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The Quarter Ball Tip.
Plus other Smiley making Process Speed tweaks and Mods.
- Including the Quarter-Ball Generator and Full ball Generator.
After the initial burst of animating all the possible combinations of Smiley Maker 3, you may feel like moving on and creating your own Style and colour/shade of Smileys. Learning from the basic principles of my tutorials and a few hours using Smiley maker and animation shop 3 you should be pretty well versed in making, editing and saving gifs and maybe even played about with animation in length or at least so you are tired of trying to create fresh starter balls. Best bet is you at least know how to save as a transparent .gif and why you should do so with a smiley. (They look different on lighter/darker backgrounds depending on colours.)
So now you are fed up with spending more time making blank balls that you can start a new generation of Smileys that you made from scratch, than you are making end result and useable Smileys!.
Part 1 - The basics.
Required applications & programs;
JASC's Animationshop 3/Microsoft Paint -
Or any other basic image making software that allows you to create transparent images and animate them.
I create my Smileys using JASC's Animationshop 3.
This tutorial will show you how to make small parts of .gifs and how to replicate them and create new smiley combinations with ease and so you can save some time.
1. - Open Animationshop or your chosen program.
2. - Click File & select New.
3. - When you select New a small menu/pop up box will appear.
This is where we will set the basic elements & properties of the smiley.
Make sure the Canvas colour is set too Transparent & enter the size 100x100.
Now open up whatever sized ball you have made from scratch/normally use, [ If you do not already have a Smiley ball you created please feel free to use the Quarter Ball Smiley Generator provided below. ] and crop it down by three quarters.
(It helps if the Smiley Ball is shaded unequally/asymmetrically for more varied results. This trick is redundant for single coloured smiley cloning/creating/replicating. unless you are using it for random face or odd shape generation)
Save that quarter as Quarter1.gif
[ If you rotate the image by 90 degrees and save it as Quarter2.gif, then rotate it another 90 degrees and save that as Quarter3.gif and rotate another 90 degrees and save that as Quarter4.gif. ]
Section 2:
Second Quarter and repeat.
Next start with your original smiley all over again, this time take a different Quarter.
[ Again If you started with a symmetrical shaded or single colour smiley ball this is redundant. ]
Repeat the process with this quarter as instructed above. Save each rotation variation.
Do the same with all Four quarters of the Original Smiley ball and you will have plenty of combinations you can put back together again to create a full smiley so you can run them through some batch processes for getting different shades and colours for plenty of smiley making fun.
As they are now saved with minor alterations already when Four Quarters from the now 4/8/16/32/++ Images/templates/quarters you just made you can create infinite shapes, colours, shades and a whole host of other uses by adding them together as Balls or other shapes for other creations.
Generator 1:
This Quarter Ball Generator will help you save some time:
Just Right Click/Save As and then open up In JASC's Animation Shop.
That is 230 shades and slight variants all in a single animation. Just copy a frame and replicate in a new Animation/Frame to form a full smiley ball. Alter a few Pixels and run it through some basic Effects from the Effects Options on the Tool bar and you will have hundreds more versions to play with. Once you have built a full smiley from the generated Quarters, you could then run them through the colour rotator and create full Smileys at will in seconds.
Then all you need to do is create a Face/Add parts/Animate.
Always remember each Rotation/Effect or change to a Quarter/Full Smiley...
/Click and Save because you never know when you might need
the part or colour!
Generator 2:
That is 240 and shades and slight variants all in a single animation.
Alter a few Pixels and run it through some basic Effects from the Effects Options on the Tool bar and you will have hundreds more versions to play with.
Then all you need to do is create a Face/Add parts/Animate.
Always remember each Rotation/Effect or change to a Quarter/Full Smiley...
/Click and Save because you never know when you might need
the part or colour!
You can also use this method to identify colours and hues of web pages or Forum Styles and themes so that you can create/generate/replicate Smileys for them or just so you can gauge what shades and colours work well with other images. By using the Dropper Tool within your chosen Art program you can find out exact shades and matches by flicking through the shades you can auto generate in the correct colour, so finding that obscure hex or decimal colour code isn't such a hit and miss guess procedure.
Simply Post the Generator or your own version of a generator onto a web forum/web page where you want to sample the colour and watch for where it matches or clashes as it rotates through the colours.
Sample the chosen colour/shade with a Dropper tool, then select the Colour picker:
You can then copy and paste the hex/Dec of the chosen colour/shade from your Paint box Mixers Hex/Dec display where ever you want. Each shade or hue can be achieved by moving along the animation strip, thus making choosing colours much easier. Also aiding colour sampling from other Images or such while at it.
Some of this may seem overly simple, or common practice, but for the novices starting out they can prove very useful. Learning a few of the short cuts or handy processes is essential if you are trying to make batches of similar things, which is often the case with Animation and smiley making.
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Monday, 03 July 2006 14:40:55
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