Sig/Avatar tutorials by the makers [Index in First Post]

[felix]

Nope still see it loop once, it's a lil' faster tho'
It's no big deal.. it's still a good technique.

[Sinestra]

Originally Posted by Kira_Naruto

.. Fancy meeting you here.. and welcome to the world of headache .. well, not actually headache, but getting sig/av under the ASuki filesize limit sure is

Hmm.. Not bad for a 1st attempt, The only glaring mistake, but actually its ok for a 1st attempt, is that annoying BG .. but to correct the darkness, .. shi-- forgot how IR look like , dont think it have adjustment layer .. If you open/import the .psd file to PS, you can add a brightness adjustment layer and play with it.. I think Cats do have a tutorial for it . Index in 1st page

yeah i thought it was about time i try my hand at doing my own gifs and sigs. Thanks for tip the backround is really annoying but i guess i will have to play around with it somemore to see what i can. thanks for the help.

[-Tsukihime-]

Originally Posted by Jinto Lin

Yes, kinda Though I did not know there exists such a problem with Opera.
Lets see, I have a version with non-timed frames here. I wonder if it will reload like the other (with 1ms timing per frame). I mean thats more like a hack, since giving no time for a frame, means the viewer has to decide if it either shows all frames at once, or waits forever to show the other frames.

Anyway here it is:

oh goodie! thx! it's been a while since I last OL or is it? anyway ta BIG THANK YOU for fixing it! and I'll save the 1 sec timed one so I can study it later!


@Cats
thanks! I'm still trying to understand that process. Although I doubt I will learn that quickly *reads the tut*

[xxmimixx]

Originally Posted by Jinto Lin

Oh btw. here is a looping version, so you get a better idea of what was done...
(set it up in a way that each frame lasts 1 second)

Wow, that is very cool. To bad that I can't do that on GIMP. Probably I can, but it is for advanced users only.

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by mimi_girl

Wow, that is very cool. To bad that I can't do that on GIMP. Probably I can, but it is for advanced users only.

I don't know exactly. But I think that should work with every graphics tool + MS GIFAnimator (afaik MS GIFAnimator is free software).

Maybe I should throw a little tutorial in... (hm, okay...)

1.) slice the picture into pieces. Saves those individual pieces as gif file (try to slice it, so you use just a subset of colors of the whole image... that way the piece will use the available 256 (128/64/32/8/4/2) colors of the gif format just on certain color tones and can use more shades per color tone)

Here is the list of sliced pieces for -Tsukihime-'s signature.

00-piece

First the null/empty frame it is used to provide the space to lay the pieces on.

01-piece

this is very colorful, so it is a very small piece

02-piece

tried to avoid blue eyes in this piece (no blue color tone)

03-piece

now the blue is in, but therefore not the light brown eyes of the previous image.

04-piece


05-piece

dividing green and pink

06-piece



Okay now one should check, if all the pieces (together) are within the 50Kb limit... if not, they need to be reduced in size somehow (for example reducing number of colors in certain pieces)

If the size is right (I'ld suggest not to be too close to the 50Kb, since the animation will add a little overhead), import them in MS GIFAnimator.

Open the last frame (Ctrl+O) in MS GIFAnimator.

Then add (Ctrl+I) each of the other frames into the sequence (in reverse order... e.g. 6,5,4,3,2,1,0).

Sometimes the application will issue a warning that it needs to reset the image dimensions or something alike (you can ignore this message, just click okay).

When all the pieces are loaded:



You need to position the pieces on the background layer. But first set the background layer's transparency color (in this example white).

Okay, you need to know where you sliced the stuff off in order to position it right.
In this example the first piece has an offset of 1 pixel at left and 1 pixel at top. Since the first piece is 41 pixels height, the second piece needs to be positioned at left 1 and 42 top. Now since the second piece is 30 pixels heigh, so the third piece needs to be placed at 1 from left, 72 from top. That one contains transparency don't forget to set it's transparency color.
The 4th piece should be placed at left 138 and top 1, because the first piece is 137 pixels wide. You can calculate the other offsets yourselves I suppose.

If everything is set, you can test how it looks like with the play button (Ctrl+R).

If it shows up right, safe it (Ctrl+A). Now check again if it is still below the 50Kb limit (the file should be a little bit bigger than all the single pieces together - but not much - overhead is usually <1Kb).

[xxmimixx]

Thanks for that. I should keep that in mind.

[Sinestra]

hey guys im having trouble getting my gifs to loop properly. Like the one i am using now i finally got the frames i wanted if someone can drop me some tips on continuous loops it would be appreciated

[Deathkillz]

^ the problem is that looping requires a clean sequence ~ ie it can start and finnish buck to the first frame ~ with your avie atm its impossible to be looped unless the effect you want is to have it jumping forwards and then backwards :3

[felix]

Select your frames.
Alt drag them to the right.
Click the Arrow in the top-right corner. Select Reverse Frames from the menu.
Delete the first and last frame in your selection.
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Some times makes it look good, some times just makes it look wierd. Enjoy~

[xxmimixx]

I was having trouble with photoshop because I downloaded adobe Photoshop 3.0 album starter edition. Is it the right download for making avatars and signatures?

[felix]

I personally have the Creative Suite 2 since I mostly need InDesign and Illustrator (and seldom use Photoshop & ImageReady), but you can make them in Gimp. (or GimpShop) For stills, Pain.NET should be good too.
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Well maybe this will help you choose.

[Potatochobit]

honestly, i wouldnt use anything less than photoshop 7. but with photoshop 3 u can make still pictures just fine. problems might arise when u export to image ready or illustrator etc. but go ahead and see how it comes out. its just for fun so nothing ha to be perfect in the end.

[Shikimori Kazuki]

I have a question.

How you cut out the words when u making a gif. is a fansub, and I dont want take out the words. I tried using Crop (C) and Marquee (M), but its not giving me the result i'm looking for. I'm using imageready btw

[Deathkillz]

^ so do you want to take out the words or not? well basically theres no way to clean subtitles so you will just have the cut the bottom part off ~ use the select box and select an area of the gif image you want to keep ie dont include the text inside the box! next just click the crop button and resize the image ~

[felix]

Just, download the .mkv or RAW.

[Shikimori Kazuki]

ahh yea, i jsut want to take out the faunsubs. Hm, looks like I have to crop them out or use the mkv file eh.

Using this program is somewhat hard x_x. I was fine by virtual dub in capturing the frames but using imageready is hard. I manage to get the frames but Q#1) is there a way to see how well I did with the looping? like a preview of the frames that I looped?

Q#2) I read in a guideline where they mention Duplicate Frames. In my first attempt, all the frames looks all the same to me. I read that similar ones are to be deleted. But if i'm not sure, do i delete them in this order? 2,4,6,8,10 of the frames? since they all look the same to me

Q#3) Also, how many frames is consider allowable? around 10?20?30?

I did this before at my high school years (hmm must've been 4 years now)

[Deathkillz]

Originally Posted by Shikimori Kazuki

Using this program is somewhat hard x_x.:

lol i remember making my first gif avie...it was hell i tell ya

1) on the animation bar there should be a play button ~ click it and the sequence will run in a loop ~

2) hmm well basically what you should do first is to take out the "duplicate" frames first ~ meaning you should delete all that looks the same to one frame until you get to the next movement...that was you are only left with 1 frame per movement ~ the sequence you mentioned is to make the gif smaller if there are too many frames...deleting them with the same gap size will mean a "smoother" avie when you loop it...

3) well it depends on the sequence...if there are a lot of different colours id say 8-10 frames (or less) would get it pretty near to 50k ~ if there isnt then about 15-16 frames before you start breaking the limit for AS

[Shikimori Kazuki]

Hm i guess i'll fool around with it some more. Is a pain asking people to do an avatar when I can take this opportunity to learn how to make one.

About the duplicate frames. let see I'm making something from 1:00-1:02 ( each second consist of 12 frames).

So, if i assume each second = 1 movement , and there are 12 frames each second. Do I delete something like...11 frames? Since the one I'm trying to make is like a person standing still while her hair is blowing. So, is hard to tell whether they look the same or different. *looks for his magnify glass*

[Deathkillz]

^ i think the problem here is that you dont know which frames are moving

for your example 1:00-1:02 theres a 2 second gap and in that 2 seconds there are 12 frames which mean that its 1 second per 6 frames ~

if you have 12 frames and you delete 11 that leaves 1 frame...which makes the thing static (no frames = no sequence) ~ what you need to do is to click on each individual frame along the animation bar and delete the ones that comes up as doubles ~ more often than not there is 1 duplicate per frame...so if thats the case you will be looking to half the amount of total frames...

and if you still can find any movement change as you look at every individual frame then maybe youve done a bad capture of the sequence (ie youve just captured the stills)

[Shikimori Kazuki]

hm , perhaps i should capture a few more seconds of the time sequence. that should show me some differences between each second.

From what you have said, it would seem I have capture the stills. haha

question: About the allowable # of frames, does that count with also loop as well? say like 8-10 frames and you loop it and you come out with 16-20 frames. thats like....