1sickbastard
Seriously?
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I've seen'em. I want one. I just don't know how.
How to Use a gif as my av?
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Zeb_Carter
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That is a complex answer...
You either...
a. Have to find a gif with size of 150x150 and 30k or less in file size...a hard thing to do.
b. grab a gif from wherever and re-size it yourself...a hard thing to do.
You either...
a. Have to find a gif with size of 150x150 and 30k or less in file size...a hard thing to do.
b. grab a gif from wherever and re-size it yourself...a hard thing to do.
1sickbastard
Seriously?
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Bramblethorn
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You could try a website like this: http://ezgif.com/resize
I haven't used that one, but I've tried others that did a pretty good job with static images, and this one says it does animations.
1sickbastard
Seriously?
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Thank you.
NightL
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Likely an answer greater than you want/need - may help understanding the process.
Gimp is a free open source image editor (like a simple but clunky Photoshop) and I believe can create/edit animated gifs
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Simple_Animations/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
Google search for Make Animations Online
What is a gif?
A file format the utilises a compression technique (making the file size smaller to transfer over Internet and display) best suited to images with areas of flat solid colour (not photos). Maximum number of colours is 256 to represent an image. That is why photos look crap saved out as a gif. Reduce the colours used reduces the file size. Other stuff goes on in saving out as a gif - unimportant for here.
Gifs can be animated.
An animated gif is just a series of individual images displayed one after another with a time display duration assigned for each image/frame. Animation can be looped indefinitely or for a specific number of times.
As Zeb mentioned the max size limitation is 150 pixels by 150 pixels for avatars. So either start a Gimp project with those dimensions or resize/crop your start image to those dimensions.
The more frames the higher the file size. If file size is too large try removing every second frame and double the duration display time for each remaining frame. This will nearly reduce the file size by nearly 50%
Gifs carry their own palette of colours. The maximum amount of colours a gif can have is 256 (that is why they never have the depth of a jpg file that can have millions of colours). Reducing the amount of colours a gif is saved out with will reduce the file size. Try 32 or 16 or even less, obviously this will impact on the display quality if using a photo-like image.
Most video editing software will allow saving out as animated gifs as well but will be very difficult/impossible to save out under 30kb avatar file size limit. - Resize/crop the vid down to 150px x 150px - frame rate will need to be reduced considerably than a video standards of 23fps - 30fps. You are really looking at a few frames displayed at 2 - 12fps. There are free video editing suites with both Windows and Macs. You could do some simple drawings in Windows Paint and import them into Windows Live Movie Maker - but I don't think you can assign individual frame durations (? maybe you can) - so in order to freeze on a frame you will actually be repeating the same image over several frames. The file size will reflect multiple images used, even if repeated.
Aim for an animation that is just a few seconds long at most. A few flat solid colours will be better for end file size than gradients or photo-like images.
Read the help files of the software you use and there are plenty of Youtube tutorials to hunt up on animating with Gimp or any software you choose.
I created my animation from a screen wallpaper
http://bozenwallpaper.com/wp-conten...-eyes-3d-animation-creative-hd-wallpapers.jpg
I used Photoshop - recoloured eye, resized/cropped to 150px x 113px - only three frames. I morphed the original image just twice.
Frame one duration 5 seconds, frame two 0.03 sec, frame 3 0.05 sec - looped
Saved the file out with a palette of 32 colours.
File size 16kb
Took a number of trials and approaches to get this under the 30kb limit. I only use three frames for my 16kb file.
http://i764.photobucket.com/albums/xx289/NightL/eye-frames_zps21pbnezg.gif
Gimp is a free open source image editor (like a simple but clunky Photoshop) and I believe can create/edit animated gifs
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Simple_Animations/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
Google search for Make Animations Online
What is a gif?
A file format the utilises a compression technique (making the file size smaller to transfer over Internet and display) best suited to images with areas of flat solid colour (not photos). Maximum number of colours is 256 to represent an image. That is why photos look crap saved out as a gif. Reduce the colours used reduces the file size. Other stuff goes on in saving out as a gif - unimportant for here.
Gifs can be animated.
An animated gif is just a series of individual images displayed one after another with a time display duration assigned for each image/frame. Animation can be looped indefinitely or for a specific number of times.
As Zeb mentioned the max size limitation is 150 pixels by 150 pixels for avatars. So either start a Gimp project with those dimensions or resize/crop your start image to those dimensions.
The more frames the higher the file size. If file size is too large try removing every second frame and double the duration display time for each remaining frame. This will nearly reduce the file size by nearly 50%
Gifs carry their own palette of colours. The maximum amount of colours a gif can have is 256 (that is why they never have the depth of a jpg file that can have millions of colours). Reducing the amount of colours a gif is saved out with will reduce the file size. Try 32 or 16 or even less, obviously this will impact on the display quality if using a photo-like image.
Most video editing software will allow saving out as animated gifs as well but will be very difficult/impossible to save out under 30kb avatar file size limit. - Resize/crop the vid down to 150px x 150px - frame rate will need to be reduced considerably than a video standards of 23fps - 30fps. You are really looking at a few frames displayed at 2 - 12fps. There are free video editing suites with both Windows and Macs. You could do some simple drawings in Windows Paint and import them into Windows Live Movie Maker - but I don't think you can assign individual frame durations (? maybe you can) - so in order to freeze on a frame you will actually be repeating the same image over several frames. The file size will reflect multiple images used, even if repeated.
Aim for an animation that is just a few seconds long at most. A few flat solid colours will be better for end file size than gradients or photo-like images.
Read the help files of the software you use and there are plenty of Youtube tutorials to hunt up on animating with Gimp or any software you choose.
I created my animation from a screen wallpaper
http://bozenwallpaper.com/wp-conten...-eyes-3d-animation-creative-hd-wallpapers.jpg
I used Photoshop - recoloured eye, resized/cropped to 150px x 113px - only three frames. I morphed the original image just twice.
Frame one duration 5 seconds, frame two 0.03 sec, frame 3 0.05 sec - looped
Saved the file out with a palette of 32 colours.
File size 16kb
Took a number of trials and approaches to get this under the 30kb limit. I only use three frames for my 16kb file.
http://i764.photobucket.com/albums/xx289/NightL/eye-frames_zps21pbnezg.gif
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