Making avatars

[Captain Ice]

The last couple of weeks, I've been thinking about learning to make my own avatars and I'm curious to see how those of you who do this learned how to make them. Specifically, I'm interested in static avs with text and animated gifs.

Any pointers?

Any good how to guides out there?

How did you get started?

 

[auntiehill]

Static avs are simple; get a photo program you like (heck, you can even use the edit feature on Photobucket), then crop it, fiddle with it (lightness, color, contrast), add the text and move it around the way you want. Just play around with it, trying different things.

Just start experimenting.

What photo editing programs do you have, if any, on your computer?

 

[Jadzia]

A simple art program is enough to begin with.

Paint Shop Pro v4 is free. It will enable you to resize/crop images and add text.

http://www.oldversion.com/Paint-Shop-Pro.html

I personally use v6, which I find perfectly adequate for all graphics editing. I've used it for many years, since my windows 95 days. You can download the trial version of it from the above link.

 

[Jetfire]

Where can you get a free program that makes avi to gifs? I tried looking some up...but they look iffy.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

For animated .gif avatars, that's more tricky, and would need special software able to do the job. I am lucky to have Animation Studio on my computer (it came with a previous edition of Paint Shop Pro) which is perfect for this sort of thing, and I've come to get to know its features and foibles. It can also convert .mpg files to .gif animations, with a little patience (and a LOT of memory ).

I think there are free alternatives that one can try using, though - trekkiedane has spoken highly of GIMP for this purpose, although I haven't tried it.

 

[trekkiedane]

^

Yes, GIMP is a free application and since I found it I don't need to use pirated PS any more

If one has a number of gifs and wants them animated, like a simple slide-show, UnFREEz is VERY simple to use and does the trick

Where can you get a free program that makes avi to gifs? I tried looking some up...but they look iffy.

Don't most media-players do that?

Anyway, Virtualdub does the trick (and a few more).

More help can be found in a sticky in Web Sites/Design!

 

[Jadzia]

Oh there's this thing as well

http://pixlr.com/editor/

 

[Captain Ice]

I use GIMP2.6 for photo editing, but don't have a clue how to use it to make avatars.

The one I just put up is my first try, though I could not figure out how to change the text color or size.

 

[trekkiedane]

I use GIMP2.6 for photo editing, but don't have a clue how to use it to make avatars.

The one I just put up is my first try, though I could not figure out how to change the text color or size.

An avatar is just a photo -albeit a very small one.

When you're ready to put text on your image, and have clicked the text tool you can also change the font and colour and whatnot:

 

[RJDiogenes]

Microsoft GIF Animator is a useful program; it allows you to specify the duration of each frame.

Where can you get a free program that makes avi to gifs? I tried looking some up...but they look iffy.

I use Premiere for that, but I'm sure I have a free converter around somewhere. I'll have to take a look around.

 

[Niorah]

trekkiedane, are you using GIMP on a computer running a Windows OS?
If so, which version?

 

[Jetfire]

I use GIMP on VISTA.

 

[Niorah]

^ Thanks for the info, I'd love to try it and I'm running Windows 7, I'm not sure it's compatible, I'll have to check.

 

[trekkiedane]

I use GIMP on VISTA.

So do I.

Microsoft GIF Animator is a useful program; it allows you to specify the duration of each frame.

That's one feature UnFREEz doesn't have.

 

[Chris3123]

If one has a number of gifs and wants them animated, like a simple slide-show, UnFREEz is VERY simple to use and does the trick

Yep. That's what I used to make your av, Jetfire.

 

[captcalhoun]

i use GiMP on Vista too.

sometimes though, it decides it doesn't like my PC and won't run properly, so i've got Irfan View as a back up.

haven't got GiMP sussed to use gif animation. i used to use a free gif animator prog, but that don't run on Vista cuz it's old.

 

[trekkiedane]

i use GiMP on Vista too.

sometimes though, it decides it doesn't like my PC and won't run properly, so i've got Irfan View as a back up.

I used to have a similar problem with GIMP, I think the version I have now is more stable -or maybe it's my PC having more RAM than the one I had the problem on -could be anything really...

I use IrfanView as my default image-viewer (and for simple things like resizing and cropping and batch-resizing and whatnot).

 

[Jetfire]

How can I lower the file size of images...my animated gifs are always too big and I tried to lower the images and it doesn't work.

 

[trekkiedane]

Lower the number of colours used, make the image smaller (than 140x140 pxl), optimize the animated gif (let each frame only contain the difference from the previous)...

The art of making animated avatars (gif's with set size-limits) is to have as little change taking place from frame to frame: a ball flying past some background does only change the actual pixels where the ball is in this frame and where it was in the previous (where it's changed back to the background) - if, however, such a shot is done with a panning camera the entire background needs to be discarded and a new one made for each frame -that takes a lot of bytes per frame!

 

[Jetfire]

Ok...I figured it out. Thanks.