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Animated Pumpkin, Part 2: The Animation
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Animated Pumpkin, Part 2: The Animation
Created by: Doro Sensen

In part 1 of this tutorial we created the pumpkin – now let's put some fire (candlelight) into it and animate it for Halloween!
Fire with Eye Candy 3.1
Fire with Pool Shadow Filter
The Animation 		For the fire we'll use Eye Candy. At the time that this tutorial is written, there's a free copy of Eye Candy 3.1 (together with a demo version of Eye Candy 4.0) available at http://www.photoshopcafe.com/ . If you don't have Eye Candy or don't want to install it, you can also create the fire with the Pool Shadow filter of Filter Factory A. The filter(s) should be downloaded and installed in your Plug-ins folder.
Open the pumpkin image that you made with part 1 of this tutorial. Your image should have three layers (from top to bottom:) "Pumpkin", "Holes" and "Pumpkin Back". Click on the bottom layer ("Pumpkin back") to make it the active layer.
Double-click on the Crop tool in your tool palette to open the "Crop Area" dialog box:
– Select opaque area – merged = selected Now click on the "Crop Image" button in your Tool Options palette to get rid of all the empty space around your pumpkin.
Click on the "New Layer" icon in your layer palette to create a new layer, name it "Fire 1". Create two more layers and name them "Fire 2" and "Fire 3". Now you've got three "Fire" layers between your "Holes" and "Pumpkin back" layer.
Click on the little glasses of the top two layers ("Pumpkin" and "Holes") to make them invisible for now. Then click on the "Fire 1" layer to make it the active layer.
  Go to Selections || Load from Alpha Channel. Your pumpkin selection is shown, click on OK.

Now duplicate your image with Shift+D (Window || Duplicate) so you can try out both ways to create the fire effect.

Fire with Eye Candy 3.1

For each of the three fire layers (first with "Fire 1" active, then with "Fire 2" active, last with "Fire 3" active), go to Effects || Plug-in Filters || Eye Candy 3.1 || Fire:

  "Fire 1" layer "Fire 2" layer "Fire 3" layer
Flame Width 12 11 10
Flame Height 37 47 54
Movement 19 9 49
Inside Masking 0 0 0
Edge Softness 29 29 29
Random Seed 100 100 100
Now go to Selections || Modify || Contract and contract your selection by 2. Then go to Selections || Invert and hit the Delete key (Edit || Clear), then click on the "Fire 2" layer in your layer palette and hit the Delete key again, same for the "Fire 1" layer.

Deselect with Ctrl+D (Selections || Select None). Your fire is now only inside your pumpkin shape.



Click on the little glasses of the top two layers in your layer palette to make them visible again, then on the little glasses of the "Fire 2" and the "Fire 3" layers to make them invisible.
Go to File || Save As (or press F12) and save this image as "Pumpkin_EC-1.psp".

Turn the "Fire 1" layer invisible and the "Fire 2" layer visible, go to File || Save As and save this image as "Pumpkin_EC-2.psp".

Now turn the "Fire 2" layer invisible and the "Fire 3" layer visible, go to File || Save As and save this image as "Pumpkin_EC-3.psp".

We've now got the three images we need for our animation.

 

Fire with the Pool Shadow Filter

First go to Selections || Modify || Contract and contract your selection by 2.

Click on the Flood-Fill tool in your tool palette:
– Blend mode = Normal
– Match mode = None
– Tolerance = n/a
– Opacity = 100
– Sample merged = unchecked
Set your foreground colour to orange (Red = 255, Green = 61, Blue = 1) and your background colour to yellow (Red = 255, Green = 255, Blue = 128).
Set your foreground style to Gradient (click on the little arrow in the Foreground Style box and choose the second icon from the left). Click right into the foreground style box:
– Gradient = Foreground-Background
– Invert gradient = unchecked
– Horizontal/Vertical = n/a
– Angle = 0
– Repeats = 0
– Style = Linear Gradient (icon on top)

Your foreground texture should be set to None.

Do the following for each of the three "Fire" layers (first for "Fire 1" which is already activated in your layer palette, then click on the "Fire 2" layer and do the same, last click on the "Fire 3" layer and do the same once again):

First click into the selection to fill it with the gradient, then go to Effects || Plug-in Filters || Filter Factory A || Pool Shadow:

  "Fire 1" layer "Fire 2" layer "Fire 3" layer
Control 1 104 151 29
Control 2 198 208 86
Control 3 97 118 103
Control 4 213 146 57
Control 5 84 79 26
Control 6 144 192 139
Shadow Intensity 173 131 140
Brightness 161 147 133
(The settings for the "Fire 2" layer are the default settings.)

Deselect with Ctrl+D (Selections || Select None).



Click on the little glasses of the top two layers in your layer palette to make them visible again, then on the little glasses of the "Fire 2" and the "Fire 3" layers to make them invisible.
Go to File || Save As (or press F12) and save this image as "Pumpkin_PS-1.psp".

Turn the "Fire 1" layer invisible and the "Fire 2" layer visible, go to File || Save As and save this image as "Pumpkin_PS-2.psp".

Now turn the "Fire 2" layer invisible and the "Fire 3" layer visible, go to File || Save As and save this image as "Pumpkin_PS-3.psp".

We've now got the three images we need for our animation.

The Animation

Go to File || Jasc Software Products || Launch Animation Shop. In Animation Shop, go to File || Preferences || General Program Preferences. On the "Layered Files" tab, select the second option, "Merge layers into a single frame".

Then go to File || Animation Wizard.

In the first dialog box, select the first option, "Same size as the first image frame", and click on the "Next" button.
In the second dialog box, select the first option again, "Transparent", and click on the "Next" button.
In the third dialog box, just click on the "Next" button; the settings don't matter since we know for sure that our images are all of the same dimensions.

In the fourth dialog box, select the first option, "Yes, repeat the animation indefinitely", and enter "25" for the display time of each frame. Click on the "Next" button.

In the fifth dialog box, click on the "Add Image" button. In the following "Open" dialog box, keep the Ctrl key pressed and select your "Pumpkin_EC-3.psp", "Pumpkin_EC-2.psp" and "Pumpkin_EC-1.psp" files – yes, in reverse order so that we don't have to sort them in the wizard dialog box afterwards. Click again on the "Add Image" button and select only your "Pumpkin_EC-2.psp" file this time to add it at the end of the row.

If you want to make the animation from the images made with the Pool Shadow filter, select those files accordingly.

Then click on the "Next" button, and in the last dialog box, just click on the "Finish" button.

And there's your animated pumpkin! Go to View || Animation to play the animation.

Here on the left you can see the animation of the files made with the Eye Candy filter.

Here on the left you can see the animation of the files made with the Pool Shadow filter.

Go to File || Optimization Wizard to save them as an animated GIF file – then put them on your spooky Halloween web page! ;-))