Step-by-step Animated Avatar Guide

<--- Another one fresh out of the oven. (for all who dont know what the heck that is, It is me grinding on a rail on the Foundry level of Tony hawk 3. I captured the video, changed the .avi to a .mpg, increased the brightness, and then picked the exact frames I wanted.)

(It looks like I am going back and forth forever, but it is only once and alligned that way.)

(for all who are interested, its 90k. Took a MONKEY LOAD of work to get it under 100k. >_< )

Cool huh&#33; B)

great avatar people&#33;

Thanks alot red rival for the guide, having more people making gif avatars will make the forum that much better, well done :)

@got_memory
See that you found heaps on doing animated avatars. I&#39;m a bit outdated considering the fact I&#39;m using a still gif for my avatar and have no intentions to change it :D. But then again, memory, if you have tips and tricks on making avatars, PM me and I&#39;ll gladly add it on to the FAQ.

@TRshady
:D. Thanks for the compliment. Always like your avatar, the way it moves, but don&#39;t like the guy in it that much though lol ;)

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But then again, memory, if you have tips and tricks on making avatars, PM me and I&#39;ll gladly add it on to the FAQ.

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Not really tricks but I explaed how I did it below

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I first captured the video using Pinacle Studio deluxe (I bought it on sale... Thank god&#33;).

Then, to increase the brightness and stuff (change to .mpg) , I used Adobe Premere (I actually bought it, &#036;&#036;&#036;&#33; They charge WAY to much&#33;)

Then, I edited it to the frames I wanted with premere (I find it eaiser than with animation shop)

I converted to gif and lowered the quality to the 2nd lowest bar.

Published to web... DONE&#33;

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P.S. Thank you very much RedRival for making such a good and indepth guide on how to do this&#33; :) :beerchug:

I&#39;m kind of expierienced in making avatars now, but I still have this little problem:

I&#39;d like my avatars to look like this (64x64): http://galleries.vinyamar.com/ps/sho...wWZD4&ext=.gif

At the moment I still have this crappy movie format: http://galleries.vinyamar.com/ps/sho...7Jt4X&ext=.gif

In other words: The black bars should go and the avatar should completely fill the 64x64 pixels area.
"The Avatar Man" told me to use VirtualDub before using Animation Shop, but I don&#39;t have a clue on how to use it. :blink:
Anyone having an idea how I can solve this?

@got_memory
Hmm that involves another software, maybe I&#39;ll leave your tip in my guide ASAP. IMO, my guide is very shallow, being in-depth is a different thing :D.

@bender
Do you have a video file of that avatar or you want that avatar you have currently to be resized to that of 64x64?? I don&#39;t think Resizing the small one to that of 64x64 px would work. But if you have a large scale video file of that, instead of resizing it directly to 64x64 and have all the black bars on the top and bottom, try for instance 110x110 px then from there crop it to 64x64.

Hope that helps.

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Originally posted by RedRival@30 April 2003 - 08:36
@bender
Do you have a video file of that avatar or you want that avatar you have currently to be resized to that of 64x64?? I don&#39;t think Resizing the small one to that of 64x64 px would work. But if you have a large scale video file of that, instead of resizing it directly to 64x64 and have all the black bars on the top and bottom, try for instance 110x110 px then from there crop it to 64x64.

Hope that helps.

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That did the trick, it was very easy even. :D
Note that, besides resizing pictures for my signatures, I have no experience with paint/animation programs whatsoever, I&#39;m very n00bish on this. :lol:

Thanks. ;)


EDIT: Maybe you could include this in your guide so people can choose between having the bars or not.
I saw that you remade your guide, looks very good now. :flowers:

I think I placed it alongside with the instructions, but it seemed a bit complicating...
And thanks for the compliment on the new layout :D.

Thank you again RedRival... Yes, it looks really complicated. But anyone with 3/4 of a brain should be able to do it :lol: .


Also, your sig2dat dosent work, it just shows up as html since this isnt in the verifieds section.

Finally, I think that there is a maximum # of frames in AS3. I think its something around 450. I tried to import a 2:30 movie and crop it and only the first while showed up.

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Ok, enough negative stuff. The new layout looks great&#33;

I have just a few Ideas, but they may be of no use.

Idea #1 If its possible, have one of the mods turn on Html on this topic. Then, your sig2dat will work, and you could use bookmarks (if you dont know what they look like, <a name="Section 1"> Section 1</a> - just as a example.

Idea #2 Remove all the posts after the first one. Then close the topic. (not to good)

Idea #3 Post the old tutorial at the bottom and offer a "advanced" version or a "simple" one. Use bookmarks to go to each.

Idea #4 Put one hand on your belly, jump around, while screaming "wooga booga". ;) :lol:
(I think I am giving WAY too many ideas ;) :lol: )

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Acknowledgements.

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What about me? ;) :lol: (kidding)


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Wow, this took a long time (over 10minutes). :spam:

Thanks again for such a good tutorial&#33;

Mabey I should of broken that up into multiple posts... then it wouldnt look so boring.... but it would be :spam: