Fade to Grey

This is what we will be making

For this example , I used the art of Keith Garvey

Do not use his work without a license from MPT

MuRa Meister-Copies

Xero-Porcelain

PSP-I used X3, but any version should work

Animation Shop

This is a fairly long one, so grab a cup of coffee and settle in

Ready?

Lets Begin!

New image, 600x250

Select all-Paste your tube into the selection

Deselect- MuRa-Copies-Wallpaper Rotate-Default Settings

Adjust-Blur, Motion Blur-96, 100%

Edge Effects-Enhance-Duplicate Layer

On the new Layer, Artistic Effects-Halftone

Change the blend mode to Overlay and merge visible

Choose a color from your tube for the foreground-background null

Get out your Rectangle tool- Create on Vector Checked, width 15

Draw out a rectangle just a little bigger than your canvas-convert to Raster

Free Rotate-24, left-move to the left side

Magic wand-click inside your rectangle-Modify expand by 5

Highlight your background layer and promote selection to layer

Highlight your background layer again

Distortion effects-wind- Left, 100

Back to your Rectangle Layer

Magic wand-select inside your rectangle-Modify-expand by 2

Copy and paste your tube -move inside the rectangle

Selection-invert- DELETE-Deselect

Xero-Porcelain-move the blue channel slider to 0

Give your tube a drop shadow-I used 5, 5, 50, 5

On the rectangle layer

Xero-Porcelain-move the blue channel slider to 0

Hide the background layer and merge visible-Unhide the BG

Give your framed layer a blurry drop shadow

I used 5, 27, 41 and 84

New Layer-fill with dark color from your tube

Select all-Modify-Contract 2-Delete-Deselect

Highlight your Background-Paste your close-up and move to the right

Change the blend mode to Luminance and lower opacity to around 30

Merge down into the background

Crop your tag to size

Now is the time to add your CR info and Name

Hide your Background Layer and Merge visible

Now you should have two layers

Let's animate this thing!

Highlight your background Layer and edit-copy

Open up Animation shop and paste as a new animation

Insert Image Effects-choose the Fade to Grey Effect

Delete the 10th Frame

Edit -Select all-Edit copy-Select none, then click on the 9th frame to select it

Paste After current frame-Now you should have 18 frames

Hold down your ctrl key and click to select the last 9 frames

Animation-Reverse Frames-edit-select all

Animation-frame properties-change the frame rate to 50

Still with me?

We're almost done, lol

Back in PSP - Copy your top layer and in Ani shop

Paste as a new animation

duplicate frames until you have 18 frames

Edit - Select all-edit copy

Go to the animated background you made before

Edit-select all -edit-paste into selected frame

Make sure it's placed where you want it and click to place

View animation to make sure it looks good and save as a gif

And that's it-you're done!

I have done this one a few times using different shapes

This example, using a Star shape

Art by Katherine Barber

You can get a license to use her art at Up Your Art

Another example using a circle shape

Art by Steve Baier - You can get a license to use his art at Up Your Art

Thank you for trying my tutorial!

I love seeing results,

so if you try it please leave a link in the comments section at my blog

Tutorial and Tags