#ps:animation

In this tutorial, you’ll have to know the basics of photoshop. I’ll be using these tools really frequently while doing this tutorial.

 and this effect on the elliptical tool

PHOTOSHOP PART

First, open a new document in photoshop. Use the size 500x500 (optional) so that it’ll work on big pictures as well. File>New. Open your new image and use the brush tool to colour your background colour black.

Now, you have to create a lot of new layers. Click on 

 or command+shift+N on mac. Click command+r/control+r and your file should look like this :

From the top and left side, drag down and to the right (you’ll see a blue line) to the center of the picture. Go to your elliptical marquee tool, click shift+alt from where the center is. You’ll get something that looks like this.

Colour the inside of the circle on the lowest empty layer. (any color will do) (x) Now, we play around with this effect

. Make a smaller circle INSIDE the bigger circle using the same method. (( Please make sure you’ve changed to this settings to 

 )) The smaller section should look like this (x). Do the same thing but a smaller section again. You should have two dotted circles. 

Now that you’re done with that, fill it with another colour on the next empty layer. These are how my layers look like (x).

You’re going to have to repeat all of these until you get the shape you want. I’m making a simple one and my final looks like this:

All my empty layers have been deleted. (x)

After this, you’re going to have merge the layers together [ DO NOT INCLUDE THE BACKGROUND ]and then use the polygon lasso tool to delete the parts you don’t want. These are my selected parts that i don’t want. (I’ve merged everything but the center white dot.)

How i selected 2 parts at once: 

  I changed the area i would like to delete because i didn’t like it but after selecting the area, go to the layer of the part you’d like to delete and click dlt/delete. Now delete the black background (x) and then save it as a PNG. (IT MUST HAVE A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND)

AFTER EFFECTS PART

This part is actually really simple now. Open a new composition and make sure you chose the size of your saved png. If you used the same size as me, open a 500px wide and 500px high composition. [New>composition]

Import your saved PNG in now. (x) File>import>file. At the left side, you’ll see this.

Drag the file into the composition now and arrange it so that it fits perfectly. We’ll only be touching the rotation tool here.

Click on the rotation stopwatch icon at the beginning of the composition. You may change your ° to anything you want. Now drag it to the part where you’d like it to stop and change it to 60° (or anything you want). You’ll get two yellow diamond

The animation probably looks boring now, so drag the yellow thing on top (x) to the part where you want the next animation to stop. For this, i made it rotate -40° and then back to 0° at the part where i’d like my animation to completely stop.

You may move the diamond according to your liking. Now that you’re done save it (AS QUICKTIME) File> export>Add to render queue> render. 

FINISHED

Now all you’ve got to do is import it to photoshop and make your gif with it! The whole design is up to you on how you’d like it to look! You should sharpen/resize the new gif you’ve made in order to use it. Change the speed according to your liking. Make sure you’ve use the correct effect on it too.