"How to make an animated GIF?" Tutorial Part 1

for you who dont know, animated GIF is a picture which is moving. how does it move? well, it is just pictures were put on top of pictures and you make it switch from one to another... this is a how animation comes actually.. like this

this is an animated GIF.. taken from anime Break Blade.. cool isnt it? well, you can make your own by following this 2 tutorial which i will post separately

Part 1 will consist of the tutorial where i learn to make GIF... the instruction is quite long but have more detailed and perfect for those who cannot figure something by themselves.. as for part 2, it is the tutorial where i will be the instructor and i will go step by step on how to make a GIF while making it myself



 PART 1

Requirements for this tutorial:
1) Adobe ImageReady
2) Virtual Dub
3) Internet Explorer 5+
4) A minor knowledge of the windows interface
5) Avatars are 100 pixels wide and 51200 bytes max

Seting up:
1) Make a folder in which you will do all your work in.
2) Make a folder called DONE in which you will save your completed Gifs to
3) I made a separate folder for each character I do and a misc folder each with its own DONE folder for compiled Gifs


Capturing your screenshots: (Virtual Dub)
1) Open the episode you want
2) Press control+g or Edit--->Go to.
3) Use Jump frame at time: XX:XX:XX
First XX are minutes, second XX are seconds, XX are fractional seconds (dont worry about this one)
5) Go to the first frame of the scene you want to capture and press the MARK IN button.
(At the bottom of the screen the last set of buttons to the right, a black left and right arrow)
6) Go to the last frame of your scene and press the MARK OUT button kinds looks like _>
7)File -----> Save image sequence
8) Choose the location of the folder you made before.
9) Set number of digits to 3, just to be safe (the number of digits wont affect anything but if you only choose 1 digit and your animation numbers in double digits you will get problems later on)
10) Name the files and push OK
11) Wait for it to save your screnshots (the little window in the middle of the window will disappear when its done.


ImageReady:
1) Open ImageReady
2) File -----> Import ------> Folder as frames
3) Choose the folder you saved your screenshots to
4) It will load all the pics in order as frames
5) Image ------> Image size
6) Change width to 100, most likely its on 640
7) If you save it as it is now the file will be the right dimensions and you will have an animated gif but it will most likely be too big, you might also want to do some more editing.
8) At the bottom of the screen there is a wide window that has all the frames in separate thumbs.
9) Delete frames to decrease file size
10) If you select a frame and select the new frame button under the thumbs it will make a new frame and in it will be the same pic as the one you had selected before (usefull for loops)
11) Also use the rectangular marquee to select the area you want to show if you want to show a certain part.
12) Image ------> Crop.
13) Cropping and deleting frames (click image then trash can) really makes your gif smaller
14) If you did that and its still too big, make your width smaller, try not to go under 75 then it gets too small and hard to see.
15) Crop BEFORE sizing down to 100
16) When your done go to File ------> Save Optimized Image As
17) Save it in your DONE folder

credit goes to these guy http://forums.animesuki.com/member.php?u=6502

this is how i learn making it. if you're used to it.. you dont need to follow all of these steps... go to Part 2