ANIMATION ON THE INTERNET

The first thing we need to learn and understand is that: There is no such thing as an animated 'GIF'.

The word animated is used as a process of the movement in the English language. What really happens to our "animated GIF’s" is a series of  'pictures' are placed into a program (The Animator) and it will reveal each layer in sequence so the eyes believe there is movement. The 'GIF' itself does not move. Keep this in mind when learning it’s not a moving 'GIF' it is a lot of 'GIF’s' one after the other, appearing to move, like a "Flip" - "Flick Book" we used as kids for showing pictures of a moving object to our friends. Usually these were stick figures, whose arms and legs were moved, and a facial expression changing. Individual drawings - 1 per page, page after page with a simple change here and there till we created all the movement we needed in the book, then we flick the pages.

A Tip: Never change the format you have straight away on your picture to a 'GIF' format. Do all the alterations to properties first to keep clarity.

Usually any picture in most any format (BMP, TIFF, PSP, WMF,) can be converted to a GIF before you start your animating. Starting with a flat object of your choosing, the only limit in animation is restricted by the time you put into it. Anything can be animated.

Things to consider first before working in animation:
• 1. What you want to animate.
• 2. The pixel size of your final 'Gif'.
• 3. Color reduction.
• 4. The overall size of your 'Gif' in bytes.

Lets talk about each of these items.

Item #1 What to animate:

You can create a figure walking across the screen, a logo flashing, a home page name/banner changing colors, a tree with falling leaves, lights turning off and on in the house, etc. You do not have to use a single item either, you can use a photograph, your family portrait or something you drew on Paint Shop Pro.

The maximum (accepted) size for animation on the Internet is 200 x 200 pixels. Anything less is acceptable also. If the item(s) you want to animate are larger then this size, you will need to reduce them, by opening the picture, and re-sizing In Paint Shop Pro5, you would go to Image, (drop down list) click "re-size" then another box will open, click pixel size, Make sure that "Re-size all layers" and "Maintain aspect ration of 1 to 1 is checked. So, if you are re-sizing a 400 x 400 pixel picture, to 200 x 200 size, it will re-size correctly.

Once we have the picture adjusted (re-sized, colorized, brightened, moved, etc.) to what we want, we need to reduce the colors to 256, This helps in making the 'Gif'. Some of the animators on the net, believe in using a 216 color safe pallet to begin with for all colors. This eliminates extra bytes being created from the start.

Try to stay under 50/60k (gif size) - This allows for faster screen showing, and takes less bandwidth. Most people will not stay and watch an animation without some other types of information being placed on the page for viewing, while the animation is loading up and getting ready to run. It is not recommended to have more then 180 Kbytes of any type of animation on any one page, it could cause browser difficulties. It is also suggested that sites with heavy graphics use thumb prints for graphics and/or still pictures for animation, with links to the item for individually viewing, as in the following site, the items are not being animated here, you can down load them for your own viewing if you want to. Tonguemonster's animation

It is highly recommended that you save your animation's in a File Folder called "ANIMATION ITEMS" to not confuse an animated 'Gif' with other gif's you have saved on your hard drive.

Before you begin the Ulead Gif Animator Lesson, get your downloadable free trial program here: Ulead Gif Animator 3 Once there (click on Free Trial)

Lessons for Ulead Gif Animator 3 can be found on the following pages Ulead Gif Animation Lesson