Animated GIF's: Nemmy's 10 Step Guide To Making Simple Animated Pictures

Nemmy

Nemmy

New Member
Original Poster
Everybody's seen someone with an animated GIF avatar. You might wonder how they do it. This tutorial will teach you how.

Step 1: Download Microsoft GIF Animator. This is no longer supported by Microsoft, so you'll have to search it up. It's free and works easy.

Step 2: If you are creating images, save them as GIF's. If you took pictures, open the ones that you want and save them as GIF's in Paint.

Step 3: Open Microsoft GIF Animator.

Step 4: Select Open. It is the second button from the left.

Step 5: Choose the LAST image in the sequence.

Step 6: Click the Animation Tab. Check "Looping" and "Repeat Forever".

Step 7: Click the Image Tab. Change Duration to 100. Uncheck Transparency.

Step 8: Press the fourth button from the left, and choose the second to last picture in the sequence. Do the same as above, only skip Step 6.

Step 9: Keep doing this until your image is done. Then click the fifth button from the left, and give it a name.

Step 10: You're done! It is important NOT to edit the picture, because if you save it, the picture will get stuck on one frame. To see if the picture animates, open it with Internet Explorer.

NOTE: If you took an .avi video, and want it to be your avatar, you can do that! Download Movies 13. It's a free program, and also allows you to convert an AVI to an animated GIF! Below, I'll give you a regular animated GIF, and then an converted from AVI animated GIF.

dbhurricane.gif


The above is a regular animated GIF, made by a GIF paint image and JPG pictures.

splat.gif


The above was a AVI, converted to an animated GIF.
 
SirNim

SirNim

Well-Known Member
Or buy Photoshop, which comes bundled with the incredibly useful ImageReady software! :)

But yes, nonetheless, nice tutorial, Nemmy..

(once again, not to be confused with me... lol)
 
Nemmy

Nemmy

New Member
Original Poster
My point exactly. I also made a Hulk one, but it's pretty blurry. The last picture (second to last animation) is a picture of that shelf of alcoholic drinks at Margaritaville, but it's hard to tell.

incrediblehulk.gif
 
SirNim

SirNim

Well-Known Member
I've used my share of MS Gif Animator... before I got the other software...

MS Gif Animator is a great freeware alternative... but it's also a hassle, in retrospect.

:)
 
NowInc

NowInc

Well-Known Member
Nice tutorial!

I agree that ImageReady would be far more efficiant to use, but as said...no all can afford it. MicrosoftGifAnimator is a decent free alternative. It gets the job done....basically.

A few things id prob want to tack on to this tutorial...

1.) File size : Yep...the longer an animation is, and the more frames, the larger it will be.

2.) Color depth : Gifs are really not the "end all" answer to image compression. Limited to at most 256 colors, which tends to give a very pixelated look to most images.

3.) A combination of the above 2 things : The more colors, the larger the image. You can try squeezing a smaller file size by lowering the depth to 64, 32, or even 16 colors (you could go as low as 8, 4, 2, or even 1..but yeah). Sometimes you have to sacrifice image quality to make the animation you want.

4.) The more similar each frame is, the less increased file size you have. For example...lets say you have a 5 frame animation, all completly different images...that'd result in a larger animation. Now lets say you have another 5 frame animation, but they are 5 VERY similar images (same background, same basic scenerey, just one object moving across it), the resulting file size would be smaller. Long story short, it does this because it would re-use the same background data from frame to frame and only replace those pixels that are changed as the animation goes on (GEEK GEEK GEEK GEEK!)

*EDIT* Forgot to mention, the length of the animation has NOTHING to do with the file size, its the number of DIFFERENT frames...so you could have 5000 frames of a single image, and it wont increase the size at all.

I could go on for pages about how Animated Gifs work , but i think honestly it would put most of you to sleep. Just keep practicing..you'll get better results.
 
AliciaLuvzDizne

AliciaLuvzDizne

Well-Known Member
okay so...
that one with the wooden roller coaster... if nemmy wanted to make the text frame stay on the screen longer he would...
Make that same image last for 2 frames?
 
Nemmy

Nemmy

New Member
Original Poster
Yea. I would. I wish that you could completely customize the amount of time, and make it more than the maximum (100), but since you can't, you'd have to put it in as multiple frames.
 
Nemmy

Nemmy

New Member
Original Poster
Too big in size?

If it is, there's really nothing you can do about it, unless you opened each frame in MS Paint and resized it (using the Stretch/Skew function).

Too big in lenght/width?

If so, just use the Stretch/Skew function.
 
Nemmy

Nemmy

New Member
Original Poster
Er...I thought that the entire focus of this tutorial was to make GIFs. I don't use ImageReady, so I wouldn't know.
 
darthdarrel

darthdarrel

New Member
I will have to try this, unfortunately when it comes to this kind of stuff I am sooo Not understanding. I need animated gifs for dummies!:lookaroun
I had the program photoshop but I could not understand it to save my life so I deleted it from my harddrive!:lookaroun
 

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