Animated Gif

[DMerchen]

Not a bad thought, I will certainly give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Egg Bramhill]

Dave, very impressive work. The most outstanding part of the animation is the sparkling star sequences. Would you mind sharing how you created them?

[DMerchen]

Thank you for the response and the compliment. Here is the final image. I went with two darker yellow sparkles instead of the brighter yellow. So, I think I am happier with this result. I always liked the white background, and the sparkles stand out a bit more. Here is also the burgundy background with white lettering. That was interesting in itself. The font is scriptina, and it seems to be very narrow and light which I like, but it doesn't show up so well. So I duplicated it on top of itself twice. The bottom two are red and the top duplicate is white. I think it made and interesting effect. Please let me know what you think.

[DMerchen]

The construction of the gif was a little time consuming. It is a 40 frame animation. I used the base image as my background, and then I added each of the sparkles individually to the frames. The sparkles also fade in and back out, so I set up a grid of different size and shaded sparkles. I would choose a size and then start with number one and add it to a frame. Move to the next frame and add the next sparkle in sequence and align it to the first one using the guide lines. I just kept stepping it through until one particular sparkle had gone through the fade in and out animation. Some of the sparkles have shorter times, so I might start them on three and they would only go through a 9 step process. On each step I would add other sparkles and in each frame following I would move them slightly (one or two pixels) so it gave it a bit of a shimmer and movement effect. I hope all of this makes sense. Here is the images I used for the sparkles and the frame sequence to keep my head straight. Believe me, it didn't always work.

[iamtheblues]

Dave, the white text on burgundy is a bit special. Thanks too for the animated .gif construction details.
Saludos,
Bob.

[Egg Bramhill]

Thanks for taking the time to explain your technique Dave.

[Rhanna]

Top job on the animation Dave. Very eye catching, great colours.
Rupert

[amoore]

Looking good on both the white and the burgundy versions, Dave. Good move on the layering with the white text.

Something else I noticed in comparing the final versions — the way the angled ribbon end points so nicely to the space between the red portion of the business name and the black portion. It works particularly well in the burgundy version, perhaps because of the tighter visual margin on the left.