number of frames as the animation. You can do this by going to Edit > Duplicate Selected or by clicking on the duplicate icon

Open a new image using the following settings:

Duplicate your new canvas so it has the same number of frames as your text and animation.

Click on your text canvas and go to Edit > Select All then Edit > Copy
or
on your keyboard, hold down ctrl and press a then c

Click on your new canvas and go to Edit > Select All then Edit > Paste Into Selected Frame
or
on your keyboard, hold down ctrl and press a then e

This pastes the text onto your new canvas.

Move your text where you want it and click once to position it.

Click on your animation canvas and go to Edit > Select All then Edit > Copy
or
on your keyboard, hold down ctrl and press a then c

Click on your new canvas and go to Edit > Select All then Edit > Paste Into Selected Frame
or
on your keyboard, hold down ctrl and press a then e

This pastes the animation onto your new canvas.

Move the animation where you want it and click once to position it.

Click on your crop tool then click on the options button.

Click on Surround The Opaque Area

Click ok.

You will get a crop box around your text and animation.

Click on the crop button.

Save your sig and you're done :o)

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Tutorial written by Shell © 2005
www.shells-tutorials.co.uk