Animated Snowglobes
This is what we will be making today:
I am going to be working in Photoshop, but this should easily translate into Paint Shop Pro. I will try to explain both for anything that is more advanced :)
First things first, open your line art and recolor the various areas of the snowglobe :)
For an outdoor scene like I am doing you may want to fill in the globe with a "sky" color. I am using a light blue :)
alternatively you can omit a sky color and leave this transparent, but for this tutorial, you're gonna want to give it a color..
On a new layer, lets draw a line in for the horizon. I am using a low saturation medium-dark blue since I am making the ground snowy.
Clean up any pixels from outside of the globe
On a new layer, with floodtool set to contigious and use all layers in PS or sample merged and RGB in PSP, fill in the area with some snowy white ^_~
On a new layer, lets draw a little tree. Your tree doesn't have to be perfect, when they are this small, any kind of mess will usually due :p I like pine trees for winter scenes, so that's what I tried to go for.
Duplicate your tree layer a few times and spread them across the horizon similar to above. Once you have them how you like them, merge all of the tree layers together. In PS, you click the link icon spot next to the eye spot on the layer palette for each of the trees then go to Layers >> Merge Linked. In PSP, make the other layers invisible then go to Layers >> Merge Visible. Afterward you will want to make your other layers visible again
Clean up any pixels that go outside of the globe with your eraser tool.
Now make a large circle to represent the sun on a new layer. Use any shade of yellow you like, I took the gold out of my globe base and lightened it quite a bit.
Pull the sun layer down below the layer you created for the ground in your layers palette. ( Click and drag it ) Then lower the sun until it looks like it is setting against the horizon. You may have to clean up some misplaced pixels. Go ahead and do that :)
Now lets add some shadow on the snow where the trees block the sun and the globe rounds at the bottom
Now lets shade the globe a bit. I used pretty standard shading here, just some slightly darker shades of the fill color I used. I didn't want to distract attention from the scene itself.
Now go to the layer with the sky color fill and use your wand tool to select it. Make sure Use All Layers is NOT checked. Same for SAMPLE MERGED in PSP.
Add a new layer and use a slightly darker yellow then the fill of the sun to draw some rays coming out from it.
Now use Gaussian Blur ( adjust radius to your tastes but this is 2.0 for me in PS )
Set your layer properties for your sun rays to Color. You may also try Color Dodge, Lighten, Screen, Hard Mix... Fool around and see what works for you. If all else fails go into Brightness / Contrast and fiddle with that until it looks good to you. DO NOT DESELECT. We want to keep the current selection for our next step.
And that is what we have so far :)
On a new layer at the top of the layers palette, with your sky area still selected, let's add some more of the shading to the top area of the globe. Use the same color you used for the snow shading.
Lower the opacity of the layer until it looks good to you...
Add a new layer, and draw some larger white "glare" highlights as outlined in red above.
Apply a guassian blur, I used about 1.5 radius. This gives the globe a dreamier feeling.
Almost forgot to shade the snowflake. I just added some darker strips diagonally. Shade to your preference.
Now add a new layer, and with white, draw some itty bitty snowflakes. For this globe I've made mine shaped like crosses..
Duplicate that last layer and move the snowflakes down some. Now add a few more toward the top of the globe.
Duplicate that layer and move it down some, this time dont worry about adding snowflakes to the top of the globe.
In all honesty, making snow for a globe this small requires no exact or precise technique. Pretty much anything will come out nicely. So do what you think looks best :)
Each of those layers of snowflakes, are a frame for your animation. So however you save frames for your animation program, set them up now. For Adobe Image Ready it's just a matter of making layers visible and invisible once you have it transferred to Image Ready. I don't recall that being an option in Animation Shop unfortunately.
Now move your project into Image Ready or Animation Shop. I havent used Animation Shop in well over a year, so I am going to have to trust that you know how to operate your graphics program ^_~
For the first frame make the first snowflake layer from the bottom visible and the other snowflake layers invisible. I set my delay time to 2 tenths of a second ( 0.2 sec. ) Add a new frame, make the first snowflake layer invisible and the second visible, same delay time.Add a new frame, make the second snowflake layer invisible and the third visible, same delay time. Now add another layer, on this one make the third invisible and the second visible again, same delay time. Now press the little "play" symbol in your animation window and preview your snowglobe. Save it as a transparent gif and you are all done :)
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