Have you ever seen those moving pictures on forums? Not the videos, of course, but next to people’s names you’ll sometimes find a picture with repeated motion. These are called animated gifs. They aren’t too hard to make, they look great, and you should try to make your own sometime! This is how you can do it.

Animated GIFs follow the basic principle of videos, but they don’t take it nearly as far. Essentially, they string together several frames to make a simple repeated motion. For example, you might see a horse running, or a plane flying. These are motions that are easy to show by playing the same frames over and over.

To get started, you’ll need an image editing program. You can use Photoshop, but GIMP is free, so that’s what I’m going to show you on. Go to www.gimp.org and download the latest version. It’s free, easy, and actually quite a bit of fun.

Now that you have the GIMP, you need an idea of what you’re going to animate. A very simple idea might be a ball bouncing, or some text glowing. As long as you can understand how the motion works, you’ll be fine.

Once you are in GIMP, you’ll need to create a new file. Go to File->New, and select the size you want. It doesn’t really matter what size you make, but bigger usually better because of the higher quality (and you can always make it smaller later). Under advance options, next to “Fill with:” click transparency. Then click OK.

The next thing you need to do is either draw your first frame, or insert a picture into GIMP to start. I’m going to do a bouncing ball, so I’ll just draw a circle and make it look nice with a bit of polish.

What I’m going to do is use the circle selection tool, on the upper left of the toolbox, and hold down the Shift key while I click and drag. This will create a perfect circle. I’ve only selected the area, though, so I need to fill it in with a color. I can do that by clicking the paint bucket, and clicking inside my selection. I can choose the color I want by clicking the square about halfway down t he toolbox window, and selecting the area of color that I want.

I can make it look a bit more realistic by going to Filters->Light and Shadow->Lighting Effects. This will make it look 3D, which will be all the better for the animation when I’m done.

Now we need to make our object move.  We can do that by creating a new frame, or layer, in the current image. In the “Layers Channels and Paths” window, look for the box that displays your layers. There should be one layer already, called Background. That’s the one that you are working on now. Right click on that layer, and click “Duplicate Layer.” Now we have two layers.

Here is the process that you are going to use to make the animation:

1.        Create an object (we did that already).

2.       Duplicate the layer you’re working on.

3.       Click on the original layer.

4.       Move the object in the direction you want it to go.

5.       Repeat Steps 2-3 until you have a satisfactory range of motion.

Once you are satisfied with your frames, go to File-> Save As. Insert a name for your image, then go down to “Select File Type.” Make it a .gif image, and then click save. GIMP should tell you that you have to export the image, and will ask you to flatten it or create an animated gif. Click the button that says “Save as Animation”, and then click export. You’ll get yet another dialogue box asking you some more specifics. Here you can set the frame rate (a higher number makes the animation go faster), and add a comment. Where it says “Frame Disposal where Unspecified,” click on the “One frame per layer (replace)” option, then click Save.

Once you’ve saved you’re gif image, open it up in your image viewer. If your normal image viewer doesn’t show the animation, try opening it in Firefox or Internet Explorer. You can do this by right clicking on the file, and selecting “Open With.” Then choose your internet browser, and you’re all set!

Making an animated gif is pretty easy, and really fun. Try experimenting with your favorite animal or even your car. Pretty soon, you’ll get good enough to make some really cool images, like full resolution images of people nodding, blinking, and talking. Have fun!