How to Make Your Own Animated Buddy Icons

Cute pets make for great buddy icon pictures.

A buddy icon lets you share a piece of your personality with the people you instant message. Perhaps you'd really like to show two or even four images. An animated buddy icon shows multiple images in rotation, like a slideshow. Multiple free online services will let you create an animated GIF to use as your icon.

Things You'll Need

• Image files

Instructions

1. Go to a free animated GIF website (see Resources).

2. Click "Choose File" (GICKR/Make a GIF) or "Upload" (GIFMAKE) and navigate to the folder on your computer where you have save the images you want to include. Double-click the first image you want to appear in your animated buddy icon.

3. Repeat Step 2 for each additional image. The order you select them in will be the order in which they appear.

4. GICKR: Choose "Custom..." from the "Size" menu and enter "48" in the box below it.

   Make a GIF: Click inside the circle next to "Resize for AIM buddy icon."

   GIFMAKE: Click inside the circle after "To a specific size(pixels)" and enter "48" as both the height and width.

5. Click "Continue" (GICKR), "Create Gif" (Make a GIF) or "Generate GIF" (GIFMAKE) to create the final animated GIF.

6. Right-click on the resulting animated GIF image and select "Save As." Choose a location on your hard drive and click "Save."

Tips & Warnings

• Buddy icons are almost always 48 pixels high by 48 pixels wide. Starting with images this size will increase the quality of your final animated GIF image.

References

• AIM: Did You Know You Can Make User-Created Buddy Icons?

Resources

• Make a GIF
• GIFMAKE
• GICKR: Photos in Motion