Tutorial: How to make your own animated avatars

Since a couple of people have requested instruction in the age-old fine art of animated GIF filmmaking, I'll share my technique here. Other "Makers" of course use different programs; perhaps someone can suggest an better way than I currently use.... :D

EDIT: Here's one by my friend RozynDragon which involves a DOS command prompt, looks fun :D

You can get video(s) to use from YouTube using the Download Helper extension for Firefox. If you select the MP4 version (if available), you won't have to convert it from FLV to edit it. Here are the resolutions of versions that may be available to you; generally only one is available as an MP4. A higher resolution will allow you to crop the video closer (in programs which allow this) without losing quality in your avatar.

[HQ18] = 480x360 resolution
[HQ22] = 1280x720 resolution
[HQ35] = 854x480 resolution

If you go with the FLV, you'll need a converter for it; I currently use a free converter available here (Free FLV Converter 6.7.2):

http://download.cnet.com/Free-FLV-Converter/3000-2194_4-10832044.html

You can use Windows Movie Maker/iMovie to edit your avatar, or you can download a trial of Sony Vegas (which I've been using) or something else. There are also GIF-editing programs out there, such as GIF Movie Gear, which has a 30-day free trial.

You will have to decide what framerate you want your finished avatar to have now, though you don't need to set it until later. The maximum is about 15 frames per second (FPS); you can set it higher than that, but when I've done that the GIF simply plays in slow motion. Last.fm's limit for the number of frames you can have appears to be somewhere around 200, so if you want an avatar that plays at 15 FPS, make sure it's at most about 13 seconds long (13 seconds x 15 frames per second = 195 frames). [EDIT: I've since learned this is not true, there is no frame count limit or size restriction as far as I can tell, BUT Last.fm's servers will time out if the upload takes too long. That means you're restricted only by the amount of data you can upload in time before Last.fm drops the connection. ON DSL, I've been able to upload avatars up to 3.3 Mb. Tall avatars are of course larger files than short ones, which impacts the duration they can have.]

There are a variety of video effects that you can apply to your avatar. You can experiment with those, or look for tutorials. The one important non-obvious thing about Sony Vegas that I have to mention is that you can change the speed of a clip by holding control and click-dragging either end of it. If you have any questions about the program, I'd be happy to answer them. :)

If you want your avatar to have a non-standard aspect ratio - that is, if you want it to be a square or a tall rectangle - then go to Project > Properties and type in the width and height you want. Last.fm will resize your avatar to be at least 126 pixels wide and/or 252 pixels tall, even if it's smaller than that. Set the pixel aspect ratio to 1.0000, click OK, right-click the preview window (the little box which the video plays in) and make sure "Simulate Device Aspect Ratio" is off. Just to be on the safe side. :) THEN, when it comes time to render, if you changed the dimensions at all you should render the video out as a MainConcept MPEG-1 video. This is the only way I've been able to get my tall avatars to export properly.

[EDIT: New discovery: actually you should always export to MPEG-1 regardless, because otherwise the next program will only be able to convert 51 frames for some reason.]

Once the video is finally exported, open it in this excellent free program...

http://www.squared5.com/

...and export it to images (File > Export to Other Formats > Image Sequence). Set the framerate to whatever you decided earlier that it should be. Unfortunately, this excellent free program can't export GIFs, so you'll have to either open every frame and save it as a GIF, or get a free batch-converter program (or find a program that can convert videos directly to GIFs). :D Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have a batch conversion feature, so that's what I use. It also can resize the frames (which will probably be necessary if you set a custom size, since when I set mine to be 126 pixels wide Sony Vegas approximates that to 128 pixels) and apply automatic touch-up effects to every frame (only recommended if you used really poor-quality footage). Once you have the GIFs assembled, select them all in Windows Explorer (make sure they're in the correct sequence, arranged by name) and drag and drop them into this free GIF animator:

http://www.whitsoftdev.com/unfreez/

Set the Frame delay to 7 centiseconds (cs) if you exported the images at 15 FPS; if you exported at less than that, divide 100 by the FPS you used to get the closest frame delay number you should use. My current avatar was rendered at 12 FPS and animated with a frame delay of 8 cs. Make sure Loop animation is checked, and export your finished animated GIF.

Um... and I think that's it. :D Good luck!

EDIT: Here are a couple more free GIF animation programs I've been using lately that can help with setting different display times for different frames.

http://download.cnet.com/Photobie/3000-2192_4-10387625.html

http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-GIF-Animator/3000-18512_4-12053.html

Cool, hope it works for you. :)

Ok, figured everything out. Once again, thanks a bunch for this tutorial!

iv vacations i ll try to do some avatars

Uh... huh. There is a free demo of Photoshop, you know. :P You can also export a GIF with SUPER - http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html but it'll be 30 FPS; you can open that and export the GIF frames with Irfanview - http://www.irfanview.com/ then select every other one for 15FPS (easiest if you resize the containing folder in Windows Explorer with Large Icons such that there are an even number of columns, then you just shift-drag-select every other column) and drag them into UnFREEZ.

Nice avatar :)

Hey, sorry for the late reply :D I'm sorry, I've never tried using GIMP's GIF editing tool (and I don't have it installed so I can't try now). Could you try something else like Photobie?