[Guide] amie's guide to animation

[aurora_amethyst]

Requested by fallleaves and smallrobot

I know this guide has been a long time in coming. So here it is, the shiny guide to animating icons! While you don't have to know a whole lot about animation, it is good to keep in mind the basic concept. I like to use the example of the flip book. Each page in the book changes a little bit of the animation. The same is true for frames in Photoshop and layers in GIMP. But we'll get to frames and layers a little layer.

For now, just keep in mind the pages in a flip book.

PART 1: Types of GIFs

Okay, so based on my not-so-wide experience, there are three types of animated icons:

• DIY animation: Basically, you are creating all of the animated effects in your icon
• Overlays: These overlays are animated textures that you will "overlay" (or "screen") on top of your icon
• Mini-movies: The mini-movie is made up of a bunch of screencaps from a movie clip (you can extract GIFs from YouTube videos through online GIF programs and, if you have the video saved to your computer, through media players such as GOM Player which I highly recommend)

Examples:

DIY Animation	Overlay	Mini Movie

DIY Animation

DIY animation can range from extremely simple to incredibly complicated. For example, you can just go through a series of layers like this icon:



Rain can also be fairly simple and so can "sparkly" snow.



However, it can also be fairly complicated as in this glitch effect which I created myself (through the use of various textures and gradients):



Or just effects with text!



Even techniques such as camera flashes and flames and slide projector effects.


Overlays

Here are some examples icons using overlays:




Typically, these overlays are set to screen or overlay or even multiply to give a certain effect, or they are used as is.

Mini- Movies

Then you have mini-movies. These are basically animations of a movie clip and can be made using GIFs extracted from a video clip or movie as well as with a couple of screencaps.

Icons made with a some of screencaps:

Icons made from a movie clip:

PART 2: Basic Steps for Animation

For this guide, I'm going to go through some simple versions of each type of animation (except mini movies) for both Photoshop and GIMP (I'm so rusty!). I'm not familiar with some of the other programs out there, but you may be able to find tutorials on places like Livejournal (mostly missing images), tumblr (some links are broken), and other places on the Internet (YouTube, personal websites, etc.). I'll include a small list of links to tutorials and other guides at the bottom of this guide.

DIY Animations: Going through Layers

With this type of animation, you will be literally going through layers (GIMP) or frames (Photoshop). For this part, I will be going through four different layers. In this case I'm just using four different images, but you can also incorporate text layers as well (see the three icons at the beginning of the guide under DIY Animation).

I started out with these four images:

(Anna, Georgie, Skandar, and William)

GIMP Method

My recommendation is that you go ahead and color your images separately and flatten them before making the GIF because GIMP uses all the visible layers (as far as I know) when the GIF is saved. To keep things simple, I opted not to do any coloring on my images.

First, open a new file.



Next, you will select the size, resolution, and color mode.



Next, paste in the images that you plan to use as new layers (use the plus button not the anchor button) to a new icon.



The first image (Anna) should be the bottom layer, and the rest of the layers should follow with the last layer being on top (William).



Be sure to delete any other layers (specifically the background layer). Use the button with the x in a box to delete any layers.



If you would like to see how your icon would look before you save it, go to Filters>Animations>Playback.



You can use the following settings, but you can also adjust the speed and the frame rate (fps) depending on how many layers you have.



Go to Filters>Animations>Optimize (GIF). This helps with the file size. GIMP will open another image with the optimized file.



I've always edited the timeframes (from 100ms to 1000ms) listed in the new file (see below), but I don't know if it makes a difference or not (apparently, it does based on what I've found in the GIMP version of the Overlay Texture tutorial).



Go to File>Export As.


A box will pop up to name the file and select the file type. Name your file, and select GIF as the file type. Click "Export" when you are done.



Another box will pop up. Check the box next to "As Animation." Make sure that the box next to "Loop forever" is also checked. Then for the milliseconds, type in 1000. For frame disposal where unspecified, choose "One frame per layer (replace)." Also check the box next to "Use delay entered above for all frames." Sorry, I forgot to check the stuff for the fram disposal, orz. Then click "Export" again.



This is how it should turn out. (Unfortunately, the quality for GIMP gifs is not very high).



Photoshop Method

The nice thing about Photoshop is that you don't have to flatten your layers before animating, so go ahead and paste your layers and do your coloring. Sometimes I put my coloring layers in a group so that I can easily see the layers that will actually be used for the animation.

Then go to Window>Timeline and be sure there is a check beside Timeline.



At the bottom of your screen, you should see a tab that says Timeline. Click on the button that says Create Frame Animation (or if it says Create Video Timeline click on the arrow button next to it).



Now you should have a frame that looks like your icon with a little arrow next to 0 sec. Also, there should be a box that says Once.



Click on the little arrow next to 0 sec. and change it to .1. Click on the box that says Once, and change the setting to Forever. The first setting slows down the animation (because otherwise it will go really fast! Try pressing play before you change the seconds to see what I'm talking about). The second setting keeps the animation going endlessly. If you leave it on Once, the animation will only play once and stop.



With just the first frame selected, I hid the layers (on the Layer Palette) with Georgie, Skandar, and William but kept my Anna layer visible along with my levels and curves layers (I'm using the same coloring on all layers).



On the Timeline window, there should be a button that looks like a New Layer button. Click on that to add a new frame.



Hide the Anna layer and make the Georgie layer visible. The levels and curves layers are still visible.



Do the same steps for the Skandar layer and the William layer. You should now have a total of 4 frames in your timeline.



To preview your GIF, hit the play button.



To save the icon, you will go to File>Save for Web.



You can adjust the settings from this screen. I usually have the 4 up option, so I can play and compare the different versions of the GIF. I love this screen because you can see what the quality would be like as well as what the file size would be like. It also allows you to mess with the number of colors. I chose the top right box because I felt like it had the best quality and a low file size. There is a tutorial listed at the end of this guide that goes into the in's and out's of reducing file size. I have found it to be really helpful.



After you've tweaked all the settings, just click the save button and save your GIF.

File Comparison

GIMP: 31.7kb	Photoshop: 32.8kb (non-colored)	Photoshop: 33.9kb (colored)

DIY Animation: Rain and Snow

I have written GIMP tutorials for rain and "sparkly" snow, so, if you are using GIMP, you might want to check them out. For Photoshop users, you can still follow the basic ideas while still using the Timeline to create your frames.

Overlays

I'm sure most of you have used textures on your icons. Maybe you set them on screen, soft light, overlay, etc. Well, GIF overlays work very similarly to textures. You'll set these layers to whatever layer mode best suits your icon.

Here are some examples of GIF overlays:

poisonfieldx2 | violateraindrop x2


wxlverine x4

If you ever open a overlay GIF (or even a mini movie GIF) in your photo editing program, you will see what I mean about a flip book because each layer is a small part of the animation.



For the next part, I will be using this texture by poisonfield:

Photoshop Method

I usually drag the overlay texture's layers to my icon, but you can open the overlay texture and work from it too, but remember to save it to a new file and don't save over the texture. In this case, I decided to open the overlay texture and save it as a new file so that the frames are already generated. If you decide to drag the layers, you would go through the process of creating a frame, selecting all the layers that should be visible in the frame (the base, the coloring layer, and the first layer of the overlay texture) for the first frame and so on and so forth.

To make things a little easier since I put the overlay textures in a group/folder, so that I can work on the coloring first. Be sure that you select all the frames on the timeline when you are doing the coloring otherwise in addition to your animation you'll have random changes in color.



Here is what my layer palette looked like after I finished coloring and rearranging my layers (notice that I put some color layers over the overlay texture layers so that the coloring affects the whole GIF):



If you haven't already, make sure that for each frame, you change each overlay texture layer to whichever layer mode you are wanting to use. In this case, I changed all my overlay texture layer modes to screen.





From here, you can save your GIF. Sometimes, depending on what I am trying to do, I may fiddle with the coloring a little more or add textures here and there. Just remember to select all your frames on the timeline if you want your coloring or textures to affect the whole animation. You may have to check each frame to see if all the correct layers are selected. But here is how it turned out:



GIMP Method

You could start by opening the overlay texture in GIMP, but I suggest that you start out with your base first so that you can do your coloring and any editing first and then merge all your layers together. But this is what the overlay texture if you started with it first:



But I am going to start with my base first.



Then (this is really a cool thing!) go to File>Open as Layers.



A box should pop up. Search for the overlay texture file that you want to work with, click on it, and click on Open.



The overlay texture's layers should now be added to the layer palette:



The next step is to duplicate your base and pair each duplicated base with an overlay texture layer.



Now, you want to change to mode of your overlay texture layers. I decided to go with screen. I also decided to change the coloring of all the overlay textures to sepia (to help with the file size and to keep the coloring consistent) by going to Colors>Desaturation>Sepia.



Then merge each overlay texture layer to the background layer by right-clicking the overlay texture layer and clicking Merge Down.


Follow the steps from the earlier tutorial for optimizing the GIF, but leave the ms at 100. For the settings to save the icon, use the following (not sure why I had to do it differently though):



File Comparison

GIMP: 94.5kb	Photoshop: 94.2kb

Mini-Movies

I'm not going to go into too much detail on these. Basically, you would take your screencaps/gif and animate them following the "Going through Layers" guide above. The only thing that makes it more complicated (other than coloring) is having to decrease the number of frames/layers and fiddling with the settings when you save the GIF (only in Photoshop). There is a great tutorial that I've listed at the end of this guide that breaks down the different things you can do to reduce the GIF file size.

Other Resources

GIMP Text Effect
GIMP Tutorials [1] [2] [3]
How to Reduce GIF file size in Photoshop
Photoshop Anime Teardrop Effect
Photoshop Blurred Background Effect
Photoshop Camera Flash Effect [1] [2]
Photoshop Candle Flicker Effect [1] [2] [3]
Photoshop Fiery Glasses Effect
Photoshop Glitch Effect [1] [2]
Photoshop Mini-movie [1] [2]
Photoshop Smoke Effect
Photoshop Sparkling Effect Photoshop Text Effect [1] [2]
Photoshop Tutorial [1] [2] [3] (#3 uses timeline instead of frames)
Photoshop Tutorial List (Click GIF Tutorials)

Questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment, and I will do my best to answer!

Comments

[abyss_valkyrie]

Oh wow!I love the projector effect and the text effect in the 'Black Organization' icon. Thanks for the flashing light tutorial, I might try it out with some of the textures from here.
Your diy glitch effect is also fantastic!

[aurora_amethyst]

D'awww! Thanks so much! I'm glad the guide turned out to be helpful!

[tinny]

Thanks so much for writing it all up! Animation is always so much work!

[aurora_amethyst]

You're very welcome! I tried to make it as detailed as possible, but I don't know if it was detailed enough for someone new (hence the list of tutorials/guides at the end). I've done animated icons for so long that it's hard to remember what it was like not knowing some of the terms and stuff. But I'm glad I was finally able to finish it. It was definitely harder to put together than the composition guide (for obvious reasons, lol). I'll just be glad if anyone finds it even a little bit useful!

[littlemissnovella]

This is so helpful!

[aurora_amethyst]

D'awww! Thanks! I'm glad you've found it to be helpful!

[chocolatefrogs]

I'm sooooo going to have to take time and read through this and fiddle around in photoshop. Thank you for this.
Alright if I link this in my Dreamwidth guide I made?

[aurora_amethyst]

You're very welcome!

Yes, you are more than welcome to link it! ^^