Mesh Warp Animation

Anything you make is yours but please don't steal my work.

This tutorial is designed to be an introduction to the Mesh Warp tool
You must have PSP 8, 9 or X installed.

Open a new image 400 X 400 transparent.

Use your selection tool, set to rectangle, and select the top 1/4 of your image.
Fill your selection with a brightly colored pattern or gradient.
Apply the inner bevel of your choice. Deselect.

In your layer palette duplicate you layer 11 times so you have a total of 12 identical layers.
Make the top later active.
Select your Mesh Warp tool.

Set the horizontal to 10, vertical to 6. As you change the numbers,
you will see the grid on the image change as well.

Because I have the horizontal set to 10, there are 10 horizontal lines in the grid.
6 Vertical lines.
I selected 6 for the vertical because it placed a grid line at the bottom of my filled area.
If this is not the case for you, change the vertical number to you, too, have a vertical line at the bottom of your filled area.

We are only going to be working with the horizontal line that runs along the bottom of your filled area.
With your mouse, grab the intersection between horizontal and vertical along the left edge and drag down slightly
(see image below)

In your layer palette, select the second layer.
Grab the next node and pull down in a similar fashion.

Make the next layer active, grab and drag the third node the same way.

Go through the rest of your layers making sure you grab and drag the next node each time.
When you're done, your image will look something the one below.

Click on your selection tool (to apply the mesh warp).
Save your image in psp, psp 7 compatible format.

Open Animation Shop.
Click File > Preferences > General Program Preferences > Layered Files.
Be sure that "Keep layers as separate frames" is checked.
Click ok and open your image.

Press SHIFT + D to make a duplicate image.
On the duplicate, select all (CTRL + A)
Flip (CTRL + I) and Mirror (CTRL + M)
Your 2 image should look like the screen shot below.

Go back to PSP, open a new image and put some text on it, Keep in mind that the text
will be on a colored background, so choose your colors wisely.
Copy your text.
Back to Animation Shop. Paste as a new image (CTRL + V)

In Animation shop click File > New.
Open a new image 400 X 400. Select opaque and select the color that will compliment
The pattern or gradient that you used to make your mesh warp image.

Right click on your new 400 X 400 and select duplicate selected.
Repeat until you have 12 frames. Keep in mind that more then one frame may be selected so keep an eye
on the number of frames that you have.. Hint..if you wind up with too many, you can always delete a few to get the right number of frames.

Make your text image active, Copy (CTRL + C),
Click on Propagate paste.
In your 12 framed image, slide the scroll bar (located under your image) all the way to the left so frame 1 is visible.
Select all.
With your mouse grab the text (in the text image) and drag it to frame 1 of your 12 framed image.
Drop it right in the middle of your image.

Make your original image (the one you saved in PSP and not the duplicate) active. Select all, copy.
Go to the image that you just pasted the text onto.
Select all, paste into selected (CTRL + E)

Place your mesh warp image right above the text, leaving enough room for the warped part to clear the text.
Keep in mind that both of these images are the same width so paste carefully to make sure there is no gap on either side.
You may have some colored on the top, that's ok. we'll deal with that soon.

Make your duplicate image (the one your flipped and mirrored) active.
Select all, copy
Go back to the image with your text. Select all, paste into selected.
Try to place this image so the test is centered between the top and bottom mesh warped images.

Select all. Press ALT + ENTER to set the speed of your animation.
The default number is 10. Change it to 20, click ok.

Click on your crop tool.

Make a rectangle (much like you would make a rectangle selection in PSP)
Make the rectangle the full width of your image. you can include as much of the height as you would like.
I choose to keep my text centered, you if you want your text closer to the top or bottom, feel free to do that.
PSSSST....Crop lines are adjustable.
Once you make the initial rectangle, you can grab the lines with you mouse and make fine tune adjustments to the placement.
The crop rectangle will be black, but I used red in the screen shot below to indicate where I will make my crop rectangle.

Either double click inside the crop rectangle or click on the crop button (located above the crop tool)
to apply the crop.
That's it. You're done.
You may resize if you like.
I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial.