• The Basics
• The Baiscs II
• Advance
• Extras

       Animation shop includes about 12 basic tools, and 4 advance ones.Beginning with the basic tools, I will first start of with the zoom tool, is  used for making character gifs. It allows you to view the character more better, in order to change very major, and minor details. The registration mark tool, is used for keeping track of where a charater was placed. It places a little or big cross on the file that can help you paste characters in a correct postioned. When your done with it, you can simply remove it by clicking on clear. The Crop tool, is used for cutting out certain parts of a gif, but it only covers  parts of the gif in a square. The mover tool, is used to move a frame from a gif in any direction. I basically used it for a homemade : ) shake screen effect. by slightly moving it up and down. The dropper tool ,is used for getting colors for any gif, I also used this tool for making characters. You wont have that much of a use for it though. The brush tool will be greatly used for making any kind of gif. You will greatly need it for making characters, and will need it in battle gifs, to chang minor mistakes. The Eraser brush for animation shop SUCKS!!!! : ( .I barelly use it because when you increased the size you can mess up your gif very easily. It gives this unwanted fade effect. Like in Paintshop Pro your allowed to change the hardness to get rid of the fade effect. The flood fill tool can be used for many things. You can use it to make a character gif or you can use it to make certain parts of a gif transparent, by clicking on canvas color. The text tool is not recommended to be used that, is one tool dont I recommened you not use because, it pails in comparihson to the one in Paint Shop Pro. I only use that tool for my sagas. If your going to use that for your sagas, dont get fancy!. Only use MS Sans Serif. The line tool and shape tool, can be used for teleporting, that I will further explain in the next section. It can be also can be used to make addons, and fireballs. The arrow tool, can be used to dag frames onto another, file or the same. The tools, that really have no use, is the inionskin,copy, paste (because the arrow tool covers that job), browse(slows down computer), animation,banner wizard, and pasting.
          The advance tools are the Effects,Replace color, Frame properties, and the rotateing tools. To work on frames in Paintshop Pro you'll have to export them, with this tool. There you can freely work and perfect any frame freely. I make all my character gifs in paintshop pro. I even do simple things such as erase in psp7.
-Saving Gifs
         Most Problems people run into when saving there gifs is how it is optimize. Sometimes you may see white crap all over your gif, little circles around everything or Stuff that you have erase will come back. To stop this you'll have to customize the level of optimization when saving your gif. To stop those little circle thing you'll have to increase the colors, and change the pallete from Median Cut to Optimized Octree. If your problem still occures change the Reduce colors from Error Diffusion, to Nearest Color. In the Optimization tab, it is recommended to click everything off execpt Collapse Identical Frames (and thats only if your creating a long battles). To keep white crap, and stuff that was erased from coming back you'll have to erase it very cleanly, the eraser tool from anim3 is crappy so dont even think of using it.
-Character and Battle Gifs
-Battle gifs

Key Tools
zoom tool

dropper tool*

brush tool*

Eraser tool*

Text tool

Registration mark

Mover tool

Exporting tool*

          Okay when first starting a gif. You can either : Make a battles gif, or you can make a character gif. First I will go threw making a Battle gif. First you will need, each character doing. attacks, moving, and hit reactions. You will also need add ons, such as fireballs, sparks (for when an attack his thrown). It is recommended to put all character attacks in one file. Instead of openning like a million files. If you want to choose a backround, you can if you want, but it doesn't load correctly on a web page. 
             Okay now lets begin making this battle gif. One thing to know never rush a battle gif. For me its take me about 5 hours straight in order to complete my most recent battle gif. Okay most problems people have when making a battle gif, is keeping the 2 characters from jumping up and down. When there in a stand postion or just in a ready postion. You can use a tool in animation shop called registration mark. Set it on Spanning cross. It will set a mark on every frame.Try to put it on the mark where the character is standing.(Try to use is head, or his toe) . As you see here in the example. If you starting off with a backround, put the backround in properly, and duplicate it about 20 or 30 times. The make sure to set the registration mark in before trying to drag it onto the backround. This should be your end result :
             Now everybody makes this mistake (even I use to) when using backrounds. You do not drag the character onto the frame. You insert new frames and drag the character there. It is way easier to handle it this way, because the other way, will mostly likely leave you haveing whatever characters jumping up and down. It also allows you to work on the frames better. Espically when exporting frames to Paint Shop Pro for extra effects. When finish whatever scenes you did, in the empty frames (that are transparent). To get them in the backround, you simply use the registration mark, selected the frames you want, and drag them onto the backround. Now lets go threw the basics when making fight scenes. Alot of people (even I used to) make punches and kicks that dont connect correctly. Fight scenes can be one of the longest scenes to create. It depends on how you make. It is best to make it one character doing his attacks, then you follow up with the defending character, you can switch here and there with offending and defending, but dont get carry away with it or it wont look correctly. Now to make a punch or kick connect correctly, you must duplicate the frame that doesn't connect (once again) use a registration mark, and drag it to the other frame overlapping it so it would look correct. Espically when a punch or kick is thrown to the gut. 
This is what you should now see:
finish project

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