♥ Boxed In ♥ Animated CT Tutorial - ADI Old School Style Featuring Terri Lynne Albright.

with a dark background

This tutorial was created with Photoshop CS6 or CS2 depending on what filters I use. Some older filters will no longer work in CS6. Can be done with other versions and/or programs.

Supplies:

Artist's Tube of choice: I am using the PTU art of Terri Lynne Albright. Please DO NOT use her images without the proper license. You can find this tube here

Fonts of choice: I am using PF Arma Five for the © and Sepian for the name/text.

Filters of choice: DSB Flux – Bright Noise and Bubbles

Alien Skin Xenofex 2 – Constellation.

Custom Shape of choice: Preferably a frame or square/box type. I got mine at Deviant Art but I can't remember the creators name and the file name does not specify.

Ok, grab a cuppa, and a munchie, and let's go!!

Please remember to SAVE your work often, RENAME your layers, and if you feel you have really messed up.... Remember that UNDO is your bestest friend!!

Abbreviations

C/P = Drag and Drop OR Edit>Select All>Edit>Copy>Edit>Paste

DS = Drop Shadow

MV – Merge Visible

Create a new image 950x950 , background color of your choice, we will be deleting it later unless you plan on animating.. 72dpi/ppi. Name the file whatever you wish and hit ok.

C/P your tube to the center of the canvas. Duplicate it 2 times. On the bottom tube apply Toadies – What Are You? At what ever settings you like best. Leave the other two tube copies be for the moment.

Grab your custom shapes tool with the following settings

Click one time on your canvas. You might have to reinsert your dimensions.. Duplicate your frames and position them around your tube. They don't have to be in any perfect order. As you see in my example some frames have small gaps, some are touching. It all depends on the look you want to go for. When you are finished placing your boxes close all but the boxes in your layers palette, right click on one of them and choose rasterize. Then shift click on each of the box layers click on the rasterized layer last. Right click and choose MV.

Open up both of your tube layers that were previously closed. CTRL+click on the thumbnail of your boxes to make a selection around them. Click on one of the tube layers and hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Drag this layer under your boxes layer in the layers palette. Deselect. Add a DS of your choice to this tube layer and a 5px stroke of your color choice. Lower the stroke opacity down to about 30.

Make a selection around your boxes one more time and invert the selection. On the last tube layer, which should be at the very top of your layer palette, make it active and hit delete on your keyboard. Deselect. Add noise at 30% and add a DS and a stroke color of your choice.

Resize your image down a bit.... between 70 and 80%

Duplicate your box layer. Place this copy just above your toadies layer and use a color overlay of your choice. I chose pink. Right click and Rasterize layer style. Duplicate this layer and in the layers palette position it so that is sits just under the top layer.

Click back on your first copy, the one that sits above the toadies layer and apply DSB Flux – Bubbles with the following settings.

If your bubbles go all the way to the edge of the canvas you may have to undo and resize your image down a bit more. Now with your Color Replacer Tool in your brushes menu choose colors from your tube to change the colors of different areas of the bubbles.

Add your name and © info, with whatever effects you wish to add to them.

If you do not wish to animate, add noise of your choice to box layer that sits under the very top layer in the layers palette. Crop your image to size and Save for web as PNG=24.

If you wish to animate continue on.

These next instructions refer to any layers you wish to animate, In my case it is my name and the pink boxes layers.

Here we go.

If you are animating any text layers, the text needs to be rasterized before you can continue.

Duplicate 3 times, the layers you wish to animate so there will be a total of 4 layers for each. That would mean that for my pink boxes layer, I have a total of 4 and for my name I also have a total of 4. Rename the layers something like boxes 1 – 4 and Name 1 – 4 starting from the bottom up.

Close off layers 4 – 2. On layer 1 click on it to make it an active layer and apply DSB Flux- Bright Noise at 50%.

Then apply Alien Skin Xenofex 2 – Constellation with the following settings.

Repeat for your Name 1 layer.

Hide layers numbered 1 and unhide layers numbered 2.

Apply the same settings for each filter except for flux hit the mix button a couple of times, and for Constellation hit the random seed button.

Follow the same steps for all layers numbered 3 and 4. Don't forget to close the previous layers and make sure the layer you are working on is active/highlighted.

Let's make sure your animation window is open. If it isn't go to Window>Timeline. It should now be open. Click on the long button that says “ Create Frame Animation”

Make sure all layers are open including your background layer, except for your animation layers numbered 2 – 4.

If you look in the animation window, you will now see that frame 1 is already there for you. Click the Duplicate Frame button. 

In your LAYERS palette Hide layers numbered 1 and unhide layers numbered 2.

Hit the Duplicate Frame button. Hide layers numbered 2 and unhide layers numbered 3.

Hit the Duplicate Frame button hide layers numbered 3 and unhide layers numbered 4.

You should now have 4 FRAMES in your animation window and FRAME 4 should be the highlighted layer.

SHIFT+click on FRAME 1 and set the frame delay to 0.01 sec. 

Set the Looping Options to Forever.

 
Click the play button to make sure that your animation runs smoothly.

Click on Frame 1 then Save for Web as Gif, no transparency.

Congrats!! Woot Woot!! you are finshed!!!

This tutorial was created by me, Mary Oakes aka Ariez Moon, on 11/26/2014. Any similarity to any other tutorial is purely coincidental. Please abide by my TOU and the TOU of Artists and Designers that you may use.

I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial, and I hope that I did not do too bad of a job writing it. If you have any problems, questions, comments, or suggestions just give me a hollar in my Cbox, or connect with me on FB. I will get back to you as fast as I can.

As always, Happy PSPing.... and Photoshop too :) !!