Flight of the Monarch (by Lori)
Flight of the Monarch
Many are unaware that the Monarch
Butterfly has one of the Great North American migrations. Traveling over 2500 miles from Canada to
Mexico to winter over. Amazing!
Someone asked for a tutorial on animating butterflies. I will share with you here, what I do to animate them.
Supplies : Here
First open a canvas 500 x 500. Choose one of the butterflies or one of your
own but be sure it is in a vertical orientation. Copy and Paste your Butterfly
onto your canvas and resize to have plenty of space around the edges. I resized
by 80%.
Step 1
Using your Lasso Tool, Carefully
trace around the body of the Butterfly. Right click the layer/promote selection
to layer. Highlight butterfly layer. Selection/modify/contract by 1/delete –
Select none.
You should now have your wings on one
layer and your body and antennae on another.
Step 2
Highlight the body layer – Arrange/move
down. Highlight the Wings layer – right click/duplicate.
Using your deform tool, Slightly move the sides in a few degrees. try to keep
it consistent on both sides.
Repeat this process until your wings
are closed as much as you’d like. I have a total of 6 wing layers at this
point.
Step 3
Here’s where you have to pay
attention. Highlight the layer just
below the top layer – Right click/duplicate – right click/arrange/bring to top.
Repeat this process with each wing layer keeping them in descending order till
you reach the next to last layer. Do not duplicate the last layer. If you
followed what I did – you should now have a total of 10 wing layers.
Step 4
Highlight top layer. In order to give
your Butterfly a more natural appearance, we will go to Image/rotate/free
rotate with these setting.
Be Sure All layers is checked!
Step 5
Starting at top layer go to Adjust/sharpness/sharpen
for each layer. You’ll notice that the
bottom layer is empty – right click/delete it.
At this point, I apply a drop shadow
with these settings.
Once you have applied the drop shadow
to all layers, you can File/Save as/animation shop psp. In a folder where you
can locate it to open in Animation shop.
Step 6
Open Animation Shop and then open the
Butterfly file you just saved in PSP.
You’ll notice the first frame is the wingless body. Click inside that
frame -edit/copy – then in an open area of the workspace, right click and paste
as new animation. Then Hold down Ctrl
and hit L 9 times for a total of 10 frames. Go back to butterfly and click on
the body frame – edit/cut. You should
now just have the 10 frames of wings.
Edit/select all/copy – Click on the body canvas – Edit/select all/paste
into selected frame. Position carefully
over body and click to paste. Go to view/
animation to check your work. Save!!
