This tutorial was created for the FlyByNightGraphics October, 2001 Challenge.

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While you may use any trees or skater tubes you have, to make this animated skating snowman as you see here you will need the following:

PSP7.04. If you do not already own Paint Shop Pro, you may download a trial version. If you do own PSP, then you can download or purchase the upgrade to PSP7.04. You can find and download them HERE.

The snow2 tubeHERE.

The clouds tube HERE. You could also use Xenofex Little Fluffy Clouds preset setting if you have that plugin. Or, you can download the demo version, or purchase it HERE.

Flaming Pear Flood which is available in demo or purchase form. You can download it HERE.

Ulead Effects ArtTexture Plugin which you can download HERE.

Alien Skin Eye Candy 3.1 which you can download HERE.

Pine Tree Tubes which you can make by following Ronni's Pretty Pine Tree tutorial: HERE. Or you can make your own by using the pine branches you create from Lora-Ly's Pine Branches tutorial: HERE.

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Open a 300 x 300 transparent background. Add a layer. Using the lasso tool with a feather set at 3 and antialias checked, draw an area at the bottom of the image for the pond.

Set your foreground color to white. Flood fill the pond area with white. Then go to Effects|Flaming Pear|Flood and apply the following settings:

Go to your Layer Palette and right click|Duplicate the layer. Make sure this is the active layer and apply the flood again using these settings:

With the ants still marching, and the duplicated layer still active, apply some snow using the snow2 tube:

Get your smudge tool, set to soften and use the following settings to blend the snow in with the pond. Use side to side strokes.

When you have blended the snow, hide that layer and apply the snow tube to the top portion of the pond on thelayer below. Then soften that snow to blend it. Change the blend mode to Darken for both layers. Deselect, Hide Layer 1, and Merge|Merge Visible. Get your smudge tool again and apply side to side strokes using the following settings:

Unhide Layer 1 and make it the active layer. Fill the layer with clouds to make snow, or Little Fluffy Clouds in Xenofex. I use Xenofex and I change the setting with each application. The one thing you need to do is make sure that you cover all of the canvas. These are my first Xenofex settings. I will change them to make the puff size smaller and also reduce the coverage in order to make it look like there are layers of snow and the ground is not level.

If Xenofex is used, you can apply the clouds to individual layers and then Merge|Merge Visible. (Make sure you Hide the pond layer before you merge the snow layers.) I tend to use layers so I can have more control - and can delete a layer if I don't like it.

Unhide your pond layer and soften the edge where the pond and the snow meet. You may soften first and then you may find that you want to smudge the area a bit. You can use the settings we used before for each of the tools. It's also best to use short strokes. Once your background looks like you want, then go to Merge|Merge Visible. This is what I'm going to use now for my pond and snow:

Add a Layer in order to add some trees on the bank of snow. You may use any pine tree tubes that you may have. I've used the pine tree that I made with Ronni's tutorial. I have placed 10 trees, each on a different layer so I can move them around. Make sure that you have larger trees in the foreground and the smaller ones toward the back. Also, make sure that when you add a tree that's supposed to be to the rear, that you change its layer position so that it is not on top of the one in front of it! Once you have your trees and have them placed where you like, then we're going to add some drop shadows. All of the shadows will end up on the background layer. Here's how you do that:

Hide all the layers except the merged layer and the layer above it. Click on this layer - the one with a tree. Then, go to Selections|Select All; Selections|Float. Click on the Merged layer and apply a drop shadow using the following settings:

Go to Selections|Select None. Unhide the next layer above the tree layer, then hide the first layer, and and follow the same steps to apply a drop shadow. Do this for each tree layer. Make sure that you unhide the next tree layer before you hide the one you've just finished. Then make sure that you click on that layer before you go to Selections|Select All or you will not be able to float that tree. Once you have your tree floating, then you go to the merged layer and click on it. Here's what my background image looks like after I have applied the drop shadow to my 10th tree:

Once you have used this drop shadow method you will find that you cannot move the tubes around as the shadow will not follow. Unhide all layers. Before we complete our background, add a layer at the top. This is the layer where you should put your signature or watermark. Once you have done that, go to Merge|Merge Visible. This is what my image now looks like. And I must confess that I did not like the way the pond and the snow met. To correct that, I took my lasso tool and this time drew a curvy line across where the edge of the pond is and then drew it up the right side, across the top, and down on the left until it met the pond edge. Then I applied another layer of Xenofex Little Fluffy Clouds with a smaller puff size. That made it look like the snow was coming down to the edge of the pond. Now this will be the base image for my animation.

Since we don't know how many of these images we may need, let's make four more copies by using Shift-D until we have a total of 5 copies.

Get your tube tool and select the image you want to 'glide' across the ice. Add a layer and place your tube in the middle, then use your mover tool to move it over to the left edge so that some of the image is actually outside the canvas. Don't go too far as we will be adding a frame of 3 pixels to our image. This is where I've placed my first snowman image in the completed image:

Once you are satisfied with the placement of the snowman, Merge|Merge Visible and get your snow2 tube. Apply some snow around the canvas, but not too much. Then save this image as snowman1.psp and minimize it for now. We'll need to add that frame later.

For the next frame, add a layer and place your snowman close to the middle of the image. Then go to Effects|Eye Candy 3.1|Motion Trail and use these settings for the trail:

Next, Merge|Merge Visible and apply some snow to this image. Then save your second image as snowman2.psp and minimize for later use. For the third frame place the snowman over at the right edge, even going out a bit. Then apply the motion trail with the same settings. When you are satisfied, Merge|Merge Visible and add some snow to the image. Save as snowman3.psp and minimize.

On the fourth image all we're going to do is use our snow tube to apply some more snow. Next, if we leave the image this size it will be a very large animation file. Therefore, bring up each image and go to Image|Resize and resize it 75%. Then go to Effects|Sharpen|Unsharp Mask and use the following settings:

Do the same resizing and sharpening on each of the images. Do a Save As after each and save using the original snowman name. Now we're going to add the frame. Make the first snowman image active. Go to Selections|Select All; Selections|Modify|Contract by 3 pixels; Selections|Invert. Now you have the ants marching around a narrow band where we'll apply the Ulead texture, or any framing of your own. For mine I chose a red preset that I made:

Apply a drop shadow using the same settings as for the trees. After applying the first drop shadow, change the horizontal and vertical settings to -3 and apply again.

Save all of your images again in PSP format using the same names originally assigned. Then launch your JASC Animation Shop. Go to File|Animation Wizard and use the following settings: Screen 1 - check the 1st radial button for 'same size'. Screen 2 - check Transparent. Screen 3 - check the top radial button in each section. Screen 4 - check top radial button to play indefinitely and change the number to 50 for a slower animation. Screen 5: click on Add Image and locate snowman1, click on it to highlight it, then click OK. Continue to 'Add Image' for each snowman. Then click on Next, and Finish. The go to View|Animation and you will see your animated skater.

To finish, go to File|Save As and then locate the file where you wish to save your animated skater and also name your image. When you have done this, click Save and then use my screen shots to follow the rest of the settings I've used. On the first screen I had to use the Customized settings shown as the image was being saved without some of my snow due to the collapsing of pixels. By making this change the image does contain more KB, but it is much nicer looking, too. The way I've done it here, the animation is now 120KB. This should be acceptable in most situations.

After you have clicked OK to the customized settings, click Next when you are returned to the original screen. After the next pop up processes, click Next. You will then see a preview of your optimized animation. Click Next and the middle column at the top will show you your optimized file size. If it is too large, go back to the beginning screen and lower the slider on the quality bar. Then follow the steps again to see what you have. When you are satisfied, click on Finish and your animation will be saved in the folder you originally selected. Congratulations! You're now done! :o)

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Here, again, is my completed Animated Skater:

And here is another 'skater' I created:

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