Quill Signature

I do not claim to be the originator of this tutorial. I found it on the web and created my own animated signature from it. Many people have since asked me for the link and when I went to get it, I found that the site was gone. I did a search for it and come up with a few others, but not the one that I used. I am writing my version of that tutorial because I feel it was the easiest one out there and some of the others I have found are a little more complex. If you are the original writer of this tutorial and can furnish proof, I will happily give you credit. This tutorial however is written by me completely from memory and is my version. Therefore I claim complete ownership. Please do not copy, claim as your own or script my tutorials. If you would like to share the link with others, that is absolutely fine! Now that the legal mumbo jumbo is out of the way, let's have some fun!

Supplies
(quill & inkpot)

This tutorial was written in PSP 8 but can easily be done in other versions. It is for intermediate PSP users who already have a working knowledge of PSP.

1. Begin by creating your name in whatever colors/pattern you like and apply any presets you want now. The only thing you won't do is add a drop shadow. Also open up your quill and inkpot in PSP so that this is what you have:

2. Activate one of the boxes and Copy. Launch animation Shop and Paste/As New Animation. Do this for all 3 items. We will now be working exclusively in Animation Shop.

This is what you will have now. Notice I lined up my images on the left. This is to leave room for my workspace.

3. Next you will go to File/New (remember we are doing everything in AS) and you will create a new window. The size depends on the length of your name. My name is 5 letters and I need it about 500 pixels wide. What you need for the width is enough room for your name and the inkpot to the right of it. For height you need about 350 pixels high to accommodate the quill moving up and down over your name. You can always crop later so go bigger. Choose transparent for the background.

4. Now click on your name to activate it and right click and Copy. Go back to your empty window, right click and chose Paste/Into Selected Frame. Your image will be at the end of your pointer and will be positioned wherever you click. Place your name to the lower left area leaving room on the right for the quill and inkpot and room on top for the quill to "write". Do the same thing with the inkpot. Mine looks like this:

These images cannot be moved independent of one another so if you need to change the placement of your name and you already have the inkpot, it will move as one so you will have to undo back to the beginning.

5. Next we will duplicate this new window so it has enough frames to create our signature. You can go to Edit/Duplicate Selected or you can just click on the shortcut. See the icon inside the red circle in the pic below.

How many frames you need again depends on the length of your name. Guessing is fine as long as you guess to the high side since you can always delete the unused frames. When you click on Duplicate the first time you go to 2 frames, when you click again you go to 3. Then next click will get you 5, then 9, then 17 and then 33. I stopped there. If your name is longer click again. The reason we only do this with our name and ink is because they are stationary and will be in the same place throughout the animation. The quill of course will be moving.

6. I now have 33 frames with my name and the inkpot. Click on the last frame to make it active. Now go to the quill image and right click Copy. Go back to your name and ink image and right click Paste/Into Selected Frame. Again the image will be at the end of your pointer and will "drop" when you click. Carefully position your quill so that it looks like it is dipping into the ink. Here's mine:

7. Using the little arrow on the bottom of your frame, go backward to the previous frame, in my case it is frame #32. Click on it to make it active. Then go over to your quill image, right click Copy, go to the frame with your name and right click Paste/Into Selected Frame and place your quill at the end of your name. Like so:

8. From this point on you will be repeating the same steps. I would like to give you an overview and then I'll show your more images. Essentially what we will be doing is working backwards. We will erase a portion of our name, then paste the quill into the frame where we stopped erasing. Go backward one frame, erase back to the same place on the next frame, plus a little more, paste your quill. That's it! All the way to the first letter of your name. It's that simple, it's just a lot of steps. To help with the right clicking, you can use Control E on your keyboard to paste your quill into the frame. So my next step is this:

Go backward one frame (for me it's frame #31) using my eraser tool

erase a portion of the last letter of my name. Now, the more steps you take per letter the better the animation will look, but depending on the letter, 2-3 quill placements is more than enough. For the capital letter of your name you may need more, especially if you used a very fancy font with a lot of swirls. So here is as much of my "a" that I erased:

Also, I keep my eraser at size 10 and make it smaller if I am erasing around lines that are close together.

9. The one thing that I find to be tedious is that after you're done with the eraser tool, you have to click on your pan tool (white arrow) to be able to continue. So it's a constant of click the eraser tool, erase, click the pan tool. If there is another way around this I would love to hear about it! So now that you have erased a portion of the last letter, click your pan tool then right click and Paste/Into Selected Frame (or Control E) and put the quill at the end of the erased part of the letter.

10. Keep repeating these steps until you get to the end of your name.

TIP: Erase thoroughly!!!!! If you leave even 1 pixel behind it will show up black on the animation. So erase, go over the area and erase, then erase again!

Here are some images of mine:

11. If you would like your quill to dip back into the inkpot before you get to the first letter just erase back to the same spot as the last frame you worked on but paste your quill over the ink instead of at the end of the letter. Then for the next frame erase to the same spot again and then a little more to continue "writing" and place your quill where you stopped erasing.

Remember: after you erase, you will need to click your pan tool to paste and to make the next frame active.

12. When you have finished the beginning stroke of the first letter of your name, you will begin to send the quill back to the ink pot. This can take only 2 frames, so if you are almost at the first frame don't worry. Erase your entire name and paste the quill halfway between where your first letter was and where the inkpot is. Go back a frame, erase your entire name and paste the quill back to it's first position. Here's what it looks like:

Here is my last placement for my name This is about halfway

This frame can be skipped if you are running short Last one

13. Now just right click on any left over frames and delete. Guess what? You're done! Finally! Now we just need to set the animations settings.

14. Go to Edit/Select All then right click in your animated quill window and click on Frame Properties. Set the Display Time to 20. Then go to you last frame, click in it to activate just that frame and right click, Frame Properties and set this last frame to about 200. This is so that when the animation is finished writing, it will pause on your name.

15. Go to View/Animation and make sure you like it. Then close the animation window, make sure your frames window is active and go to File/Save name and save to your folder. Then click the Next button on the following windows that pop up until you get to Finish. Click that and you are really finished now!!! You should have something like this: