By following this tutorial you will learn how to make your cartoon dolls blink their eyes just like the doll to the left. It is assumed that you already know how to get your own cartoon dolls, and maybe how to edit them in a program like Paint Shop Pro. You are encouraged to use your own doll for this tutorial as the one that I am using is not free for use.

The tutorial is for Animation Shop 3 that comes with Paint Shop Pro from www.jasc.com. I'm sure the same kind of animation can be done in any other animations program with a painting tool, but I can not give you instructions on how to use other programs as the only one that I know and use is AS 3.

The doll I'm using is from Deb's Dollmaker. I got all the props there and assembled them and then animated the doll myself. You can go to Deb's and make your own dolls, or you can use other dolls. But make sure that they are yours to use before you alter them.

Now lets get started!

1. Open up Animation Shop and open the image that you want to use by file>open and then locating the right file. You now have a one frame animation of your doll, which means no animation at all. I am using a doll on a transparent background, but you can use one on a coloured background if you like, just make sure it's clear and good quality image. Mine looks like this now:

2. Press the 'duplicate' button once. You now have a two frame animation but without any movement. If you can't see the two frames just place your cursor over the right side of the image and click and drag it bigger like you normally do with a window. It should look something like this:

3. Click the second frame once to highlight it.

4. Click the zoom tool and then click the second frame about four times to magnify it so you see all the pixels clearly. Magnify more if you need too. Now make sure you have the dolls face in center view. This is the size of the image I'm working on (this image has been shrunken, if you want to see the full size image just click on it and a new window will open):

5. Now choose the dropper tool and click one on the black colour of the eyelashes of the doll in the second frame.

6. Choose the paintbrush and set the width = 1 .

7. With your paintbrush paint all the white and green (or which ever colour your dolls' eyes are) black, but only in the second frame. She'll look something like this (this image has been shrunken, if you want to see the full size image just click on it and a new window will open):

8. We could stop here but we won't. Now you have to consider if you want your doll to wear eyeshadow or not and which colour. Take the dropper tool again and click on the dark skin tone of your doll (if she has just one skind tone use that one), or if you want her to wear eyeshadow click on the colour you want her to wear (some colour that appears in the image to make things easy).

9. Now with the painbrush paint over the place where the doll's eyelashes used to be in the second frame. Something like this (this image has been shrunken, if you want to see the full size image just click on it and a new window will open):

10. Use your zoom tool again and left click on the image until it gets the original size again.

11. Now click the 'view animation' button to view the animation. Can you see your doll blinking? But she does it rather fast, doesn't she? Close down the preview like you'd do with a normal window.

12. Choose the arrow tool and click once on the first frame to highlight it.

13. Now right click the first frame, choose 'frame properties' and set the time to 75.

14. Click the second frame once. Right click it, choose 'frame properties' and set the time to 25.

15. Now view the animation again and see if it's better. If you're satiesfied it's time to save.

16. File>save as. Name the animation and make sure to choose the gif option in the file type. Then hit save.

17. This window should appear:

18. Slide the handle all the way up to 'better image quality' and then hit the 'customize' button.

19. On the colors tab choose these settings:

20. On the 'optimizations' tab choose these settings:

21. And on the 'partial transparency' choose these settings:

22. Then just click ok and next until your animation has been saved. That is all!

I will at this point encourage you to try some variations on this animation. Make your doll blink just one eye, or one eye after the other (that would take more than two frames), or make her blow kisses. It's not difficult to make simple animations like this one just by altering the colour of a few pixels. With some practice you'll soon be ready to go on to more complicated animations.

(This entire tutorial © 2001 by Guðrun Jacobsen)