Ichi-gif!

[monkeyboy]

Yes it's Kool!

<--- loves seeing gifs!

I see you went outside of Rs to host, that is great 'couse you can have a larger image.

Placing a break is good for some gif, just setting the timing can be the issue.

Have fun making more!

Congratulations!

[aernath]

LOL.
I tried making that pause by adding the last frame again, but apparently that makes it too big to animate in my PS3.0.

Which is kind of a good thing, really. If it had been oh, say, only able to take 15 frames, I would have gone absolutely ballistic.

[klet]

Leah, I just thought you should know that when I clicked on the jpg hosting thingie in your gallery, I got the most interesting message.

Right above the wonderful gif, the screen read: "When you can't get naked in person . . ."





I thought it was a fitting tribute to you.



Oh, and lovely job on the gif! It looks wonderful!

[aernath]

Right above the wonderful gif, the screen read: "When you can't get naked in person . . ."

I see you went outside of Rs to host, that is great 'couse you can have a larger image.

I refer you to each other on this one.


(Yeah klet, I love that bit! It was just a bonus bit of serendipity.)
(and thanks! If I can figure out how to do it better, I just might re-do the whole thing. )

[redwolf]

I voted you are CRAZY because you needed at least one crazy vote. Really nice job on editing these together!

I tried making that pause by adding the last frame again, but apparently that makes it too big to animate in my PS3.0.

As for timing, when I pause my GIFs, I always change the seconds/fractions of a second that the frame stays visible. Isn't there a way to do that in your program? Adding duplicate frames always increases the size, so it's not a good route to take.

[aernath]

I voted you are CRAZY because you needed at least one crazy vote.

Yay! I was wondering, and waiting for someone to vote that for me!

when I pause my GIFs, I always change the seconds/fractions of a second that the frame stays visible.

Doesn't that change it for all of them though? Or can you do that differently for each frame?
Can you tell I basically bluffed my way through this whole thing?
I refer you to the "work harder, not smarter" bit earlier. I'm a computer idiot. I tend to work my way through problems like this with stubborn refusal to accept defeat.

Hey, while I've got you here: I scan the things at 200 dpi and get a really crisp scan, but it's far too big of a file then to do anything with. So I scanned these in at 100dpi and still had to crop them, but you can see the broken lines everywhere. How the heck does everyone else manage to get even smaller pictures but with crisp, unbroken lines???

[redwolf]

Yay! I was wondering, and waiting for someone to vote that for me!

I am always happy to call people crazy, glad you enjoyed it.

Doesn't that change it for all of them though? Or can you do that differently for each frame?

Respectively, no and yes. While it's possible to change the time of all the frames at once, you should be able to select only a single frame as well.

Scanning: it's better to scan at the higher resolution and resize down than to scan at a lower resolution--the lower the resolution, the more likely broken lines will appear in the scan. I usually resize in Photoshop. Resizing can add some blurriness to the images, so afterwards I often sharpen each image (using the Unsharp Mask tool at around 50% in Photoshop). No need for cropping!

Getting a bit more complex... I cut your Ichigo down from 1 MB to less than 500 KB, and all I had to do was cut the colors down from 128 to 16 (through the Optimize and Color Table windows in Adobe Imageready). It works because most sketches don't have very much color. I'm not sure the specifics of PS Elements, but I'd think it would have a similar option of reducing colors. There are a few other ways to lower the size of the file, but number of colors is the big one.

The bigger visual difference here is I changed the time on most of the frames from 0.2 seconds to 0.1 second, and the final frame to 1.5 seconds. When I animate my sketches, I typically choose 0.1 for smooth douga animations (same as my animated GIF avatars), or 1.0 for genga animations (genga sequences are missing all the in-between frames, so one second+ allows people to see the details better). However, this timing is ultimately up to personal preference.

Hope this makes sense and that I haven't overloaded your brain. Feel free to ask more questions.

[aernath]

*is taking notes like crazy*

I cut your Ichigo down

That is a whole heck of a lot smoother!

Okay, cut the colors. I think I saw something somewhere in all the gobbeldygook on the side of the animate thingy bit. <.< Yeah.

And scan big, resize in Photoshop.
I've been resizing in Microsoft Photo Editor. I didn't even know you could resize in Photoshop.
Yeah, complete moron.

And change timing. Check! I do remember seeing that little box somewhere.

Hokay. Now.
Yeah, I'm going to re do the bugger!

Because it's Ichigo and he's got to be just right!


Oh, and because I'm CrazY!
Thank you so much!!!

[redwolf]

Hokay. Now.
Yeah, I'm going to re do the bugger!

Because it's Ichigo and he's got to be just right!

Good luck!! I think you might find that Photoshop does a better job of resizing than Microsoft Photo Editor. Shoot me a line if you have any more questions while you have your head buried in Photoshop.

[Krafty]

Greak work, Aernath! Ani-dougas look so cool but I know they take some hard work- thanks for going to the trouble of making this one.

How the heck does everyone else manage to get even smaller pictures but with crisp, unbroken lines???

As you've already discovered, RedWolf has given good advice.

Scanning at a resolution of 200-300 dpi will get good results but use the correct colour setting to begin with. If the douga has colour to it, you can safely use a 'colour scan' OK. If it's a black & white douga- DON'T scan in B&W but use the 'Greyscale scan' which is less harsh.
A total B&W scan is fine for text but it sharpens the image too much which can cause broken lines on graphics.

You can jigger about with the levels/darkness after the image is scanned but do this AFTER you have resized your image(s) to the scale you want.
If you sharpen/adjust levels to your initial scan, THEN resize it, it can break up the image.

When making Ani-Gifs it's good to work fairly small and remove little dust specks that appear in the white spaces of the image. This saves on file size greatly and makes the end result look better too. This 5min job per picture is worth the effort.

With regard to frame durations, it is possible to adjust the timing for EACH frame, 0.1 seconds+
I messed about with that in an Ani-Gif I made last year- Iggy from JoJo's Adventure
I had the original Timing sheet with this cut which helped me plan out the frame durations. When he laughs, I alternated the 'judders' between 0.1 and 0.2 seconds .
The file size was brought down to 300kb by making it small, getting rid of speckles all over the image and altering the compression when it came to saving. I used Adobe Image Ready for this, part of Photoshop.