We are going to make this

Here is the floatie I used

You can right click and save it.

This is really easy, just alot of doing steps over and over, so here we go!

First you will need Paint Shop Pro, I am guessing any version will work. I am using PSP8. You also need an animation program. I am using PSP Animation Shop, but if you know how to use your own, then you can follow along, as long as your animation program can open the frames of your animation.

So, we start in the animation shop, we click the open icon

Find the floatie you want to use

When you open the animation, you will see all the frames

Go to Edit/Select ALL

And all the frames will be highlighted

See how all of the frames are surrounded by blue?
Now go to Edit/Copy

Once your frames are copied, you will go to your PSP program, right click in the work area and you will get this window, click PASTE AS MULTIPLE FRAMES

And all the frames will open

Now, you want to open a new project

I am using these settings

But if your name is longer, you may want to make the "400" alot longer, or you can make your text smaller, that is up to you!

Click on your text tool button

I use these settings

But you can change them later, if you want. Just be sure you have it said as Vector. And fat fonts work best. I also have the stroke set at 2, but you can not have an outline if you don't want, that is up to you.

Click on your new opened space

And your text box opens

Type your name (or a word) into the box, and it shows up in your new work area

As long as your name or word is highlighted, you can change it

You can choose a different font

See, different font!

You can change the font size

Now go to your material pallet

This box is what fills your text

When you click on it, and the window opens, you can click on this box and see your animation frames!

You click on the first image

And with your first frame of animation in this box

You will see it is also now in your text!

Back to the material pallet, this box decides the outline color or your text

I want a gradient color (you can choose anything you want!)

I want a rainbow, so I choose these settings

And my text now looks like this

In your layers pallet you will see this

If you click on the plus sign, you will see your name or word

Now you want to go to Edit/copy and copy your text.

Now go to Edit/Paste/Paste As New Image

You want to do this as many times as you have animation frames. This floatie has 8 frames, so I do it 8 times.

Once I have my 8 copies, I minimze them down

Since we already added our outline and the first animation frame as our text inside, we can now save it as frame one in our animation. But first we have to to back to your layers pallet, you want to right click on your vector layer

When you do, you will see this window and click convert to raster layer. And in your layers pallet you will see that this indeed did change it to one raster layer.

Now you will click on your export gif button

Or you can go to File/Export/Gif.
Now we go though the steps of saving as a gif. I choose these settings...

And finally, just name your first frame

And close your first frame you just saved

And click on your next frame

Click on the plus sign in your layers pallet

Double click on your name or word

Go to your text box, make sure your name is highlighted

Go back to your material pallet and click on the background box

And choose the next image.

Click Apply

And save your next frame

Repeat all these things until you have fill each of your frames and you have the same amount of frames that is in the floatie

Go back to your animation shop, and close the floatie, if you left it open.

In animation shop, click the wizard icon at the top

Click through the wizard at these settings...

Now find your frames you saved and open then in the correct order.

Click next and then click finish. When you do, all your frames you made will open and look like this...

To check your animation, click the see animation icon

If you like it you can save here. But in this one, I don't like how fast it is going. So I go to Edit/Select all frames. Then I go to Animation/Frame Properties

And change it to 15 instead of 10, this makes it slow down. You can also make your tag smaller withing the animation shop, if you want to. Just go to Animation/Resize Animation.

I am happy with that, so I go to File/Save AS and name my new animation and click Save. The click through the gif animation quality windows, just clicking next, until I click finsih. TADA! You have a brand new animated tag! I made my tag transparent, but you could add a background and fill with color, even put a frame or border around the background!
Here are some others I made!

Here are some with solid background floaties

Here is a great floatie site! Meghan's Floaties


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