Animation Tutorial

1. Take your animation pictures with your digital camera. (See “Taking animation pictures" Tutorial) and load them into your computer.
2. Download the animation templates from our website and store them on your computer. (See “Animation Templates”)
3. Have an appropriate imaging program loaded on your computer to manipulate these files. We suggest that you have Adobe Photoshop for using layers to put your images into the Template and Adobe Image Ready to preview your animation. If you don’t want to do any of this, we can do it for you for a fee. (See Animation FAQ Q8). If you don’t have Photoshop or Image Ready you can purchase it from Adobe (see link) or used or new versions on ebay (see link) which run from $50 and up. Some versions of Photoshop have both programs bundled together.

4. For those that want to avoid the fee and have fun preparing your own images, adding text etc. follow our tutorial to prepare the images for our 3D printer.

This tutorial presupposes having Adobe Photoshop or another suitable imaging program and the knowledge to perform the functions needed to prepare the files to these instructions. If you don’t have what is necessary to do it yourself, we can do it for you for a fee.

1. Download our template from our website. See (Download Animation Templates).
2. Load the animation images from your digital camera into your computer. (see Taking animation pictures Tutorial). Or use computer generated animation images if you want.
3. Open Photoshop and load your animation pictures. To keep it from being unwieldy I suggest only loading 5 pictures or so. Often a very good animation only has 2 images (flip animation).
4. Because the images were taken following our directions (see Taking animation pictures Tutorial) there should not be too much preparation work needed to get it ready for printing. If the animations were taken in a hurry or were not able to be done following our tutorial there may be more time needed to adjust the images to make them suitable.
5. First you are going to take the camera images and put them into a PSD file putting one on top of another until you have 5 layers. Label them “Image 1, Image 2 and so on…”
6. Go to each layer and align each layer on a stationary object in the scene that does not animate. When all layers are aligned, click the “eye balls” on and off to check the alignment. If properly aligned the stationary objects should stay stationary and not move or “twitch” as little as possible. Of course, the moving objects will move frame by frame. The moving objects should be as clear and in focus in each frame as possible for best results.
7. You can add more or subtract frames as you wish in the layered file although I recommend not having more than 14 images. You can also duplicate frames if desired.
8. Look over your frames and the action in them and analyze the flow of the action. It is sometimes pleasing that the action will repeat in a cycle so that action repeats itself smoothly. Rearrange, discard or add frames as necessary to get them the way you like.
9. After the frames are arranged as you like, you trim the edges and crop it generally to the aspect ratio that you want. Save the layered file at full resolution. Call it “name-layer”. After saving it, reduce the image size to around 500 pixels wide which is a smaller file size. Save that as “name-layer small”
10. Now you are going to preview the animation. Open Image Ready and load the “name-layer small” file. Create an animation from your layered file. Use frame by frame and have it repeat. Use 0.1 sec delay so that the animation doesn’t go too fast. Ideally the animation will have a flow to it and won’t look like it is “snapping” back to the beginning. Experiment with more and less frames until you achieve the animation that you are looking for. Save the animation as a gif file “name-animation” for your reference.
11. After you have the animation the way that you like, you are going to prepare the animation for lenticular printing. First you note the layer order and layer titles in the desired animation. You go to your original layered high resolution file “name-layer” in Photoshop and make the layers match the order as in the small file animation “name-animation” Save the new layered file as “name-layer final”.
12. Your finished animation has to be prepared and placed into a template box for us to make into a film negative for our 3D print machine. We provide you with a template (See Animation Templates) for you to paste your animation images into. These have been previously downloaded on to your computer.
13. You are now going to prepare your animation frames for pasting into the template. You take your “name-layer final” and resize it to 1946 pixels H X 2502 pixels W. This is for a landscape (horizontal) 3R (3.5”H X 4.5”W) lenticular. You resize it to 1652 H X 2478 W for a 4R (4”H X 6”W) lenticular. If you want, you can stretch or squeeze your image to fit these sizes as well as resizing and/or cropping. These sizes give you an animation to the full size of the card. If you want a size different from these aspect ratios printed then you make the longest side of the picture match these pixels and let the rest of the width or height go. This means the finished lenticular animation will have the right aspect ratio of the picture for you but won’t fill up the card completely. The blank excess can be cut off with scissors if necessary. This paragraph deals with pictures that are square to landscape mode.
14. If you have portrait (vertical) animation pictures, you can put 2 up onto a lenticular print. You will crop your portrait picture to 1946 pixels H X 1251 pixels W. This will give two-3.5”H X 2 ¼”W animations on a 3R size card. Similarly you can crop your portrait picture to 1652 H X 1239 W for two-4”H X3”W animations on a 4R size card. Finally you can crop your portrait picture to 1785 H X 1250W for two-5”H X 3.5”W animations on a 5R size card. Similar to Paragraph 13 instructions if you have an aspect ratio that is basically portrait mode but isn’t exactly the right fit you make the longest side fit and let the rest go.
15. After your image is sized accordingly, you can add a text layer if you wish at this time. Now you are going to paste your frames into the templates. You bring up the appropriate template. Each template file can accept 2 frames. If you have a flip (2 image) animation, you will use a single template file. For a flip animation you prepare the template by leaving the word “flip” in the middle, the size and “1” above the left box and “2” above the right box. You turn your layered-final file 90 degrees clockwise so the image is sideways. You take layer 1 from the file and paste it into the left box. Because it has been sized properly it will fit exactly. If you have a size that is a different aspect ratio, make it fit into the bottom left corner. Then take layer 2 from the file and paste it into the right hand box. Flatten the image and save as a tiff file as name- 3R (or whatever the template was) flip-final. This is now sent to us ( See “Send us finished files”) for making into a negative and then printed.
16. If you have a portrait mode image flip, you follow the instructions in Paragraph 14 as well. When pasting the images into the boxes you put 2 copies in instead of one. Again because they have been sized correctly the 2 copies will exactly fit side by side in the one box. If you have a size that is a different aspect ratio, make the first image fit into the bottom left corner. Make the second image fit above the first one right against it on the left side of the box. Flatten the image and proceed as in Paragraph 15.
17. If you have more than 2 images (flip) in your animation you will have to make up a separate finished file for each 2 images of your animation. For instance a 4 image animation will need 2 files, a 6 image will need 3 files and so on. For an odd number of animations you proceed 2 at a time and then make the last file with only a single image in one box. You then fill the unused box with a solid colour to eliminate it. (See our sample setup in our Tutorial). When composing the multiple files, it is important to have Image 1 and 2 in the first flattened image labeled as “name-A--3R-final”. The next file will have Image 3 and 4 and is labeled “B-…..”, the third file has Images 5 and 6 and is labeled “C-….” And so on. It doesn’t matter if the last file is 2 images or one, just flatten it and label it as the last alphabet letter in the sequence.
18. After the multiple animation files are finished. See "Send us finished files" Tutorial to have them made into negatives and printed. Note that multiple frames of animation cost more than a flip animation. See Animation Price List.