Animations » Blinkies
First, what is a blinky? It is a small image that has blinking text on. You can write whatever you want on it, but the longer word, the more work it is making it.
This is my blinky:
Open a blank sheet in PSP.
Make a small square with black edges and the color you want for filling. Make it as big as one route, which will contain one letter. To make a square, choose the tool called Preset Shapes, and looks like this:
Set the settings in the Tool option box (if you don’t have that little box open, press the letter o on your key board) like you see on my image here:
That is, the square shape, create as vector (so you can change the size of the square if you’re not happy with the size after you let go of the mouse button) and line width 1. In “styles”, make the top color black (it’s the border) and the color under should be the color you want as filling.
Ok, this is my first route:
Instead of fiddling with making the next 100 in the exact same size, just press ctrl + C then ctrl + E (copy and paste as new selection), and place the route next to the previous route. Make one route for each letter or space in the text. I use a blank route between two words. This is my empty line of routes:
Now, write the letters in black in each route (my image is enlarged so you can see it better):
Now, write a new letter in a new color over the first letter. Um, yes, strange sentence, just look at the pic under:
Now, copy the image and paste it into AS3. Then, in psp, press ctrl + z (undo) until all letters are black again. Then do the same thing to the next letter. Keep the 1st letter black, and make letter number 2 in a lighter color:
Paste the new image into AS3, then do the next letter… and so on. That’s why it takes so long to make long blinkies. You can’t make the effect in AS3, you have to make each slide in PSP, there is no easy way out, so you can just make one image blink with it’s letters ;)
My blinky’s slides in AS3:
The longer the line of text is (the more routes the blinky has) the faster the blinky should blink. So for my 5 routed blinky I have set the display time to 10. If you have a long blinky, reduce it to 3 perhaps. To change the display time, select all the slides in AS3 (crtl + a) then go to Animation in the top tool bar. Clik on “Frame properties”. And change the Display time in the box that pops up.
Now, save as a .gif file. Upload it to your photobucket account, and put the code on your hl page :D