How to Animate Avatars

Animating an avatar is not much different than animating an banner ad. Both take artwork and use Photoshop to create a simple graphic interchange format (GIF) file. By creating a frame-by-frame animation, you can show a transition from one image to another, much like stop-frame animation.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe Photoshop
• As many graphics as you want to include in your avatar

1. Open Adobe Photoshop and create a new document. For the purposes of this article, we will create a 300 by 300 document at 72 dpi.

2. Get your images together. If they require cropping and sizing, this would be a good time to prepare the file. For our purposes, we will animate the transition of four numbers: 1, 2, 3 and 4. Once your files are properly sized, bring them in as individual layers to your document by dragging the item from your layers palette to the open document window.

3. Determine the order of the animation.

4. Create a GIF file of your graphic by going to File and Save for Web and Devices. In this window, make sure the file format GIF is selected and your settings are correct. Then, save the file. Repeat this process until you have created GIF files of each piece.

5. Go to Gickr.com. This website will help you assemble your GIF file. Choose Upload your file by clicking Browse, selecting your file and hitting OK. Repeat for each file you wish to upload. Then, click the next link in the bottom right corner of the screen.

6. This will take you a screen where you can download your GIF file. Simply click the Download Image link and save it to your computer. Then you can upload it to any site and use it as your personal avatar.