Make Your Dolls Blink!

I claim the copyright to this tutorial. You are free to do whatever you please with what you make, but please do not take my tutorial. Do not send the tutorial through email. Only share my link.

This tutorial was created for some friends of mine who wanted to begin learning more about PSP. It is intended for beginners to learn how to make dolls blink. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

This tutorial uses tubes that I have made. But you are always welcome to use your own image of a face. If you are a beginner, then you will probably want an image with large eyes. Click on the link to download the zipped file of my doll face, then unzip into a folder onto your hard drive. Download Tubes

To do this tutorial you will also need Paint Shop Pro. I used Paint Shop Pro 7.04 . You may download a free trial at Jasc.

Remember to save as a psp file often!

Before we begin, you might want to study the PSP tool bars. I have labeled the tools on another page. Click on the link and it will open a new page. You may want to keep this page open while you work on the tutorial, to refer to the names now and then. PSP Tools

Now that you have studied the tools, let's begin!

1. Open the file face.gif that you downloaded. (or open the face file that you are using.)

2. In the Layer Palette, right-click on Layer 1 (Doll) and select duplicate. Then right-click on Layer 2 (Duplicate) and rename to blinking. Click on the eye glasses for Layer 1 to hide that layer. There should be a red x where the glasses were.

3. In the left tool menu, choose the magnifying glass. With the magnifying glass, LEFT-click on the image 5 times (or more) to get a close-up view of the face. This will save your eyes!

4. Change the foreground color to black. From the left tool menu, choose the paintbrush tool. Set the Tool Options box to size=1, hardness=10, opacity=100, step=25, and density=100.

5. With the paint brush, make a black bottom line under the eye. (Do one ye if you want your doll to wink. Do both eyes if you want your doll to blink). In the top tool bar menu, Click File--Save as, and save the file as dollblink.psp somewhere on your pc. I like to place mine in a work-in-progress folder.

6. From the left tool menu, choose the eye dropper to pick up the lightest shade of eyelid color. You don't want the shade to be too dark, or it will make your doll look like she has a black eye. *S* If the doll didn't have eyeshadow color, then use a shade of skin that is near the eye. After choosing this color, LEFT-click with the eye dropper to make this color the foreground color.

7. Choose the paintbrush again from the left tool menu, and use the same settings as in #4. With the paintbrush, color each pixel above the black eye line with that selected lid color (foreground color).

8. From the top menu bar, click on View--Normal viewing. This changes back to normal size so that you can check your closed eyes. If the eye shadow looks to dark, magnify the image again and change the eye shadow to a lighter shade of that color.

9. In the Layer Palette, click on the red x of Layer 1 to unhide that layer. Right-click on Layer 1, and select duplicate. Duplicate Layer 1 4x so that you end up with 5 copies of that layer (and your blinking layer)--a total of 6 layers altogether.

10. Click File--Save.

11. Open up the Jasc Animation Shop, by clicking File--JASC Software Products--Launch Animation Shop.

12. Open the file you saved by clicking on the yellow folder and finding the dollblink.psp file that you have just saved. When the file opens, all 6 layers will be there.

13. At the top, click on Edit--Select all.

14. RIGHT-click on one of the frames , and select frame properties. Change the display time to 25. Click ok.

15. Now Save your animation: Click File--Save As.