Quote:
Originally Posted by Dist
Setting aside the times in frames and such, could anyone see if they can reduce This GIF into 50kb or less, and then tell me how they did it ? I do realise there are 39 frames which is ALOT, but since all frames are different, I have no idea what frames I could remove - if any. |
It's really not possible to rework that graphic because it's already been differenced. I opened it in the
GIMP and saw that many of the frames were essentially empty.
Here's what I'd suggest. Start with the original sequence and go through each frame one at a time in a graphics viewer. Watch how the frames change. Typically you'll see that each frame is repeated two or three times. Keep only the ones that are different. Then try creating an animated avatar from the resulting frames and see how small it is. If it's still bigger than the 50K limit, you'll need to start dropping intermediate frames. You'll be surprised at how few frames it takes to create a reasonably smooth animation. My
current avatar has only nine frames. That's because nearly every frame is identical except for the arm and mouth movements.
Creating a good animated avatar within the AS limits takes a lot of experimentation. I often spend an hour or two before I find the right set of frames that preserves the look of the original yet fits within the limits. You might find you'll need to make something smaller than 100x100 to comply.
You'll also need to work out the timings. Remember that there are roughly 24 frames each second, so if a frame is repeated three times in the original sequence, it needs to be displayed for about an eighth of a second, or about 125 milliseconds, to preserve the timings.
I work entirely in Linux and use
mplayer from the command line to extract frames. Both I and Green
2 have written up methods for doing this that appear in the thread above. I'm not suggesting you switch operating systems, but whatever you use shouldn't require that you convert to AVI. You just need software that will extract the frames as individual GIF or PNG images. If VirtualDub can do that, you should be able to reassemble the frames as layers in Photoshop or GIMP.
Edit: For a truly awesome example of what can be done within the AS size limits, take a look at
this avatar by Pellisier.