Viva Mexico!

I wrote this Tutorial on the 31st of August 2007, any similarity to any other tutorial is coincidental.

I have used PSP X in making this tutorial.

I am using the Gorgeous art of Popeye Wong, you can find his art HERE

YOU WILL NEED

* A font of choice

* Eyecandy 4000

* Viva tube by Popeye Wong HERE. Click on picture to download tube.

* Cactus animation of choice. If you google cactus animation you should find something you can use.

* MuRas Perspective Tiling Filter HERE.
MuRa TOU - This filter collection is Freeware. You can use them freely and distribute them without modifying.
But it is forbidden to sell them without permission of the author.

* Background made by me in PSPX HERE

LET'S BEGIN!

1. Open a blank canvas 500 x 500 and fill with white.

2. Copy and paste your background as a new layer. Select your selection rectangle tool and make a selection like this...

3. Add a new raster layer and fill your selection with a green shade, I used #3a963a. Repeat the step again but this time fill with white. Repeat again and this time fill with a red colour I used #c5221f. Deselect and rearrange your colours so they resemble something like this...

4. When you are happy with your placement of your colour strips, merge the 3 colours together.

5. Open a new canvas 400 x 400 and floodfill with black. Set your preset shape tool to Heart 1 that came with PSP and with the foreground on the materials palette closed and the background white, draw out a heart 230 x 230 pixels. Make sure your cursor is in the top left corner of your canvas with x and y on 0. Convert to raster. Cut and paste the heart layer to centre it on your canvas. Apply MuRas Perpective Tiling filter at the settings below. Merge the layers and save as a jpeg. Load this to your PSP Masks folder (call it vivaheartsmask or something similar).

6. Apply the mask to the coloured strip layer on your original canvas with these values and merge group.

7.On the same layer add a grad glow with the Fat preset white with these settings

8.Select your rectangle selection tool again and draw a rectangle around your mask layer like this

9.Add a new raster layer and take this layer Below your mask layer and fill your selection with Black.Deselect and repeat the Gradient glow settings again and add a drop shadow to the layer, I used 0,0,40,5.00 Black.

10. Now add your tube, I mirrored mine, position and add a drop shadow to it...Resize if needed. Select your Font, I used 2 Peas Airplanes with 2 stroke FG black and alternated the colours of green, white and red as we had used before to resemble the colours of the mexican flag. I also added the gradient glow to the text layers and the same drop shadow too.

11.Resize and crop your tag, add the copyright and your watermark...X out your tube and text layers,Merge your backgrounds visible and take it to animation shop.

12. Open your Fleurs.gif and duplicate your tag so there is 4 frames. Select all, copy and paste your animation into your frames of your tag.Change the speed of the frames to 15.

13. Go back to PSP and merge the tube and text layers and take them to animation shop, duplicate so you have 4 frames and copy and paste into your tag...View your animation, if you are happy with it save it as a .gif

We are done! I hope you enjoyed doing this tutorial, Sharon.

Here is another variation if you don't want to animate...