God Bless America Blinkie

This tutorial is wrote for PSP 7 and should work in other versions as well. Please do not copy or redistribute this tutorial as your own. This tutorial will also work with other words and styles. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see examples of how this tutorial can work. Please be patient while images load.

First download this flag to your hard drive.

You will need to use the "Agent Orange" font for this tutorial. It seems to work the best. You can get that font by clicking here. Unzip the font into your windows/font directory. Ok lets create a patriotic God Bless America.

First open up a new image 350X50.

Next go to your text tool and use all the settings you see below. Color does not matter at this time.

Deselect...now using your

magic wand tool click on your image outside of the words. Next go to Selections-->Invert.

Now you should see marching ants on the outside of your words.

Now open up the flag.jpg that you should have already downloaded. Now go to you color palette and click on the background color and choose pattern.

Now click on the pattern that comes up.

A box will pop up, locate the flag pattern inside and click ok, it should look like this.

Now flood fill your words with the flag pattern.

Now deselect and go back to your text tool, and use the same words and size as before, and position the words over top your words with the flag pattern.

Next go back to your color palette and choose 2 colors, one for foreground and one for background. I chose #FFFFFF and #C00000. Next you are going to use gradients. Start with your foreground color and click on the gradient icon.

It should automatically come up as "sunburst gradient" but in case it doesn't then click on the color palette and a gradient box will pop up and you can switch it to "sunburst".

Now using your foreground "gradient", floodfill the text and you will notice that it only goes into the outline of your text. Your image should look like this.

Now you need to make a copy of your image, so hit shift D and you should have 2 images that are the same.

Now on your color palette you will see 2 arrows in between your foreground and your background colors, click on that and this will switch your gradient to your background color now, thus changing the postion of your colors in your gradient.

Now using your background gradient flood fill the words on your second image. Your second image should now look different from your original.

Now if you want you can go to Effects-->3Deffects-->inner bevel, if you would like your words to be beveled, just be sure you do it to both images. Now deselect both images and save both as a psp file, remember where you save it to. I like to have a seperate folder that I can save stuff to, easier to find that way.

Now open up Animation Shop. In the upper left hand corner click on the animation wizard icon.

Below are the boxes that will pop up as you click next, follow all of it as you see in the examples below.

Now you come to adding your images. Click on add images, and locate the images and click next.

Then you will click finish and you will see your 2 images pop up on your screen. You can click on the "view animation" icon on the upper far right.

. And there ya go...your Patriotic God Bless America.

If you like this tutorial and would like to link to it, then link to txhartnsoul.150m.com/tutorials/patriotic_blinkie.html.

Here are some examples of other text you can blink. Images should be added to your text before you make the copy of your original.