Animating Clipart

I choose a clipart file that has some action to it, like this little man painting. Save it as Image1 or like I did here - paintguy1.gif. With Animation Shop, it doesn't really matter what format you save it in at this point. After you animate it, it will be saved as a gif file.

I use my Lasso tool alot to make selections of parts I want to move.

Now you can flip, rotate, mirror... anything to move the part in the direction you want to go.

Use the move tool (four headed arrow) to reposition the part just right.

Then use the eraser tool with the background selected as the same as your image's background, and clean up your image. Then save it as your second title (paintguy2.gif).

Here is where I go to my EDIT/UNDO and undo everything that was done up to the new selection, and I begin to edit again - making the motion go the other way now.

I had to make a finer selection and edit to get a twisting effect of the brush. So I deselected everything and with the lasso tool, selected just the hand and brush. With a flip and a few rotations I finally got it into position, cleaned it up with the eraser tool and a dab of the paintbrush then saved it as paintguy3.gif.

Now I use the Animation Wizard in Animation Shop and add my images. I arrange them so they make a smooth transition. Usually on images like this, if you make the speed of the animation a little faster it seems more normal and not as choppy. Another thing to do is to reduce the size of the whole animation (Go to tutorial on Animation Shop).