How to Make an Animated GIF Avatar
Avatars are used on many websites and discussion forums as a visual way to represent yourself. These avatars are often chosen from premade ones the site provides. However, some sites allow you to make your own. Many people will post a simple photo of themselves for this purpose, but a more interesting approach is to create an animated avatar based on a series of photos of yourself or something else. There are several programs that you can use for this purpose.
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Instructions
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Photoshop
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Load the photos that you want for your animation onto your computer, either by copying them from a camera or other digital source or by scanning in printed copies.
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Open Photoshop. Select “File” from the menu and choose “New.” In the dialog that appears, enter the width and height that you want for your animated avatar. Click “OK.”
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Select “File” from the menu and choose “Open.” Browse to one of the images you loaded and open it. Then use the “Copy” and “Paste” functions under “Edit” to place the image in the animation document. Repeat this to bring in all of the images in the sequence you want.
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Use the “Scale” function to resize the images to fit the canvas.
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Select “File” from the menu and choose “Save for Web.” In the dialog that appears, make the file type GIF and click “Save.” Name your file and save it for use.
Photoshop Elements
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Load the photos for your animation onto your computer, either by copying them from a camera or other digital source or by scanning in printed copies.
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Open Photoshop Elements. In the opening window choose “Edit.” Select “File” from the menu and choose “New.” From the options, choose “Blank File.” In the dialog that appears, enter the width and height that you want for your animated avatar. Click “OK.”
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Select “File” from the menu and choose “Open.” Browse to one of the images you loaded and open it. Then use the “Copy” and “Paste” functions under “Edit” to place the image in the animation document. Repeat this to bring in all of the images in the sequence you want.
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Use the “Scale” function to resize the images to fit the canvas.
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Select “File” from the menu and choose “Save for Web.” In the dialog that appears, make the file type GIF and click “Save.” Name your file and save it for use.
GIMP
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Load the photos for your animation onto your computer, either by copying them from a camera or other digital source or by scanning in printed copies.
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Open GIMP. Select “File” from the menu and choose “Import as Layers.” In the dialog that appears, browse to the images you loaded and import them. They will appear in the “Layers” palette.
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Select “File” form the menu and choose “Save.” Make the file type GIF and click “Save.” In the dialogs that appear, choose “Save as Animation,” “Export” and set the duration of the frames. Change the “Disposal” to “Replace.” Click “Save” again, and your animated avatar is ready.
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References
- Photo Credit red nosed reindeer image by Roslen Mack from Fotolia.com
