Animated icon tutorial - size and quality saving technique - Animation Shop 3
I really wasn't sure what to call this, so hopefully the subject is specific enough.
Basically I'll be telling you how to make this icon, which is a remake of an icon I've made in the past.
This tutorial is for Animations shop 3 with a little PSP7 thrown in, though it may work with other programs. I'm not sure.
Now I tend to be terrible at explaining things, so hopefully this helps. I also can't help you if you use other programs, because I'm only familiar with these. Please tell me if you don't understand me or need help in some way because I wasn't clear enough. I'm trying. :)
First you get your caps, the ones I'm using were taken a frame apart. The caps you're using are pretty important, and this works best with animated movies (especially some older ones, or ones that are cheaply made). Find a split second scene where only a small portion of the frame is animated, make sure there isn't a whole lot going on behind the animation either. It's okay if sometimes another part of the frame is animated (like if Bambi were blinking), as long as it's easy to cut around.
You use Animation shops animation wizard
add all your caps, I don't think all the settings matter all that much. I'm pretty sure I'm mostly using default except that the speed is 10.
then crop. I actually didn't figure out animation shops cropping tool until after I'd been iconing for several months. I used to crop each and every one in PSP.
I usually try to make sure it's a perfect square for when I make it into a 100x100 icon. You should have something like this after resizing:
Aside from the twitchy frame, look closely at it. See all those tiny pixels dancing around in the background? They don't look all that great, and they tend to inflate the file size by a lot. I believe this icon is 37k, which is small enough to use on LJ, it just doesn't look that great. Animations count every little movement towards the file size, so you need to eliminate most of the movement in order to lower the filesize. Basically we're flattening the entire icon so it thinks only that small portion is animated and only counts that towards the filesize.
I delete the twitchy frame, and copy my favorite background frame over to PSP. Just the one frame. I cut a hole in it where the animation is.
You can also cut the hole in animation shop, but you need to change the animation properties to have a transparent background instead of a set color. I copy it back over to animation shop, and make a new animation using the one frame with a hole in it. (ctrl+V, then ctrl+L 6 times) The original animation is 7 frames, so I make the new one 7 frames.
Then I select all of it (ctrl+A), copy (ctrl+C), and paste it on top of the original (ctrl+E). This should flatten the background and make the file size and quality much better. Now you have -
It's only about 13k and with no scrambly background. Much much better, right?
Just add a black border (using the same new animation & pasting technique, this also works for text), slow it down, and you're set.
I hope I didn't over simplify it. It's really easy when you're used to doing it.
I'm probably putting myself "out of business" so to speak by sharing this, but so many people wanted a tutorial I figured I'd share.
Basically I'll be telling you how to make this icon, which is a remake of an icon I've made in the past.
This tutorial is for Animations shop 3 with a little PSP7 thrown in, though it may work with other programs. I'm not sure.
Now I tend to be terrible at explaining things, so hopefully this helps. I also can't help you if you use other programs, because I'm only familiar with these. Please tell me if you don't understand me or need help in some way because I wasn't clear enough. I'm trying. :)
First you get your caps, the ones I'm using were taken a frame apart. The caps you're using are pretty important, and this works best with animated movies (especially some older ones, or ones that are cheaply made). Find a split second scene where only a small portion of the frame is animated, make sure there isn't a whole lot going on behind the animation either. It's okay if sometimes another part of the frame is animated (like if Bambi were blinking), as long as it's easy to cut around.
You use Animation shops animation wizard
add all your caps, I don't think all the settings matter all that much. I'm pretty sure I'm mostly using default except that the speed is 10.
then crop. I actually didn't figure out animation shops cropping tool until after I'd been iconing for several months. I used to crop each and every one in PSP.
I usually try to make sure it's a perfect square for when I make it into a 100x100 icon. You should have something like this after resizing:
Aside from the twitchy frame, look closely at it. See all those tiny pixels dancing around in the background? They don't look all that great, and they tend to inflate the file size by a lot. I believe this icon is 37k, which is small enough to use on LJ, it just doesn't look that great. Animations count every little movement towards the file size, so you need to eliminate most of the movement in order to lower the filesize. Basically we're flattening the entire icon so it thinks only that small portion is animated and only counts that towards the filesize.
I delete the twitchy frame, and copy my favorite background frame over to PSP. Just the one frame. I cut a hole in it where the animation is.
You can also cut the hole in animation shop, but you need to change the animation properties to have a transparent background instead of a set color. I copy it back over to animation shop, and make a new animation using the one frame with a hole in it. (ctrl+V, then ctrl+L 6 times) The original animation is 7 frames, so I make the new one 7 frames.
Then I select all of it (ctrl+A), copy (ctrl+C), and paste it on top of the original (ctrl+E). This should flatten the background and make the file size and quality much better. Now you have -
It's only about 13k and with no scrambly background. Much much better, right?
Just add a black border (using the same new animation & pasting technique, this also works for text), slow it down, and you're set.
I hope I didn't over simplify it. It's really easy when you're used to doing it.
I'm probably putting myself "out of business" so to speak by sharing this, but so many people wanted a tutorial I figured I'd share.