Open a new file, 400 pixels wide by 150 high, 16 million colors,with a white background. Select Black as your foreground color and addsome text. Use a nice solid looking font. Here I've used Arial Black, 72point.
Deselect the lettering by pressing {Shift N}, and choose the retouchingtool (the little pointing finger.) Set it to Smudge, Size = 4, Shape round,opacity = 50, and paper texture None. Make icicles on your text by strokingdownwards with the brush. Be sure to roughen all the edges, and try tosmudge some of the white color inside of the letters. When you're done,it should look something like this:
Go to colors and select negative image. This will make the textwhite, and the background black.
Now we need to get the text selected for further work. Choose theSelect tool (the magic wand) and click on the black background. To completelyselect all the black, hold down the shift key and click on any inside areasin the letters (such as in the e and the o). While we have the backgroundselected, we'll change it to some neutral color, such as brown. This willlater be the transparent color in our GIF. Now go to Selections, and chooseInvert. The text should now be the highlighted area.
Change the foreground color to white, and apply a hotwax coating.You should get something like this:
To highlight the icicles, we use the Metal Effects filter from Greg'sFactory Output, Vol II. Slide the wave scale to 255, and leave the othercontrols alone.
This looks pretty good, but it needs a little color. Go to the Colorsmenu, adjust, red/green/blue. Set the blue to 20 %. To finish, set thebackground color to your neutral color (brown here) and save as a transparentGIF.
