Create the frames
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Creating GIF animations is, in some ways, like creating other digital art. You fire up your imaging software of choice and create an image... or, in this case, many images. What you also need, though, is another program that'll enable you to put your images together so that they form the frames of an animation.
There are a number of animation packages available ranging in cost from free to quite expensive. I won't talk about them all, here, or even about a lot of them. This is not because I necessarily favor one over the others, but because I haven't had the time or the opportunity to use them all. Most of the ones I've seen are pretty similar and, whichever one you use, you should be able to follow along just fine.
The real work in creating an animation is not dependent upon the animation software. It's more dependent on you designing a string of images that, when strung together, will form the frames needed to create an animation. Whether you create these images/frames in Photoshop, Corel DRAW!, PSP, a combination of these (as I often do) or in a 3D rendering program, as I did to create the spinning logo in figure 1.1, doesn't really matter.
Actually, the spinning logo started out as a much larger file. I cut many frames from it which really reduced its size. The final image is not nearly as smooth as the original, but it's a lot smaller. Gamani.com's GIF Movie Gear heplped me squeeze in the most image for the least bytes, though.
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