Blinkie-tutorial

For this tutorial I used Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 and Jasc Animation Shop, but any graphic/animation program will work , as long as you have some general basic knowledge about the program you're using.

This is what we're making:

 Go to my blinkie-maker, drag and drop the pieces to the blinkie in any way that you want to. When you're done, click the Print Screen (PrtScr) button on your keyboard. Open your graphics-program (mine is Paint Shop Pro 8). Right click somewhere inside the grey area and choose "Paste As New Image", now you will see something like this:

Now choose the Crop Tool and crop it down to a more reasonable size. This is what we have so far:

Now, choose a color that you're sure isn't used in the blinkie already, and use the Paintbrush or the Flood Fill Tool to color the parts of the image you want to be transparent (I used: #C1FC0E), like this:

Ok, on to the next step: Animating the blinkie. Right click your image and choose "Copy", then open your Animation Program (mine is Jasc Animation Shop). Right click and choose "Paste As New Image". Your image will now appear in your Animation Program:

Select your image by clicking the blue bar at the top (Where it says "Animation 1"), then click Ctrl+Shift+L at the same time, your image will now be duplicated, like this:

Repeat the last step until you get as many frames as your blinkie requires. For this blinkie I will use 7 frames (because there are 7 letters in the word) My blinkie now looks like this:

It's time for the actual animation. Color one of the letters in each frame in any color that you want (white is easiest to see), like this:

Click the Dropper Tool and click the color that you want to make transparent (in this case the green color), then click Animation --> Replace Color. Choose these settings:

(You find the color you want transparent by right-clicking the little palette next to where it says "Old Color", then choose the foreground color of your pencil tool.)

Your image should now look something like this:

Now click File --> Optimization Wizard. Choose these settings:

Click "Neste(=Next)", then choose "Customize". Choose these settings:

Click "OK" --> "Next" --> "Next". You will now get a preview of your blinkie. If it looks good, click "Next" --> "Fullfoer(=Proceed (or something like that) in English)" Your blinkie will now show up as a new image, like this:

Click "File" --> "Save As"... and save it as whatever you want.

Tadaa... you can now proudly call yourself  a blinkiemaker!!

If you think this tutorial was helpful, or have any questions, feel free to send me an e-mail! I would love to see your work!