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 PAINT SHOP PRO AND ANIMATION SHOP

MY TUTORIALS

LITTLE MERMAID

Bubbles effect

This tutorial was inspired by another tutorial made a long time ago by Titoune called 'Beauty's Kingdom' and translated in italian by Pinuccia here, yet unfortunately, this specific tutorial is unavailable in english.

That aside, I want to thank Pinuccia for all her translations of Titoune's tutorials and thereby, avoiding that those tutorials disappear into the clouds and become unavailable anymore.

To realize it, I have used a beautiful kit by Linda's site 'My Tagging Addiction'  called 'Tales of the Deep Blue Sea'.  You will also need Simone's animation 'SimoneAni371'.

All her animations are in her site 'Scrappy Bit of Fun' as well as her tutorials for Animation Shop fans!!  You can use any other kit or images that you like, of course.  You will need Animation Shop for either the bubble version or the tropical ocean waves. It is a different animated version of this Little Mermaid as you can see:

Waves effect

I have made this tutorial with PSPX on March 21, 2025, and
tested/corrected it on April 14, 2025.
Thank you to respect my work and the other creators work.
Don’t hesitate to write to me here if you have any trouble with this tutorial and I’ll try to help as best as I can.

Decompress the zipped files, open the files and save them somewhere in your PSP folder where you will find them later on.  Make duplicates of your images to preserve originals. 
Save your work often as pspimage with all your layers just
in case your PSP crashes!!

If you use your own images, some steps, like the offsets, could need different settings.

Materials
Scrapkit from Linda
SimoneAni371.gif 
Background image made by me with Bing's Image Creator

1
Open a new transparent image of 800 x 600 px
Selections - Select all

2
Select one of the images 'background' furnished in the Materials
Back to your work, Paste it into the selection
Layers - Duplicate
(keep the selection active)

On the duplicate (top layer)
Selections - Modify - Contract 50 px
Selections - Invert
Adjust - Blur - Radial blur

3
Effects - User Defined Filter - Emboss 7

4

Selections - Invert
Effects - 3D effects - Chisel with color #1b589c

Keep selected

5

Layers - Duplicate
(now, we have 2 layers of the border)
On this duplicate layer (the 2nd border of 50 px)
Effects - 3D Effects - Cutout with color #6699cc

Selections - Select none

6
We have these layers:

7
Highlight the bottom layer
Layers - Duplicate
On the duplicate, Effects - Geometric effects - Circle

8
On the circle layer, Image - Resize at 80% uncheck 'Resize all layers'
You now have these layers:

9

On the circle layer
Effects - 3D effects 5 / 5 / 50 / 20 with color black

Repeat the drop shaddow effect with the negative settings
Layers - Merge visible

10
Open, Copy/Paste as a new layer 'image 5' (bubbles)
Image - Resize at 80% uncheck 'Resize all layers'
Effects - Image effects - Offset

Open, Copy/Paste as a new layer 'element 21' (anchor)
Image - Resize at 50% uncheck 'Resize all layers'
Effects - Image effects - Offset

Effects - Plugins - Alien Skin Eye Candy Impact 5 - Perspective shadow

11
Open, Copy/Paste as a new layer 'element 4' (mermaid)
Image - Resize at 80% uncheck 'Resize all layers'
Effects - Plugins - Alien Skin Eye Candy Impact 5 - Perspective shadow, same settings

12
Open, Copy/Paste as a new layer 'element 38' (aquatic plant)
Image - Resize at 50% uncheck 'Resize all layers'
Effects - 3D effects - Drop shadow with same settings as before but color #113947

I think there are enough elements in this image; feel free to select whatever elements for the completion of your under the sea image. 

When you are satisfied, you can add text if you like, then sign your image before saving it.

If you want to animate it, like I did, save it as a psp image.
In step 13, you will obtain the image with the Bubbles and
in step 14, you will obtain the image with the Waves effect.

13 - Bubbles effect
Open your Animation Shop
Open your image just saved as a jpg or as a psp image as a new animation
Animation - Resize animation to 80%
Select Frame 1, Copy it and Paste it after current frame
Repeat this in order to obtain a total of 24 identical frames

Open 'SimoneAni371'
Edit - Select all,  Edit - Copy
Back to your image with the mermaid, you should have 24 frames
Highlight Frame 1 - Edit - Select all
Edit - Paste into selected frames and click about where you see the bubble in the red oval in the screenshot below:

Click on the Cinema icon  to see the animation and if you like it, add your watermark in the same way, using the Propagate Paste icon and clicking in the "Paste into selected Frame' icon.  Save your result as a gif.

14 - Waves effect
Open your Animation Shop
Open your image just saved as a jpg or as a psp as a new animation
Animation - Resize animation to 80%
Effects - Insert image effect
Select Animation Frame and in the Effect, select Underwater
In Define effect, enter the following settings:
Effect length at 1.1 secs
Frames per second at 7
Then click on Customize

When you do, the image below will come up; here are the explanations of this image:
1- The Vector area (inside the red square):  here, we make the wave vectors (looks like a star with many rays) we pull a line from the center going outward.
for the wave that I used in this tutorial, there are 12 lines and any line can be deleted by extending it outside of the grey square. Try to be as precise as you can but when you are done, do not pass on the Vector area as it will change your settings; you can play with these vectors, adding or removing them and trying other wave effects.
2- The Effects zone: check 'Apply sunlight dappling' and set 'Sunlight intensity' at 10
3- In Liquid properties, Set 'Water depth' at 30
4- In the Waves zone: set the Wave at 1, X at 30 and Y at 30,
then, hit your Enter key (so that you don't pass over the Vector area)

You obtain an animation with 8 frames but frame 1 has no effect on it so delete frame 1. You can admire your beautiful wave effect by clicking on the Cinema icon. Don't forget to add your watermark in your result and save your result as a gif.

Here is another example with the Underwater effect:

I truly hope that you enjoyed doing this tutorial and that making waves and bubbles will inspire you for other beautiful creations!! Send me your result here and I will be honoured to add them in this page, below.

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