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How to Create Animations
Lesson #1
Help from Lenny

Lessons: 1 2 3 4

I do not consider myself as an authority in graphics or animations. What you see here is the work of a beginner in computer graphic animations. I wrote this page to provide information that could help others learn how to create simple animations.

Ok, so you want to create some animations, but you don't know where to start, what tools to use, or how to do it.

You don't need to be a graphics expert to use these programs, but it helps to become familiar with these programs and do some experimenting before you get started.

I don't know of a single program that can create an animation like those seen here, so I found individual programs that had features I was looking for, and took off from there.


The main tools I used.

These programs require a Windows operating system. You should be able to find similar programs for other operating systems. If you know of any reliable and quality graphic programs for other operating systems, please let me know.


The steps and techniques outlined below for setting up each animation should be the same.

Here are a few things to consider:

An animated graphic image is a series of pictures that is continuously replayed in the same position, such as a slide show you may have seen in school, or in a business presentation. If you are familiar with movie film, for how cartoons are created, the concept is the same, you need to draw each image to be displayed. These pictures are saved in a single file for display on the internet.

The only programming embedded in an animated graphic image is time delays between frames, one time or continuous play, and color transparency.

When saving a GIF file to be imported into MS GIF Animator, the file should be saved as type 89a, non-interlaced. MS GIF Animator doesn't like interlaced images.

Reduce the color depth of your images to help keep the file size down and smooth out the animation. Keep the color depth the same for each image in the same animation. (256 colors or less)

You can also keep the animation file size small by reducing the image size and/or number of frames. In my opinion you should keep the file size under 15K for faster loading. Keep in mind, using more frames may make for a smoother animation, but increases the file size and may slow down the animation. Remember! You may be surfing the net at 28,800 or faster, but someone else looking at your page may only be surfing at 9600 and may get discouraged waiting for a big animation to load.

Once each frame of the animation is saved, then you can use a program like MS Gif Animator to combine these frames into a single file and set the display properties.

Now you can see, with using a variety of programs, you can create your own animations simply and quickly.

If you are having problems, take your time and think it thru. I find I learn a lot about a program by experimenting with it's various features.

Another way to catch on to how the animations are created would be to load up one of these animations onto a program like MS Gif Animator and see each of the individual frames used to create the animations.


And now for additional links:




Online since May 23, 1998.
Images on this site are Copyright ©1998 by Leonard Kikstra

You may use the graphics for your own private use. If you use these images on your own web site, you must download the graphic and save it on your site. DO NOT link directly to the graphics on this site. You must also indicate on your site where you got the graphic from, and I would appreciate you providing a link back to my site.