How are animated gifs made?

[Gary D]

I was wondering how animated gifs for avatars are made?

Are there any free tools?

How do you link the images together and animate it?

Just wondering how complicated it is.

[LT. Columbo]

there are some free tools, but i'm pretty sure like anything else, the best stuff is trialware. UncasMS and anonymez are 2 fellas i can think of right now that know alot about this. i would like to make one myself, just have a hard time---finding the time with everything else

you'll get plenty of help in this thread i'm sure.

[anonymez]

2 good tools for the job are photoshop and ulead gif animator (both have trials, though the latter is easier to use)

its not difficult if you have all the frames you need

[floresdave]

i have an animated avatar i want to use it has a gif file extension and is 48x48 size but when i try to upload it i get a message saying that i am not allowed to upload animated images.

[cynthia]

My pleasure...

[Chewy]

watched fight club one too many times

[floresdave]

you guys crack me up.



thank you.

BTW how did you do that?

[cynthia]

I guess there is a restriction for members to upload moving avatars. I don't have that restriction. Not yet...

[LT. Columbo]

2 good tools for the job are photoshop and ulead gif animator (both have trials, though the latter is easier to use)

its not difficult if you have all the frames you need

i decided to give uleads gif animator trial a whirl. i used the wizard and made one from an avi i made but why does it show the upper left area only on the canvas for each frame? i can manually slide it to kind of center it, but then i'd have to do this for each frame - or is this due to the trial?

[anonymez]

not sure, only used the trial for a little while (cause it allowed more tweaking to lower output size than PS). maybe extract frames to bitmaps with virtualdub and load it that way?

[paglamon]

i decided to give uleads gif animator trial a whirl. i used the wizard and made one from an avi i made but why does it show the upper left area only on the canvas for each frame? i can manually slide it to kind of center it, but then i'd have to do this for each frame - or is this due to the trial?

1.Select ALL the objects in the Object Manager Pane
2.Select the first frame.
3.In the Workspace drag the object to the desired position(you can see the coordinates changing in the Object Manager pane)
4.Right click on any object in the Object Manager Pane and select DISTRIBUTE TO FRAMES.

[LT. Columbo]

thanx fellas. i see what you mean paglamon, but does that actually center the image rather than compress and reduce the entire frame size?

i finally made this as a test project. at first it only came out with the upper left corner, how i did this is beyond me. sure are a lot of buttons to click!



does it cycle in 3 or 6 seconds for you? in windows pic viewer in folder 6, with firefox in forum, 3. when mailed to myself in outlook express, it's 14

even your av paglamon spins twice as fast in firefox than explorer for me

[paglamon]

does it cycle in 3 or 6 seconds for you? in windows pic viewer in folder 6, with firefox in forum, 3. when mailed to myself in outlook express, it's 14

I opened it in UGIFA.It has 72 frames.The first frame is 0 sec.The rest .04 sec each.So the total time is .04x71=2.84sec.I am getting it in @3sec in all applications.

[LT. Columbo]

ok thanx. any idea why it would vary in speed for me with the other browser etc? firefox displays it correctly though. i recall other avs i had played a bit slower in explorer too.

i'm starting to figure out the basics...i like this software. this cat was posted in funny pics i believe, just resized it.


btw, anyone know how to apply frame delay to all frames at the same time?

[BR7]

I was wondering how animated gifs for avatars are made?

Are there any free tools?

How do you link the images together and animate it?

Just wondering how complicated it is.

I use GIMP and BINK (Both are Freeware)
It does just as good of job as Photoshop IMHO Head over to Deviant Art and look up Gimp tutorials. A good friend of mine there has a tutorial on this he goes by the name of fencepost