Twinkling Stars

**diana** · 09 August 2006, 01:15 AM

I gave it a try with fading in, although it would need several more frames to make the fades look better. It's a different look, but only five frames. It is based on a 5 frame 29x29 pixel single star fade/blink animation I made up tonight. I pasted that star fade/blink animation to each of the 5 frames of a still star filled background so they wouldn't go on and off at the same time. Then I pasted the text to all five frames of the stars over the background with twinkling stars and adjusted the frame speed. Almost too much holiday tree looking maybe but I thought I'd give it a go even though you've done a nice one already.

**jamesmc** · 09 August 2006, 03:37 AM

Another version of twinkling stars. This one has I believe has more twinkle factor as it appears on the screen very briefly.

Same basic technique as I used earlier, except:

I used 3 frames for a star change. Each successive frame has a star point, 2 sizes smaller than the previous, i.e.; 12,10,8 or 8,10,12.

So in the first three frames it would pan out like this.

Frame 1: size 12 star Frame 2: size 10 star Frame 3: Size 8 star

I kept the time on screen very brief, with a few longer frames. I didn't try bigger sizes. This small size may be very difficult to see or appreciate, but does twinkle more than the previous version. After thinking about it, I noticed that when light fades out in a short period of time, it doesn't disappear. What it does is get smaller, at least to our perception. If one can imagine a circle around a star and that circle is representative of light. As the the light fades, the circle will grow smaller and thus dimmer. It does it at particularly fast speed, so it appears to twinkle.

That's all for now. On your design, I would incorporate some twinkly designs in the letter themselves. One could probably work up the twinkle effect so it looks like gold glittering, if the shape was changed to a square or some other shape. Would have to be smaller than 8 point maybe even 4-6 point.

Again, you can right click on the image below to save as for further examination of what I did.

**jamesmc** · 09 August 2006, 04:26 AM

Here's the text in a glitter form. This was easier than the stars.

Make a gold looking text.
Insert your text.
Copy that frame to Animation Shop, make 5 copies (6 frames.)
Export frame 1 to PSPro
Select Paint Brush, size to 3 pixels, white foreground and background.
Pepper the each of the letters lightly, including edges with the 3 pixel, white brush. Not too heavily, but please do experiment.
Repeat the procedure for each of the five remaining frames, randomly peppering the letters with 3 pixel white paint brush stamps. Just lightly touch and move on to next spot.
One could probably get away with another color as well, in addition to the white, but more experimentation would be required.

Again, copy the GIF animation to see what I've done and some suggested frame timing. Experiment and improve it.

I got a little heavy handed on the stroke for the Letter "I" in GLITTER, as you can see it sticks out a bit and looks not too much like glitter. So, stroke lightly.

**inphoenix** · 09 August 2006, 12:52 PM

Dear Jamesmc,

O thank you so much for the other examples. I really like the glittered text because hubby suggested not to use a black background.

Dear Diana,

I did try the 'fade' in the Animation Shop but could see no change. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong as I find PSP extremely difficult. I'm so used to CorelDraw/CorelPaint. But you gave me something else to work on later as I want to learn more and more about PSP. Please let me know what font you used for Night Sky. I really like it.

Dear Seagull,

Wow!!! What a wonderful perspective. See, I'm not a web designer and I totally have my focus on the logo/banner. I really want to thank you so much for your honest opinion. It is so greatly appreciated. You just saved me many hours of change/tweaking/etc.... that I'm sitting here with a huge smile.

I did learn a lot, though, as this is the very first time I've used PSP for anything. I find it extremely difficult and will probably stay with CorelDraw/CorelPaint. I still have not gotten the hang of even selecting an object in PSP and when the tools are active or not.

I would like to thank those that helped me with the twinkling as I mentioned before, I learned a lot!!!

Again I think you hit the nail on the head with what we focus on at a site. I too will leave a site if it takes too long for my impatient self.

:-)

**diana** · 10 August 2006, 02:43 AM

Originally Posted by inphoenix

I did try the 'fade' in the Animation Shop but could see no change. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong as I find PSP extremely difficult. I'm so used to CorelDraw/CorelPaint. But you gave me something else to work on later as I want to learn more and more about PSP. Please let me know what font you used for Night Sky. I really like it.

I did the fade effect in PSP by pasting a star on a layer and duplicating the layer 4 times. Then I resized the stars gradually smaller and smaller for each layer which makes them appear to fade out. I saved a psd file and opened it in Animation Shop to continue putting the animation together.

The font I used for NightSky is a commercial font named SandyTextHmk. It came with the 2003 and/or 2004 versions of Hallmark Card Studio but don't know if it is included with the newer versions.