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all an animated graphic is (sfdt cartoons included) is a complied series of frames, just like any cartoon. all you need to do is make each seperate image, then use some software program to complie them into one animated image. i use gif construction set from alchemy mind works. of course, you don't have to use gifcon at all. any animation software will do.
once you've got that, and an idea for a skit, all that's left then is to make the individual frames.
to start with, the first thing i did was copied one of the images from the real stick figure death theater, so i'd have a template to work off of, as far as dimentions went (which, for our purposes, we'll say was five by twenety pixels). once i got that, i used it as my "master image," which i'll mention again in a second. when i made "the safe," what i did was i created a new image (in paint shop pro, but you can use just about any graphics pacakge, i expect) about two hundred by twenty pixels, and drew the building, people and sidewalk. then, starting at the top, i copied out a five by twenty selection, with the words for the first frame, into the master image and saved it as safe001.gif. then back to the big image, i moved the save a little bit, changed the words, and copied it out into the master image and saved it as safe002.gif, and so on.
when the safe began falling, all i did was move the safe down a bit, then copy a five by twnety selection around it, with the safe always in the middle, and kept saving them as new images. when it got to the bottom, (which was the most difficult of that one), i kept using the same selection, but kept moving the safe down a bit, and moving the stick guy, so it looked like he was getting crushed. that took about ten frames altogether, i think, just to crush him. then, when i had all those saved, i made the introduction title frame and the ending frames, and saved all these images into the same directory (i like to keep things organized).
now, you open up gifcon to import the images. here, it is important to import them in the correct order, because they don't get arranged automatically in anyway- just however you import them. you can do a mass-import, which is nice, and it will go from top to bottom importing the files form the source directory. during the import, it lets you play with the color palate and all that stuff, but i just always select "use local palate for all images" or something, because i don't know what the rest of the stuff means. after all the images are in, go to block -> manage, and click the "select all" button. then, click the "insert where required" radio button, and "apply." this puts management controls before each image, which allows you to alter the timing between the frames, and also the properties of the individual images. you just have to play around with these until it looks right (you can preview it right in gifcon, but the speed there isn't always the same as the real speed over the internet, so i suggest testing in on your page before going public with it, too). then save it as a new file name, and you're done.
the most difficult part, of course, is making up all the individual frames, which is time consuming and can also sometimes be a pain. some tips i learned are:
- sometimes, it's better to work backwards. an example of this is, on your page, there's an image of a paitn brush painting a button. that was probably made by making a complete button picture, then erasing more and more of it in each subsequent image. then, you just load them into gifcon in reverse order, and it looks like it is appearing, not disappearing.
- to make the bubble gum one, i used another trick (so to speak). if you watched it, you saw the bubble blowing out then deflating, getting bigger then deflating, etc. well, for the deflating series images, i just reused the blwoing up series images in reverse order. a small thing, i know, but something someone might overlook. it saved a lot of time not having to make new images for repetitive action, so use that whenever you can.
- try to always keep an original, untouched image off to the side (in case you screw up), and only work with copies of that image. this can also mean that you have a origianl for every frame, if you're doing complicated motion. these don't have to all be saved when you're finished, but it's nice to have a safety net when you're doing work that isn't easily reversible.
- if you're doing something that requires an object to move _over_ a background (like in the paintbrush one again), i find it easiest to keep the moving object (the paint brush) as a seperate image, and not paste it in until i'm ready for it. if i were making that image, i would start with two images, the complete button image (saved as image01.gif) and the paintbrush on a transparent backround image. i'd make a copy of the button (we'll call it copy one), then, in copy one, erase some of the button in the lower left corner. i'd make a copy of this (we'll call it copy two). now, i'll copy the paintbrush image into copy one, placing it whereever i wanted, and save that as image02.gif. for the third image, i'd erase a little more from copy two, then copy it to make copy three. now paste the paintbrush into copy two wherever you want it and save as image03.gif. and on and on, etc. this way, you can get the motion of the image in the foreground (paintbrush), without disturbing or having to repair the background image all the time.
- trial and error is the only way to go, but make sure you've got a pretty good idea of what you want to do before you start. you don't have to draw it out first, but it can help.
- don't be afraid to make a hundred frames. choppy animation is annoying, and if you're just using two-color .gif format, the file size still won' tbe that big. (my bubble gum image has well over a hundred seperate frame in the final file, and it's only fifty-eight kb).
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