Hi! So, I got bored and decided I’ll be teaching the basic techniques of how to achieve these two gifs from my Laura Palmer x A-Bunch-of-Things-Gifset!
✦ 1:
✦ 2:
Now, a lot of will be similar to my previous gif tutorial from here, but it's disctinct enough I decided to do another one. Let's go to the tutorial! [all tutorials] [all graphic edits]
Because I no longer have the same movie, I will be using this gif of Lawrence's photo from Saw, which has the same colors and vibe, for both my examples. Ignore the "group" layer on my example images, I did it all again before teaching to make sure it worked, and then grouped the layers so it'd be easier for me to showcase it.
Ok, so for the explosion shape: Open a new document, grab the line tool...
And… Draw. That's it. You can free hand this, you can also get an example off of the internet and trace on top of it. Either is fine. These are my settings and an example, half thing:
Make sure to draw the entire shape and close all lines so it is a contained thing. We'll be selecting the inside of the shape later on, so this is important for the magic wand to not select anything outside of it. Also, if you get any overlap, move the individual lines accordingly with the arrow keys until they align.
Then, select all lines, right click, merge all shapes into one big thing, like so:
This is it. Now you have an explosion effect. Now, open your gif. Take this shape and paste it on top of a new layer, on top of your frames like so.
It might look too big, so resize it until it looks good (it doesn't have to fit perfectly, mine don't).
Once you're satisfied, make a new layer over your previous frames. Paint bucket it whatever color you feel like (in my case it was red), the color is not important right now. From here on, it's basically the same as usual: Right click, resterize layer, and use the magic wand to select the middle of it, like so.
Then, select the layer underneath the resterized one and delete the middle so the gif will show through. Connceal the shape or delete it because you don't need it anymore (or keep it if you think it looks neater, cause it does lol, though the lines always look a little frayed, this isn't a perfect art). Et voila, a perfectly good explosion gifset.
For the lettering, I just used Arial Black, and flipped it slightly.
Then you can edit, add the colors you want. I didn't make mine as gritty as the original this time, but here is the full example:
Now, onto the second gif!
Open the gif as usual. Now go back to your capture folder (wherever that is) and open one of the frames used in the same gif as well. It could be any frame, but it's better if it's a middle frame so the gif meets it instead of starting with it, for a better effect. Take this static frame, resize it so it meets the original gif's height and weight, and paste it on top of the original gif, like so.
(I realize now that it doesn't translate, but know that this is the static image on top of the gif. Trust). Make sure the image is properly aligned, or the effect doesn't take (unless you're going for a more 3D thing). After you're satisfied, set it at 50% opacity:
You can then add a gradient map of whatever color you want. Since this was already a red gif, the effect was obvious right away, though I made the gif underneath the frame a little darker using levels. Doing this without a gradient map, on a regular gif makes it even more dizzying. It's also best to have this type of gif a little slowed, as to not cause nausea (but that's up to the creator, honestly). Anyway, edit, sharpen it, do all that good stuff. Then, use Arial Black again (though I think the original was Arial Bold Italic, but it can honestly be whatever you want), and here it is:
The only difference is that Laura's gif has a black border, but I taught how to do that in this tutorial already, so head there if you wanna find out (also, remember that photoshop already has a rounded rectangle tool, something I overlooked during my first tutorial lol).
Here are my drop shadow settings as well (these change all the time though):
Keep in mind, that finished and with the white to balance it, this gif is usually less heavy than the previous one, which is helpful in heavier edits in general (like my web weaving ones are).
Anyway, this is it! It couldn't be more simple. See ya!
