avatar help?

[Koichi]

Hey guys, I've been making avatars for eh a while, I'm not so good, but i cant complain lol, anyways I thought that i would start to try making animated avatars, so here's my first trial..
http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n81/k0ichikun/kiva-avatar.gif
Thing is.... Its waay too big a file size :sweat: anyone have any suggestions? if it helps at all, I use photoshop cs3.

 

[glcorps2002]

I'd say use every other frame then lower the color scale to 128. It will make it go faster and take up less space. You don't always need all 256 colors anyway. If it's still not small enough remove some dither. Remove about 20% to 30%.

 

[Takuya]

The file played pretty slow. I'm not as patient as GL probably is, lol...so I don't work frame-by-frame unless I absolutely have to. Import the MOV file by using maybe every second frame if you're using them all now, because that .gif moved quite slowly.

You can also add it to a backdrop like in my avatar. If you happen to do that, use every third frame when importing.

But...great job. I really think it's great to be getting more people doing graphics here at HJU. Try some of the tips you've gotten, and see where it goes from there. Good luck!

 

[JFC]

Time-wise, it's rather long. Remember that for each second of footage you use for these GIFs, you're looking at around 20-25 frames depending on the source. Watching him walk in that GIF, I would suggest that you trim off at least a couple of "steps" at both the beginning and end of it to reduce the number of frames (which would in turn reduce the overall size of the GIF).

And yeah, as Takuya said, it somewhat slow. Try experimenting with reducing the time interval between frames. The less time the faster/smoother it should look.

 

[Koichi]

Thnaks for the tips, I tried cutting down half the frames, and it worked! A backdrop huh.. I've never really tried borders for avatars or sigs before, any tips?

 

[Takuya]

Thnaks for the tips, I tried cutting down half the frames, and it worked! A backdrop huh.. I've never really tried borders for avatars or sigs before, any tips?

Look at my avatar. Start with a blank project and fill it with a color. Then link your animation layers and drag them onto the backdrop. From there it should be easy adjusting layer positions and adding some effects if you want. To do a border in Photoshop, [Ctrl + A] to select the border, then [Edit -> Stroke] with a color you want.

Good luck.

 

[glcorps2002]

Look at my avatar. Start with a blank project and fill it with a color. Then link your animation layers and drag them onto the backdrop. From there it should be easy adjusting layer positions and adding some effects if you want. To do a border in Photoshop, [Ctrl + A] to select the border, then [Edit -> Stroke] with a color you want.

Good luck.

That's how you do it? I've been putting rectangles behind them all this time.:shakefist

 

[Koichi]

Oh wow thanks! I like the results xD

 

[Takuya]

That's how you do it? I've been putting rectangles behind them all this time.:shakefist

Ah, that works too, haha. But the more we learn...

Oh wow thanks! I like the results xD

Glad to help. Your new avatar looks great! Perhaps a bit bigger, though?

 

[Koichi]

yeah thats what i was thinking too.. i might have to remake a new one though because if i resize these constraints it'll be blurry lol, thanks for the tips guys wait and see what i come up with now!!
Edit: Resized it, it does look better, but i had to take out a 5th of the frames lol and still then it was too fast so i put in a delay of .1 secs