Can anyone offer me some instruction in the art of creating my own animated avatar? I'd like to have something unique to me rather than stealing something amusing off google like i usually do. Thanks.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chainsoar @ Jun 12 2006, 01:24 PM) [snapback]236118[/snapback]</div>Use progs like RealDRAW Pro, or Adobe Photoshop or smth or MS paint.
Mine is a rip from a game, nothing special now.

You could make a flying chainsaw. :P What a unique avatar.

You'll need to get a program that does animated Gifs. I do that via a program that came with Paint Shop Pro, a relatively inexpensive but totally funcitonal graphic editing program. (I think I payed $60 for it, while in comparision Adobe costs like $700 and has no animation program.) However, that was a while ago and I don't know if it's still bundled with PSP, or how much the latest version of PSP even is. I hear it's gone up in price.

Good luck. People round here know how I feel about making your own avatar. Thumbs up!

Use paint.

Get a image from your favorite game, cut out a part of it, a head of an enemy for example, draw a sexy border around it, boom, you got a nice looking avatar. Saves you $600 dollars and comes out looking better than some strange milky effect anyway.

Yeah, but he speciffically wanted to animate it. can't do that with paint.

Yes you can, make your frames in paint then download a free GIF image compiler and you can make a good looking animated GIF without any problems.

It's easy.

Yeah but you aren't animating it in paint, only making the frames.
And if that counts you could do that in PS, Image Ready.

I made my animated avatar using GIMP (which is downladable for free)
In that program you just have to draw the frames in separate layers and then save as an animated gif! It's so simple, isn't it? ;)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Quintopotere @ Jun 13 2006, 06:31 PM) [snapback]236519[/snapback]</div>I did not know that. i don't use Gimp myself because I'm still using PSP. But for this thread I think this wins the award for "most useful reply."

Actually, the best idea is to first make them as separate GIFs and then combine them into one animation.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(the_fifth_horseman @ Jun 14 2006, 11:20 AM) [snapback]236695[/snapback]</div>How? With what program? It's a good idea in theory, but then again "communism was a good idea 'in theory'" (-Homer J Simpson). The above post actually gave what program would do that job and how to do it. You could take that post right there and hand it to a newb, and they'd be producing animated gifs in no times.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(guesst @ Jun 13 2006, 06:52 PM) [snapback]236524[/snapback]</div>I did not know that. i don't use Gimp myself because I'm still using PSP. But for this thread I think this wins the award for "most useful reply."
[/b][/quote]

Yippeee!! :brain:
So, what I've won? :blink:

With GIMP. GIFMERGE also works, but GIMP is more versatile here.

I made mine using Photo shop image ready.

First of all open photo shop, not image ready.
Make all the frames you want to have in your avatar but in diffrent layers. The first layer should be the background of the avatar(if it's not apart of the other layers(frames))

If you don't have enough frames you can add a few 'transation layers'.(like I did in mine)
Copy the two frames you want to add a frame between them. The copy of the first should be placed right after the first one and the copy of the second frame should be before the second frame. Change the opacity of the second copy to something like 50%.(maybe lower, maybe bigger) Hide all other layers execpt the two you created right now. Merge all visible layers.(layer->merge visible)

When you have all the frames you want in diffrent layers, open image ready through photo shop.
Make the background visible all the time(unless it changes) and in each frame make a diffrent layer visible.
Once you are done enter file->save optimized.(gif) If you want to test before saving it you can test it through the image ready in the web.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Quintopotere @ Jun 14 2006, 04:31 AM) [snapback]236519[/snapback]</div> I have to remember to try GIMP one day.

I downloaded GIMP and gave it a go...I really can't figure it out, for example, how to make each frame different from the last, how to create each new frame to join on from the last one, etc.

Alternitavley you could use GIF Movie Gear. Quite simple.

Ok, cool, that's great, but how do I create the frames? They all need to look slightly different in order for it to be a succesful animation, obviously. I don't have photoshop or anything like that. How do I do it?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chainsoar @ Jun 17 2006, 05:12 PM) [snapback]237346[/snapback]</div>Well... having GIMP, you just to start a new drawing (with dimensions around 100x100), drawing something (and all over internet there are many tutorials, you have just to google a bit searching the one which fits for you) to make the first frame.
Then you have to go to the "layer window", create a new layer and draw a second frame... than a third... and so on... when you've done all the frames/layers you need just to "save as" and choose the animated gif format!

And here you have your animated avatar :brain:

As I said, there are many very tutorials on the net, I've learned in that way and I can assure you that is not hard at all ;)

:brain:

YAY for GIF Movie Gear, it made my sig.

The animation in that sig isn't that breathtaking you know. <_<

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Elon Yariv @ Jun 18 2006, 09:03 PM) [snapback]237504[/snapback]</div>It isn't meant to be. It's meant to be like his other sigs joined to make story like thing.

Ok, but still it doesn't make the program look so great.

... WAIT A MINUTE, why the heck did I just post those stingy remarks, dear stupid me. :wallbash:

Anyway, you don't need a great animation program to create great sigs and avatars.

Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't think of a way to involve my original statement that lead to such a sig... "Keep It Simple".

I will always live by those words.

EDIT My bad those words are in there...

uh...

Enjoy :ph34r:

I still can't do it. I'm going to cry. All I want to do is take screenshot from a game or something and animate it. I'm thinking maybe a Warcraft 2 Ogre doing his punchy thing. Or maybe, if I tried real hard I could get a bunch of screenshots of different moments and make a red alert rifle infantryman look like he was dancing. You know how they move around and stuff. Help me please.

So is this now an issue of not being able to take the screen caps or not being able to animate them? Have you got the screen captures of the game you want yet?

I guess this thread is almost extinct now, but oh well. I'm starting to get the hang of the things I was having difficulty with now..I'm using GIMP again, playing around, seeing what I come up with, but just out of curiosity, how exactly does one take screen shots? I know it isn't the print screen button (oh yes, I DID try that :P)...Any advice is muchly appreciated.

It should be Print Screen -> paste into a paint prg or a word/-pad doc, or a game defined key. If it's a game defined key, it should tell somewhere in the game docs which one. Search all readme files, config files and other text based files as well as the game manual.

The Print Screen button works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. If you're using DOSBox then the easier and more reliable way to take them is Ctrl+F5, the .PNG files will appear in a folder you can access from the DOSBox folder in the Start menu of Windows.

The problem is that if you use the PrintScreen you'll not be able to paste the screenshot directly to GIMP (or at least it doesn't work for me...): usually I paste in paint, save the pic and then I open that pic with GIMP...
That's a bit annoying...

Paste From Clipboard usually works for GIMP.