Tutorial animation Peek a Boo

You could make yours or use the one provide in the zip file. The one in the zip file have already been put together and some of the z-merge applied to it.

Since we are going to make the eyes and mouth move later on, these parts could not be merge together. When making a z-merge graphic all of your object need to be z-merge in the graphic.

Open a new canvas about 400x400 pixels, copy and paste all your head object onto this canvas. Open your bush into your workspace, copy and paste on top of the head in your 400x400 pixels canvas.

Select all your object to see where your head is under the bush, make sure the head is behind the top part of the bush.

Ok, now that everything is in place, we need to crop our canvas, no need for the extra space now. Click on the crop tool and select around your bush, just like in the example on the left.

Once done click the check mark on the top bar for ok.

Now, we are going to select all of our objects. Once done, click on the z-merge, that is the two little ball icon on the blue square on the image on the left.

Now at the top, put a check mark by clicking on it. This is the image you will see on the left.

All our objects stand on the same level here this is why we see some transparencies.

Before going any further, specially if you have made your own parts, you may want to save it as a ufo without merging anything.

Before we begin, let's open your layer manager.

Name your objects like I did with mine on the left. So this way we will know what we did to what.

I'm going to go through the step here in case you make your own head feature.

Let's click on the eye next to the bush, this will hide it.

Now, we only see the head feature here.

We are going to select both eyes, and set our z-merge to 28, or until there is no transparency in the eyes. (Note: the setting will depend on the graphic you did make so make sure you just don't see any transparency in your objects).

Great, you are doing good, let's move on.

Next, we are going to select the mouth, you could select your object just bt clicking on it without going out of the z-merge tool.

Set the z-merge the same as you did for your eyes objects.

Next we select the hat, and set our z-merge just a couple of numbers higher than our eyes until we have no more transparency and making sure the hat is above the eyes level.

Ok we are done with our head feature for now.

Let's unhide our bush by clicking again where the eye was in our layer manager.

This is what you will see on the left.

Select the bush and move the number up in the z-merge setting until the bush hide all the head features.

This is what you should see.

Since UGA 5 does not support the z-merge, we need to select all our object, copy and paste as a new image and merge our object as a single object. Once done, hide your background and save as a ufo naming it name001. This will be your first frame to use in UGA 5 to make your animation.

Once save, close it.

We are back with our working canvas, deselect all. Select your bush again, make sure you are still have the z-merge tool selected. We are going to make things appear through the bush now.

Set your z-merge level at about 41, making sure you see all the hat and only the hat part without any transparency on it.

Again, we are going to select all object, copy and paste as a new image. In our new image, making sure all our object is select we are going to merge as a single object, hide our background and save as name002.ufo. This is going to be our second frame for our animation. Close this window when you're done.

Next, we are going to make the eyes appear. Deselect all and select your bush.

Set your z-merge level at about 21, making sure all the eyes are showing without any transparencies.

Ok here, two black ball showing weren't that great, so did convert my eyes path shape into an object select one and use the paint brush, color white and paint some highlight in them, did repeat the step for the other eye. lolll look must better now.

Ok again we are going to select all our objects, copy and paste as a new image. In the new image, making sure again that all our objects is selected, we merge as single object, hide the background again and save as name003.ufo, once done close this window.

Back to our working window, deselect all again, select the bush, you should still have the z-merge tool selected if not select it.

Set the z-merge level at about -46, making sure you see all the head feature now, without any transparencies.

Repeat here: Once again, we are going to repeat the step, select all object, copy and paste as a new image, in the new image, all object selected, merge as single object, hide your background. End here.

Save as name004.ufo. Close this window.

We could stop here, but let's go a bit further by making him move his eyes.

Select both eyes and move them to the right facing you, just like in the image on the left.

Do the step above where it says Repeat here. Once done, save as name005.ufo. Vlose this window.

Now deselect all, select both eyes again and center them like if they were looking straight at you.

Repeat step from repeat here.

Save as name006.ufo, close this window once done.

One last step and we're ready to move on to animated it. Select the mouth, I did choose the edit tool to shape my mouth like an " 0 " just like if he was surprise. Once done, repeat the step Repeat here.

Save as name007.ufo , take note of the size of your canvas here, you will need to know it when we open UGA 5. Close this window.

Save all your parts if you haven't done so at the beginning where I told you, once done close it and now you may close PhotoImpact. We are going to open UGA 5 ( Ulead Gif Animator 5).

We are going to use the wisard, if it doesn't show up at the beginning go under file and select it. When the wisard open, it does ask us for the size of our animation, remember what yours was. Mine was 378x272 pixels. Put that info in and click next.

In the next window, we need to add all our images we did prepare in PI. Click on add image, navigate where you did save your images, select them all by holding the shift key and click ok.

Now with the left scroll bar, make sure that you have all the number in order, starting from 001 to 007. If not, click on the one that you need to change, hold the click down and drag where you want it.

Once everything is in order click ok, click ok again and again until your done with the wisard.

This is our 7 frames in order. As you could see all the frames have the same property delay at 0.25 sec. We are going to change that.

Select the three first frame together, right click and choose properties and set the delay at 45. Click ok. Next, select 4:Frame , 5:Frame and 6:Frame , right click and choose properties and set the delay at 55, click ok. And for the last, 7:Frame, right click and choose properties and set the delay at 65.

You could preview if you want, but don't you think this is a little big for an animation? We sure need to resize it down for sure, this will bring down the kb size and it will upload faster, those on dialup connection sure will appreciated it.

Go under edit on the top bar and choose Resize Image.

Put a check mark in the Keep aspect ratio box by clicking on it.

I have put 200 pixel for the highest side and choose quality Best. Once done click ok.

Wow!! It sure did bring it down quite a bit but all for the best, by choosing the quality at Best, our image did keep it's focus and haven't got blurry which is very good.

Now go and look at your preview, if you don't like the timing between each frame, you could go back and change them in the property of each frame.

I'm going to leave mine as is.

Hey, we did great here by resizing down our image, we got it under 45 kb and get a download time 00'07" @56 k and we have our preset at photo 256 color.

I'm pretty please with it, so I will save my animation as a transparent gif format.

Peek-a-Boo!! this is my result.

This is the chef, do you remember him....hehehe I did this one a while back when the z-merge featured did appear in PI.

Oh! Oh! What is he doing? loll the little Devil stealing our snack hahahaha!!!!

Don't forget to show result at PhotoImpact International, I would love to see it. The animation forum is the right place to show your animation.

If you are not a member, you just have to register, it is free.

Hope you did learn something new and had as much fun as I did had to write the tutorial for you. If you need help you could always contact me.