There Be Pirates

YOU WILL NEED:

* Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop or similar. I used PSPX but you should be able to make this tag in earlier versions.

* Tube of choice. I am using the artwork of Jasmine Becket-Griffith. You need a license to use her artwork. Tubes and images can be purchased from CILM

* Font of choice - a fat font works best. I used Vivian.

* Edge mask of choice.

* Eyecandy 4000 - HSB Noise.

* Skull and bones motiff - this was made by me from the Pirates PW font by Intellecta Design. Right click and save as a png file.

LETS START!

1. Open your tube and supplies in PSP. Open your font (by double clicking on it in Windows Explorer) and minimise to use later.

2. Open a new image 500 x 400 with a white background.

3. Add a new raster layer and floodfill with black. Apply your mask and merge mask group.

4. Add a new raster layer. Use your selection tool to draw out a rectangle inside the mask. Floodfill with a colour from your tube (I used #b41915). DO NOT deselect.

5. Add another raster layer and floodfill with black. Select none. Hide this layer for the moment.

6. Copy and paste the skull motiff to your canvas. Move to the top right of your canvas.

7. Copy and paste your tube to the canvas. Resize (I resized to 60%), sharpen if necessary and move to the left. Add drop shadow to your tube at the following settings. Use a complimentary color from your tube.

Your canvas should look like this -

8. Make your skull layer active, then select your text tool. Set the materials palette to black for the foreground and null for the background. Using the following settings, type your name in block capitals. Stretch out the text to fill the remaining red area. If you are using the same tube as I am, then you want to make it look like she is sitting on the edge of your name. Position all the elements of your tag so that you are happy with them.

9. With your magic wand on the following settings, select the middle of each letter in your name. When all letters are selected, Selection - Modify - Expand by 1. Make your black hidden layer active (keep it hidden still) and press delete. Select none.

10. Activate the skull layer and click your magic wand outside the skull motiff. Selection - Invert. Activate the black layer again and press delete. Select none. You make this black layer visible now.

11. Activate your tube layer and add copyright information and watermark.

12. Close off the bottom 3 layers (white background, black mask and red layers). Make sure one of the other layers is active and merge visible. Hide this merged layer and duplicate twice.

13. Open the white background and the black mask layers and merge together. Duplicate twice.

14. Activate the red layer and duplicate twice. (You should now have 3 of each layer.) Make the bottom red layer visible. Apply Eyecandy 4000 HSB Noise at the following settings to each layer. Change the random seed for each layer. NOTE: This filter can put a lot of tansparency in the mix which shows as black. Try a few different seed numbers to find one you like. I used 585, 419, 801.

15. Open your top tube layers. Arrange your layer palette into sets of three ie from the top down - tube layer, red layer, background layer - 3 sets in all. Merge each set together so that you are left with 3 layers. Save as a Animation Shop .psp file.

16. Open your file in Animation Shop. Edit - Select All. Animation - Frame Properties - change to 40.

17. Save as a .gif and you are done. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.