Circus Train Part 2



 
 
 

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Remember to save often!
Let's work on the animal car next.
Remember that base car I had you save when we made our coal car? Well open it in PSP, go to
Windows, Duplicate, then close the original.

You should have a layer 1 and a layer 2 which contains the car. Make the car layer your active layer.
With the Selection tool set to rectangle, feather 0, antialias UNchecked. Select a section out of the
car trying to make it as even as possible on both sides. Like this...

While selected hit the delete key on your keyboard to remove that area. Select None.
Add a new layer and let's make the rails for our animal car. Make your foreground the wood that you
used for the box on the engine, changing the angle to 90. Set your Draw tool to single line, width 16.
Draw a line starting from the top of your car all the way down to the bottom where you cut out the section.
Like this...

Don't worry if it overlaps the top and bottom a little, we will put them behind the car layer once we get them
all in anyway, use the mover tool to move the first one so that it is on the purple a little. (note.. we are trying
to make it look like a cage so that first bar needs to look like it is coming out of the purple side and so does
the last on that you add to the other side. ) Now copy and paste as a new selections to fill the empty area that
you cut out. Try to space them about the same all the way across the area. You should end up with something
like this...

Now add a new layer and change the angle on your wood pattern back to 0. Draw a line across the top of your
cage starting at the purple and going all the way across to the other end. Then copy that line and paste as a new
selection,  move to the bottom of your bars. Like so....

Now close Layer 1 and Layer 2 (the base of the car) and merge visible your bars.
Now move your bars layer under layer 2 so that the bars are behind the car.
Now go to Effects, 3D Effects and apply the Preset "Soft Edge" Inner Bevel to your bars. Remember
how we did the presets in Inner Bevel using the Round? Well with this find the Soft Edge preset.

Make Layer 2 (the car) your active layer and lets change the color of it. Go to Colors
Colorize and apply these settings or any that you prefer. You can also flood fill the car if you wish!
But I chose to use the colorizer on this one...

Remember the 3 wheel sections I had you save? Open them up and lets put some wheels on our car.
Copy the green image of your wheel and paste it as a new layer on your car. Now lets colorize it. I
changed the Hue to 140 but kept the Saturation as it was to color my wheel a pretty blue.
Next take the orange part of the wheel copy it and paste as a new layer, then moved into position inside the
blue wheel. I went back to the colorizer and lowed the Hue to 48 to make it a yellow! I then copied the
center of the wheel (the small black one) and paste it as a new selection inside of my now yellow center
wheel. I just left that part of the wheel black.
Now at this time, I knew I would want another animal car for my train at some point and would want to change the
colors for the other car so I went to Windows and Duplicated it before I merged any of my layers together.
I then went back to my original image, hid layer 1, layer 2 and my bars layer, then merged my wheel layers
visible. I then duplicated my wheel and moved into position as the back wheel.

Next make Layer 2 ( your car layer) your active layer Go to Selection, Select All, Selections Float.
Then apply a cutout with these settings...

I then duplicated my car layer and used the deformation tool to resize it a little smaller than the original.
I moved it behind my original layer so that it would look like the other side of the car showing through
the bars. I then went to Colors, Adjust and used the Brightness/ Contrast to make the back darker to
add some depth to it. Settings below....

Close your two wheel layers and merge all layers visible! You now have a car to add circus animals to.
Save as a PSP file.
Note.. the reason I left my wheels unmerged is so that when I connect the cars together I can move my
wheels up or down to make all the cars fit together better.
Here is what my animal car looks like...

I'm so proud of you for making it this far! Give yourself a bow, you deserve it!

Now are you ready for the caboose???

Open your base car once again and Duplicate it... then close the original.
We will work with it to make our caboose from.
Now I decided I wanted my caboose to be blue so I went to Colors and used the colorizer to change
the color. I set the Hue to 144 and the Saturation to 159.

Set your background color to the wood we used. Preset tools, rounded rectangle, Create as a vector and Antialias
both Checked. Draw out a long rectangle across the top of your train car, like so...

Click on the Object Selector, right click on your palette, chose Node Edit.
Add a node on the top left on the right side of the first node on your rectangle. Like this..

Pull that Node up to create a dome on your caboose. Now grab the node on the right side and pull it up to the
same height you have the other one. It should look like this now...

Now I want you to pull the nodes on the bottom line up so that they meet with the line of blue, like this..

I thought the caboose needed a dormer that hung over the rear of the caboose so what I did was the node that
was on the right bottom corner I pulled it out like this...

I then added one node just above where the top point is on the arrow on the screenshot above and pulled it up
to square that area up. I then played with the nodes that were already there until I had something that I liked.
Here it is...

I then converted the layer to Raster.
I thought the roof part of the caboose needed some windows. So I set my foreground color to the wood grain
and my background color to white. I used the preset shapes tool set to these settings..

I drew out one window then converted to raster, copied it and paste it two more times to have a total of 3
windows. I placed them on the roof about where I thought the roof and the dormer would met. Look at the
screenshot below to see where mine are...

Then used the magic wand, tolerance & feather set to 0 to select the white area of my window. Then go to
Selections, Modify, Expand by 1. Go back to Selections and click on Float. Apply a cutout using these settings..

Select None
Go to Effects, 3D Effects, Inner Bevel and apply the Soft Edge Inner Bevel Preset.
Make the roof layer your active layer, Go to selections, Select all, Selections, Float.
Apply a cutout with these settings..
Vertical and Horizontal both on 2, Opacity set to 63, Blur 16. Shadow color black.
Add a new layer and change the V & H to minus 2.
Close Layer 1 and Layer 2, merge layers visible rename to roof!
Now let's work on the rest of the car. Make layer2 your active layer. Add a new layer.
With your foreground set to the wood grain and the background set to white. Use the Preset tools shape
Pentagon like you did for the small roof windows but change the line width size to 8.
Draw out a pretty large window on the blue area of your car. Convert to raster, copy and paste as a new
selection so that you have two windows like this...

Using the magic wand again, tolerance & feather set to 0,  select the white area of your windows. Then go to
Selections, Modify, Expand by 1. Go back to Selections and click on Float. Apply a cutout using the same settings
as we did above for the small windows. Now this is a little different than what we did with the small windows.
While you still have the white selected go to selections Defloat, copy it, then hit the delete key on your key board
to remove the white area from your window. Now Paste the white you copied as a new layer and move back into
position in your windows. (the reason we did this is so that we can have the white on a separate layer so we can
do an Inner Bevel on our window frame.) I then used the Inner Bevel Soft Edge Preset on my window frame but
I raised the Depth on it to 11.  I still thought the white area was to bright so on my layer palette I lowed the
Opacity on that layer to 86, which I thought looked better. Close all layers except your window layers and merge
the two windows visible. This is now what I have...

I know it still looks a little weird but it will all come together!*L*

Add a new layer and let's put a rail under our windows. Set your foreground to the wood grain, background
closed. Draw tool, single line, line width 8. Now use the same Inner Bevel you used on the window frame.
Copy the layer and paste as a new selection just below the first line you made. You can also paste one just
below your roof if you wish too. Look at the screenshot below to see how mine looks.
Add a new layer, Change the angle on your wood to 90. Let's make some post for our back porch.
With the same setting as for the rail draw a line from your back roof area down to the coupler on the back
of your caboose. Use these setting and apply and inner bevel to your post..

Copy the layer. Make Layer 1 your active layer, add a new layer and paste into that layer as a new
selection. This puts the post behind your car layer so that you can move it into position as the other
back rail off the porch. Like this..

 Go back to your outside post layer and added a new layer. I changed the size on my Draw Tool to 5
and the angle back to 0 on my wood pattern, I drew a line from my post to my car. I then copied that
layer and paste as a new selection moving it to the bottom of my post. This makes a frame that looks like a
porch rail. I then changed the angle back to 90, added a new layer and went down the side of my car to make a
short post there. I then copied that post and paste as a new selection in the center of my rail. This is what
I have so far...

I then closed all my layers except those two and merged them visible. I then copied the layer, made layer 1
my active layer, added a new layer and paste as new selection for my back side rail.

Now go to the front of your caboose. Change the foreground color to Black, background closed. Draw tool
size 5. Let's put a rail around the front of the car also. We don't have a post there so don't worry about making
the porch post. I then used the Round Preset in Inner Bevel to give it a little shine. Here is what mine looks like.

Close Layer 1, merge all layers visible. Add a new layer. Set your foreground color to #1E5171,
background closed. Use the Draw Tool set to size 3 and draw around the outside of your car like this..

As you can see in the above image I also did around my couplers. With Layer1 closed, Merge visible once
again. Go to Selection, Select All, Selection Float.
Apply a cutout with these settings..

Select None.
We are now ready for our wheels. Open the 3 wheel images. Copy and paste all 3 as new layers into
your caboose. Move into position as the font wheel. With the green wheel your active layer, Go to Color,
Colorize, set both the Hue and the Saturation to 255. This makes red. Make the orange wheel layer your
active layer. Colorize it with Hue set to 144 and Saturation set to 103. This is a blue. Leave the black as is.
Hide Layer 1 and your caboose layer. Merge the wheel layers visible. Duplicate the layer and move into
position as back wheel. Once again I did not merge my wheels so that I could make any adjustments I
might need, I saved as a PSP file instead.

Now to make the nail that connects our cars together.
Open your engine. Add a new layer to it. With your background set to red #FF4040 ,foreground closed.
Preset tools set to Ellipse. Draw out a small flat oval that will be the head of your nail. Zoom in so you can
see what you are doing. Place it on top of the engines coupler. Like this...

Convert to Raster. Apply the Round Preset Inner Bevel to your nail head. With the same settings on
your preset tools. Draw another oval at the bottom of the coupler. Click the Object selector then right
click to Node Edit. Pull the bottom node handles on your oval out to flatten out the oval some. Convert
to Raster and apply the Round Preset to it. You should now have something that looks like this...

Hide all layers except the 2 nail layers and merge them visible. Copy and paste this layer as a new image.
Save as a psp file to use for the rest of your cars.
That's it, we now have a train. You can open a new transparent 800x400 to assemble your train. Resizing
the train cars as needed. Then decorate as desired and resize to a managable image. Copy and paste
it as a new image to remove any excess, export as a tube or save as a psp. Have fun!!
 
 
 

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