Sound Bar Animation
Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:00 pm
In this tutorial, I'll be showing you how to make your own animated graphic equalizer in Adobe Imageready, which looks good in both signature images and also on web templates.
1. First things first, create a new canvas in Photoshop, roughly 150x150px, and use the paint bucket tool to fill the background black. You can also open up an existing graphic you have created that you want to put the animation over.
2. Now zoom in slightly, and using the pencil tool with a 1px brush, draw in you the first level of your equalizer bars. These will act as a guide for where to put everything else.

3. Now you need to decide how tall you want your equalizer to be. Draw a line under your guide bars leaving a 1px gap bewteen, and then draw a line up each side leaving a 2px gap. The 2px gap is so that you can leave little level markers along the sides, such as shown here:

4. Ok, you're ready to start drawing the bars in. Again with the 1px Pencil tool, but on a new layer, start to draw in your first set of equalizer levels. Make them nice and uneven, and make sure you create the lines straight upwards! You can either leave a 1px gap between each section, or you can use solid bars. I'll be using a 1px gap, but I've shown both below for this step only:

1. First things first, create a new canvas in Photoshop, roughly 150x150px, and use the paint bucket tool to fill the background black. You can also open up an existing graphic you have created that you want to put the animation over.
2. Now zoom in slightly, and using the pencil tool with a 1px brush, draw in you the first level of your equalizer bars. These will act as a guide for where to put everything else.

3. Now you need to decide how tall you want your equalizer to be. Draw a line under your guide bars leaving a 1px gap bewteen, and then draw a line up each side leaving a 2px gap. The 2px gap is so that you can leave little level markers along the sides, such as shown here:

4. Ok, you're ready to start drawing the bars in. Again with the 1px Pencil tool, but on a new layer, start to draw in your first set of equalizer levels. Make them nice and uneven, and make sure you create the lines straight upwards! You can either leave a 1px gap between each section, or you can use solid bars. I'll be using a 1px gap, but I've shown both below for this step only:
