PART III: The Animation
Step 19: You're the Captain open online photoshop
Back to homepage

Now that our ship is ready to go, we need to get our head into the Captain's seat.

  1. Open both your Face08 and Spaceship18 files in ToolPic and go to your Face08 file so we can edit it
  2. We need our head in a layer folder to make it easier to move it around and resize it, so place the Cartoon and Backing layers (we won't need the Face or Freehand Grade layer) into a layer folder (the quickest way to do this is to select those two layers and then click the New Folder icon at the bottom of the Layers panel)
  3. Rename the layer folder to Head
  4. With the Move Tool selected, click on the Head layer folder and drag it to the Spaceship18 file tab (do this the same way you dragged the layer for your personal image into the Ship file)
  5. Close the Face08 file - ToolPic will open this window...
    This is simply letting you know that you may have unsaved work, but since we don't actually want to save the changes we made, just click OK to remove the popup, and you should be returned to your Spaceship18 file

You should notice at this point that your head is ENORMOUS compared to your spaceship...this is ok, it is supposed to be like this. We can easily resize our head.

  1. Select the Head layer folder and then click Edit and then point at Transform and click Scale

Instead of trying to click and drag the resize handles (which you probably can't even see) we are going to decrease the width and height percentages in the Scale's options bar.

  1. Locate the W: and H: values...

W changes the width of the image and H changes the height. We could change each value separately, but since we know at this point that we want both the height and width to change by the same amounts, we can simply set it so that when we change one value that ToolPic automatically changes the other. The three tiny lines between the height and width values (called the Keep Aspect Ratio button...remember that from Step 13?) will do this for us.

  1. Click the Keep Aspect Ratio button - it should now appear selected as in the graphic below...
  2. Click in the W: section and type 25...
  3. Press Enter on the keyboard - notice that the H: setting changes to also read 25%
  4. Click on your head and drag it so that it is sitting in the captain's seat of your spaceship...

    Notice that your head is now a much more manageable size
  5. Press Enter on the keyboard to apply the transformation
  6. Click and drag the Head layer folder down until it is at the bottom of the layer stack...

    Your head should now appear to be inside the ship

My head currently looks like this..

The head is still too large, so I will need to resize it again. Also, since the face seems to be leaning toward the left, it would actually sit better in the cockpit if I flip the head horizontally so that it is the other way around. Take a look at your head and determine if you are happy with it or if you need to make additional changes.

  1. If you need to make additional adjustments, do so now - keep in mind that your head should be cartoonish and large, but it should not be bigger than the spaceship...

    For my head above, I decreased the size a little more and used Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal to get the head to face the opposite direction

At this point you may notice that there is a great deal of wasted space around your spaceship. This was useful when we were working with our huge head, but will be cumbersome as we try to combine our spaceship with our space scene. We need to crop (trim away the unwanted areas) our image.

  1. Click the top layer in your layer stack (which should be your Image layer) then press and hold the Shift key and click the Head layer group to select everything in your Layers panel...
  2. Click the New Folder icon to create a new folder group (yes, you can have a layer folder - in this case the Head layer folder - inside another layer folder)
  3. Rename the new layer folder to Pilot
  4. Click the Rectangle Select Tool
  5. Click and drag to create a selection box around your head and your spaceship...
  6. Click Image then click Crop, notice that ToolPic removes all areas of the image outside the selection box
  7. Press Ctrl+D to deselect the image

Our ship is now ready to go. In the last step we will get it flying thru space.

  1. Click File and then click Save as PSD
  2. Name the file Spaceship19

01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20