|
|
Animated images like the one above are pretty to look at, but huge in file size, and not very practical for sigs. But, there is a way! Notice how fast this one loaded? Click here to read the last 3 paragraphs, and see how it's done. Then, if you want to make one, read through the insructions. It's a lot of work, but you can do it in stages.
Moon Angel NOTE - These intructions are specific for these 2 images. You will likely need to do some adjusting depending on the images you choose, but the basics will remain the same. I started by trimming the excess black from the sides of the moon. Then I made a bg of one of the colors in the angel, and comp'd the moon using multiply. Resized the angel to about 1/2 the height of the moon. Comp'd her North (multiply), then flipped the image and comp'd her north again. Flip back to right side up. Out and save. Example 1 Back to IM and cropped it so that I had just the bottom half. Approximately 1/2 the size of the total image. Since WebFX automatically flips the image when it does the ani, you need to flip this image at IM. Out and save. Example 2 Take this to WebFX, and apply the Lake Reflect effect at low intensity, background color=black. Save as a gif. Example 3 Crappy looking, eh? We'll fix it! Take the animated image to Gifworks . Crop off _just_ the top half of the image, the part that is not animated. Try to center the crop as exactly as you can, but do not take any off the sides. Next, go to optimize. Split into frames. On the next page you will see 3 seperate images. Upload each one and save. Make sure you keep them in the right order. ( Top=#1 Middle=#2 Bottom=#3 ) They will look like this Split Frames . Take each of the frames to IM and paint in the white areas on the image with black. Use floodfill and fuzz 999. Save each one (again, keeping them in order) to a seperate directory with nothing else in it. name them 1.gif, 2.gif and 3.gif, like THIS After you have them painted, ccp the url to the directory and head back to IM. The url should look like this - http://wtv-zone.com/MsV2/Projects/4/ Enter the url for the directory in the text box. Next page, click output. Choose gif & "multifile". Scroll down to the "delay" box & enter 20. Click output. It should look like this - Example 4 Return to Gifworks and optimize to an acceptable size. Make sure ya don't crunch too much and loose your color. Mine is about 20 kb. The original from webfx is 82 kb. WebFX also shrinks the image to approximately half it's original size in width, when making the ani, so you need to resize your starting image. Resize to the same width of the ani, by _twice the height of the animation. In this case 200 wide by 242 in height. 200!x242 NOW - we could go ahead and comp the ani on the resized original. I did, just for chuckles, and ended up with a whopping 166,000 kb image! Nuh uh! No way! Even if you optimized it at gifworks, it would still take forever to load in a sig. Sooooooooo, tables to the rescue! Ha!!!! We have a fast loading sig or webpage with the look of an animated image! Codes to pull it all together <<>table background="pnk-angel2.jpg" width="200" height="242"> <<>tr><<>td align="center" valign="bottom"> <<>img src="pnk-angelani2.gif"> <<>/td><<>/tr><<>/table> ŠApril 15, 2005 Club Chocolata |
