Hello members of CG. Some of you may be wondering how people make a flashing text avatar like this?



(Excuse the background colour)

Well today I am going to teach you all how to do so!


Programs needed: Adobe Photoshop CS5/CS6
Difficulty level: Easy


*I've forgotten to mention, you must have the background colour so it doesn't mess up the gif. animation*


Lets get right into it, shall we?


Step 1:
Well, first of all, you want to have your name or a word that you want to spell out. For this tutorial, I will be using my name, Virtuosity. When you have found your word, you want to spell out the word, but have each letter on a different layer, like this:

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Step 2:
Once that has been done, you want to select the first layer and make sure it is on 100% opacity and change the photoshop option to Motion like so.

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Your photoshop should now look like this:

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Since we are now able to do animations, we can proceed to the next step.



Step 3:
Click Create Video Timeline down the bottom and then change the frame timeline, like so.

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Your timeline should now look like this:

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Step 4:
Now that we have our timeline, we are able to finally get into the animation part! This part can get very tedious and confusing at times, depending on how long the animation goes for. Now make sure all of your layers are visible, but at 0% opacity, except for your first layer, keep that at 100%. Create a new frame, like so.

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Make sure that you have selected the second frame and the first layer only, then change the opacity of the V (in this case) to 0%.
Once you have done that, select the first frame again and select tweens animation frames. Add 20 frames then press okay.
It should look like this.

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Step 5:
Now that you have done that, you want to create another frame at the end then change the I 100% opacity.
NOTE: You have to add the 20 frames for the second last frame each time.
It should now look like this:

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Once you have finished that part, you just have to repeat and it should turn out to be like this!

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Step 6:
Before you finish, make sure you make your animation loop forever, like so.

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There we have it folks. I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Shoot a PM my way if you need any further help! Thank you for reading my 2nd ever, in depth tutorial. Thanks again guys and as always, have a nice day!