Blinkie tutorial

Here's a tutorial so you can learn how to make blinkies.

Here's what we want our blinkie to look like :

1- Click on the little sheet.

2- Make sure the image you'll create will be 150 pixels wide and 20 pixels high.

3- It's gonna look like this... if not, you put the wrong numbers in the wrong places...

4- Now, create a new layer by clicking on the two little sheets in the Layers palette. Or else, click on Layers>New Bitmap layer.

5- Now, take the brush tool. Be sure it's 1 pixel high and 1 pixel wide.

6- Now, be sure you're in the layer you created. Don't draw the dots in the background, draw them in the layer you created. You'll understand why later. So, you draw dots. You draw one black, one gray, one black, one gray (or any other color you chose). Your dots can be 1 pixel wide or more. You choose. You may think 1 pixel dots are cuter. I put an example at the end of the tutorial of what it would've looked like if you would've made it with 2 pixels dots.

7- So now, your image look like this :

8- Now, select the background in your layers. We're going to put thing on the background.

9- Now you can write things or draw things. You can put images (as long as you make them little before adding them to the blinkie)

10- When you're finished, merge all the layers and save your image. But don't close it yet!!! It's supposed to look like this :

11- Now, hit the back button so your layers aren't merged.

12- In the layer with the little dots, change the color of the dots. It's what will make our image blink. A little tip : as long as you're in a transparent layer, you can move the dots and it won't break the things you put on the background. This is why it's important to make the dots in the layer and not on the background. So now, you can crop the dots and put them so gray dots are at the place of the black dots and so on.

13- After you made that, merge the layers and save the image WITH A DIFFERENT NAME FROM THE FIRST ONE. OR else you'll have make the little dot changing part again. The image is supposed to look like this.

14- Now, go in Animation Shop (if you have another animation program... try to figure out how to make it). Make a new animation and add your two images. Animate it and... you're gonna have a cute blinkie!!!

with 1 pixel dots :
with 2 pixels dots :