There are a lot of people who love the Korean animated dolls like me. I hope this tutorial will teach you an easy way to add your name to dolls you like. To get you started, I have attached a blank animation for you to play with. Click on this zip file and save it to your computer. Unzip the file.

Open the gif in Animation Shop. Go to Edit, Select All, then go to File, Export to Paint Shop Pro.

The next screen you see will be the file in Paint Shop Pro.

Before working on the doll in Paint Shop Pro, go back to Animation Shop. Go to File, Export Frames, and click on Break link with exported frames.

Now we are ready to work on your doll. In Paint Shop Pro, enlarge your canvas size. I usually add at least 100 pixels in both height and width. With this doll, I entered 225 for width and 275 for length. This gives you some room to work with for your name.

My dear friend, Sandi, gave me a wonderful tip that I will pass on to you. If you add a background layer, your animated doll will actually be lower in size (kilobytes, that is) when it is finished. It doesn't seem logical but it does work. Add a layer, send it to the bottom of your doll layers, fill the new layer with white. Now, close all layers except your white layer and the layer called "Frame1".

If you'd like to have a drop shadow on your doll tag, simply go to Effects, 3d, click on Drop Shadow and play with the settings until you like it. Below is what I used, but it is your animation so don't feel like you have to do what I did.

With only these two layers visible, go to Edit, Copy Merged. In Animation Shop, paste as a new Animation. Back to Paint Shop Pro, close the Frame 1 layer, highlight the Frame 2 layer, turn on the visibility, apply the drop shadow to this layer. Again, go to Edit, Copy Merged. In Animation Shop, go Edit, Paste After Current Frame. (In the screen shot below, I have underlined the "After the current frame" and well as the little icon which is the same thing. Clicking on the icon saves a couple of clicks).

Follow the step above with each frame layer until you have 11 frames in Animation Shop. Check to be sure you have added the drop shadow to each layer! (It is easy to forget.) You can close this file without saving it since your animation is complete now.

In Animation Shop, you now have an animated doll that you can add your name to. If you don't plan on using this blank to make a tag for others, you can use this animation after preparing your name and adding it (see below for directions). After adding your name, use the Crop Tool in Animation Shop to cut away the excess white (don't cut into your drop shadow!).

Let's say you'd like to make tags out of this animation for your friends too. You have the animation open, again Select All, then Export frames to Paint Shop Pro (don't forget to break the links!). In Paint Shop Pro, you have an image with eleven layers. Decide what color you'd like to use for your text by using the Color Dropper. In order for the text color to be the same for all your friends, click on the color over at the Materials Palette. Either write down or use your mouse to highlight the HTML color number. Then go to Image, Information and enter the color number(s), what font you decide to use, what point size the font is, etc.

To place your text on your tag, prepare your text in Paint Shop Pro. Open a new transparent image 200 x 100 pixels. Set your foreground color to null. Use the color you picked, type your name with the text setting at floating, size 36 (or your preference). The size may need to be smaller depending upon the length of your name the teeny your are using. I use different fonts just for fun. For my tag, I used the font A&S Christmas Script. Apply your bevel, Eye Candy or whatever to your text then select none. Go to Image, Crop to Selection. It isn't necessary unless you are going to use this color and font again. If you choose not to save the name, simply go to File, Copy and then go to Animation Shop and go to File, Paste as a New Animation.

In Animation shop, on your tool bar, make sure the "propagate paste" is toggled ON.

With the animation you just made still open, make sure your name is highlighted or "active", go to Edit, Copy. Next, highlight your animation. Go to Edit, Select All, the Edit, Paste into Selected Frames. When you do that, you will see your name at the end of your mouse, place your name where you would like it. I put my name under the image. You will notice that your name appears in each frame at exactly the same place!

You can crop this new tag by clicking on the Crop Tool. Drag it around the part of the image you want, then go to the Crop Tool Bar, and click Crop.

Now save your new teeny file and share it! I hope this has helped. Hint: if your animation has a lot of frames, it will be a large file in kbs. You can either remove some frames that are not critical to the movement OR when saving it, move the optimization arrow down from "best quality" to the next bar. (see screen shot below) I rarely see that doing this degrades the animation quality.

Here is my result below.