MrWhitefolks' Animated Gif Insanity [GALLERY/TUTORIAL LINK NOW AVAILABLE]

THE GALLERY IS NOW ONLINE

Feel free to peruse the gallery located on the nav bar link selection thing on the left side of the main page, then go in and snag any animation you want(plus all of the new Silent Hill 3 stuff I was working on).

THE MEGA TUTORIAL IS NOW ONLINE

This tutorial is a complete(as of right now...it will be continually updated as my own skills increase) walkthrough for making an animation out of an AVI file.

-Includes a full "how to" using Virtual Dub(with pictures) via step by step instructions-

-Includes a full "how to" using Gif Movie Gear(with pictures) via step by step instructions-

-Includes a lesson on optimization, with examples given and explanations-

-Includes a lesson in dithering, with examples given and explanations-

fuck, someones been busy.

I LOVE that trouble at hogwarts one.

Cool...I was inspired to make my first attempt..

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/a...id=13994&stc=1

Ill have to play around to see if I can find a good point to loop it..

Fuckin' A Whitefolks, that's some good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to try and learn us something!

-due to tnls 18000character maximum per post, i have to put the "how to guide" here instead of in the main post-

Ok, now that we got that out of the way; here comes the informative part.

Here's the long version of "how to make animations the MrWhitefolks way":

Programs Needed
Fraps
VirtualDub
BBFlashRecorder
GifMovieGear

No, none of these programs are free, get the demos via google or download.com and then go crack the fuck out of 'em or something. lol

How to make it work for you
The trick here is knowing WHAT each program is used for.

FRAPS
This is what you use to record anything you see that is a video file. Sure, you COULD try to edit it first in VirtualDub...but sometimes certain formats just wont work(quicktime, specific mpegs, wmvs, etc). So, what do you do? Open those fuckers up in either Media Player Classic or Windows Media Player and record from there using Fraps. Fraps will dump it to an uncompressed AVI file that can be edited in VirtualDub to cut out exactly what animation you want.

BBFlashRecorder
This little gem is what you use to record anything you find that is on a web page. See a cool flash movie? Want to steal it for an animation? Then use this. It allows you to set up the dimensions of the recorded area and it saves as a flash file that you can edit(w/BBFlashRecorder) before you export it as a raw AVI file.

VirtualDub
This is one of the most valuable programs ever for editing animations. You can use this do delete dead frames manually(dead frames are frames of animation that repeat themselves...thus stalling the animation), convert avi's and edit them before exporting, etc. All around a good "right hand man" style of program to the next one on our list.

Gif Movie Gear
This is THE god damn gif animator. The only thing (if anything at all) that it lacks is the ability to overlay text on your animation. This is where you can adjust frame length(milliseconds), optimize, crop, resize, reduce count, and all the stuff associated with gif making. This is basically where all the "magic" happens, and this is the program you will spend the most time with.

How to make an Animation "fluid" without having a huge file size
Now, when i say "huge file size" i mean anything over 600kb. I try to keep all of mine under that as it makes for good sig images(and considering that almost everyone has broadband now, it's a perfectly acceptable size for msg board signature images).

Ok, here's the tutorial...step by step. Use whatever means nessecary to get what you want captured. Now that you have that done and you've deleted the "dead frames" in Virtual Dub...your gonna open that sumbitch in Gif Movie Gear.

Rule 1: Always experiement. you never know if the animation you're working on needs to be faster, slower, or have millisecond delays; so constantly save different versions of your animation(ie...anim1, anim2, anim3) and compare them while you work towards the goal of having a badass animation.

Rule 2: Learn how Gif Movie Gear works. This program offers so many different options it might be pretty intimidating. Here's the main options you will be using to fix up your animations:

Edit~Reduce Count: You use this to automatically delete frames of animation to keep your animations "speed" parallel to the source material. It allows you to chose how many frames to skip before deleting one as well(ie...delete every 1 out of 2, 1 out of 3, one out of 4, etc)

Animation~Crop: This is what you'll be using to cut out your animation and make it look "letterbox", or even to just reduce the file size somewhat. Never underestimate the power of the cropping tool.

Animation~Resize: This is what you use if you want to shrink your animation down. Chosing the "Nearest Neighbor" option gives you an overall better look to the animation, but the file size might be a little bit bigger. Choosing "Bilinear" has the program remap the palatte scheme and deletes "like frames"...this will give you smaller file size, but the look might not be what you want. Test accordingly.

Animation~Optomize: This is the last thing you do before saving your animation as it designates what colors each frame shares and then optimizes the actual animation to use colors from frames before it(if possible) to reduce file size without any quality loss.

Play Animation: Now this is not only a test for your animation, but it allows you to edit the timing of each individual frame. Just click the little "clock" button and an extra area should open up that will give you all kinds of options.

-remember-
adding a slight delay to one frame will make that frame stand out. not to the point where anyone notices that it's slowing down or pausing the animation...but you CAN use this technique to draw their attention to specific frames in the animation itself.

example: so you have an animation, all the frames are timed at 6ms(milliseconds), but you see one or two frames that just need to "stand out" to the viewer.

try delaying those frames by setting them at around 8 or 9ms and see what happens. if the animation begins to "stutter" around those frames, then it's too much of a delay.

a general rule of thumb is to delay the frames only 2 or 3ms MORE than the rest. you want it to stick out and be noticeable to the viewer, WITHOUT them knowing you did it.

Now that we got that out of the way, we can continue on with the 'how-to'....

1)open file

2)does your animation need to "REDUCE COUNT"? try saving it and seeing if it plays really slow(use internet explorer to test animations, as that is the standard that all other browsers are based on). If it does, you have to many frames of animation and need to "REDUCE COUNT"

2a)how is the "FRAME TIMING"? did you delay any frames to make them stand out? you should always do this directly after step 2...because you will want to see what "ms" is needed to keep your animation fluid after cutting out those frames.

3)how big is your file? can you "RESIZE" it to lower the file size? will you be using "NEAREST NEIGHBOR" or "BILINEAR"? test it out and see what happens.

4)Now that your animation plays fluidly, and you have it resized as you need it....is there any areas on the animation that you can "CROP" out to conserve space with? test it out real quick and see what it does for you.

5)after the above 4 steps are completed...you probably want to "OPTIMIZE" your animation and then you should be finished. open it in "INTERNET EXPLORER" and see how it runs.

if you have any other questions, feel free to lemme know.

Make some cool Shaolin Soccer animations - so I dont have to break my laziness cycle and learn how to do it on my own - which I am tempted to do based on your 'how-to-guide'.

smoo didn't make this, but I thought it was awesome.
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/a...id=13995&stc=1

bump for 5 new animations(flash based)

Pue genius

bump for saturday update