Animation Tutorial
This is my first time writing a tutorial! A lot of people ask me about this, so i decided to make it about How to Animate! Horray!
I’m going to start off the tutorial assuming you already have a base knowledge of ImageReady and Photoshop.
We're going to start with four random bases, all sized 100x100 in Photoshop.
Open all of your bases in ImageReady, and make sure you have your Layers, Animation, Tools, and Optimize windows open.
Next, make a New document, sized 100x100 pixels.
Go down to the Animation window, and select how long you want each individual frame to be displayed for. Usually for making animation gifs, you would set it for 0.2 seconds, but for the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to set it to 1 second.
Next, make as many new frames as you have images for your animation by pressing the “Duplicate current frame” button as many times as necessary.
Select the first frame in the New Document. Then, go to your first base, and select the ‘Move’ tool. Drag the base into the New document. Your screen should look like this:
Now that you have your first base in the new document, you need to make the first base only show up in the first frame. Select the hold down the Shift button and select frames 2-4 in the animation window, then to go the layer window and press the button that looks like an eye. This is the visibility of the base for that frame.
Alternitively, you could select just the first frame in the animation and deselect the visability, and that will make it invisable on all the frames. You can then go select only the frame you want it to be visable in and make it visable.
Viola! Now your base is only in one frame.
Next, you are going to add the second base to your animation. It’s pretty much the same as before, but a tad bit different.
Select the second frame in your animation. Then select your base, and drag it to the animation document. Your screen should look something like this:
You’re probably going to have to nudge the base straight after you drop it in the animation. Do this with your keyboard arrow keys, but only in the frame you’re working on.
Select frames 1,3, and 4 in the ‘animation’ window. In the ‘layers’ window, deselect the ‘eye’ (visibility) button.
Oh noes! My base is gone! Silly bear, no its not. Select frame 2, and simply reselect the eye (visibility) button in the layers window again.
Yay its back. :)
Now just repeat these steps until you get to the last frame. Just drag your base into your new document, make sure it’s in the right frame, nudge it straight if necessary, select the frames you don’t want that base to appear in, make the base invisible, and start over until you get to the end!
Go to the ‘Optimize’ window, and make sure you have it set to something like ‘gif’…’128 colors’…here’s what mine looks like on default:
If you ever need to make the file size smaller, you can change the number of colors to a lower setting without significantly changing how the picture looks.
When you’re finished doing that, click the ‘Preview’ button on the ‘Tools’ window.
This will open a window in your default internet browser, weather it be IE, FF or whatever. If your gif is moving too fast or you forgot to take the visibility off on one of the frames or anything, you can still go back and fix them in ImageReady. But if everything is fine, then you can go ahead and save your gif! And you’re done! <3
If you have any questions or comments, go ahead and ask me~!
I hope I helped you to learn how to animate! I tried to not be as confusing as possible…^^;; Dunno if I managed that, hehe. Well, ta~ta for now~!
I’m going to start off the tutorial assuming you already have a base knowledge of ImageReady and Photoshop.
We're going to start with four random bases, all sized 100x100 in Photoshop.
Open all of your bases in ImageReady, and make sure you have your Layers, Animation, Tools, and Optimize windows open.
Next, make a New document, sized 100x100 pixels.
Go down to the Animation window, and select how long you want each individual frame to be displayed for. Usually for making animation gifs, you would set it for 0.2 seconds, but for the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to set it to 1 second.
Next, make as many new frames as you have images for your animation by pressing the “Duplicate current frame” button as many times as necessary.
Select the first frame in the New Document. Then, go to your first base, and select the ‘Move’ tool. Drag the base into the New document. Your screen should look like this:
Now that you have your first base in the new document, you need to make the first base only show up in the first frame. Select the hold down the Shift button and select frames 2-4 in the animation window, then to go the layer window and press the button that looks like an eye. This is the visibility of the base for that frame.
Alternitively, you could select just the first frame in the animation and deselect the visability, and that will make it invisable on all the frames. You can then go select only the frame you want it to be visable in and make it visable.
Viola! Now your base is only in one frame.
Next, you are going to add the second base to your animation. It’s pretty much the same as before, but a tad bit different.
Select the second frame in your animation. Then select your base, and drag it to the animation document. Your screen should look something like this:
You’re probably going to have to nudge the base straight after you drop it in the animation. Do this with your keyboard arrow keys, but only in the frame you’re working on.
Select frames 1,3, and 4 in the ‘animation’ window. In the ‘layers’ window, deselect the ‘eye’ (visibility) button.
Oh noes! My base is gone! Silly bear, no its not. Select frame 2, and simply reselect the eye (visibility) button in the layers window again.
Yay its back. :)
Now just repeat these steps until you get to the last frame. Just drag your base into your new document, make sure it’s in the right frame, nudge it straight if necessary, select the frames you don’t want that base to appear in, make the base invisible, and start over until you get to the end!
Go to the ‘Optimize’ window, and make sure you have it set to something like ‘gif’…’128 colors’…here’s what mine looks like on default:
If you ever need to make the file size smaller, you can change the number of colors to a lower setting without significantly changing how the picture looks.
When you’re finished doing that, click the ‘Preview’ button on the ‘Tools’ window.
This will open a window in your default internet browser, weather it be IE, FF or whatever. If your gif is moving too fast or you forgot to take the visibility off on one of the frames or anything, you can still go back and fix them in ImageReady. But if everything is fine, then you can go ahead and save your gif! And you’re done! <3
If you have any questions or comments, go ahead and ask me~!
I hope I helped you to learn how to animate! I tried to not be as confusing as possible…^^;; Dunno if I managed that, hehe. Well, ta~ta for now~!