Overview
With easy step-by-step instructions for desktop applications including Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop, this book will teach you how to create and edit GIF89a animations to enhance your Web site. Whether you are a beginner or experienced Web developer, it will answer your questions about creating and animating GIFs.The GIF Animator's Guide is designed both to be easy to use and to provide all the important information about creating good-looking graphics and animations using a variety of popular programs -- freeware, shareware, and commercial -- for both Windows and Mac computers. The book includes valuable information about animation, computer graphics, and GIF standards so that you can easily create animations for your Web page.
You'll also learn how to optimize animations by using the 216-color palette, planning for transparency, offsetting images, and setting time delay.
The CD bundled with The GIF Animator's Guide includes Microsoft GIF Animator, Paint Shop Pro, GIF Construction Set, GIFBuilder, Ulead GIF Animator, and save-disabled versions of Photoshop 4 and Illustrator 7. It also includes a large gallery of unique and copyright-free GIF animations that you can plug into your own Web pages.
Editorials
Bill Carmada
Win one for the GIFfer! After all these years, the most effective way to get motion and excitement onto your Web site is often still a GIF animation. And if you're creating the banner ads that pay the bills, animated GIFs are almost certainly the right technology. You may be surprised how much mileage you can get out of animation without being named Disney-as long as you have The GIF Animator's Guide, by Sandra E. Eddy.
Eddy, who previously authored HTML in Plain English, has fortunately chosen the same language
The GIF Animator's Guide opens with an overview of GIF animations that'll be invaluable no matter what software you choose to create them. You'll find practical techniques for planning and designing your animation (including helpful checklists). You'll learn how to select colors (with a convenient full-color reference to Web-safe colors) and make the most of the GIF89a transparency feature. You'll learn techniques for keeping file sizes under strict control-for instance, animating only part of an image. You'll walk through manufacturing your GIF animation, previewing it, editing it, controlling time delay, inserting your image in an HTML document, and testing it on multiple browsers.
Whether you're new to GIF animation or not, you'll find this is a marvelous "idea book," full of easy-to-execute effects you probably haven't tried yet. Eddy reviews all the most commonly used GIF animation effects, with real-world coverage of pitfalls and suggestions for shortcuts.
For instance, consider rotating, flipping and revolving objects; building on text; changing colors; flickering; and fading in or out. Try animating rigid objects that don't change shape (and therefore don't have to be redrawn from scratch). Learn how to indicate motion by simply dragging objects around your frame (if you can use a mouse, you can do this!). See what I mean? You definitely don't have to be Disney!
Once you've mastered basics like these, The GIF Animator's Guide transforms itself into an all-in-one guide to GIF animation on practically any software you want to use. Just name your poison! You'll find specific, step-by-step chapters for GIFfing around in each of these:
Microsoft's freeware GIF Animator is on the CD-ROM, along with heavy-hitter shareware like Jasc Paint Shop Pro and GIF Construction Set; a trial version of Ulead's nifty GIF Animator, convenient 216-color palettes for Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, plus a library of great animated GIFs you're free to use-GIFs you haven't already seen on ten gadzillion Web sites!
If you've put off working with animated GIFs because you assumed you didn't have the expertise or the tools, you can stop assuming and start animating. With The GIF Animator's Guide, you won't just get great results, you'll have a blast doing it!
Bill Carmada @ Cyberian Express
Even if you only use one of these packages (or, for that matter, none of them), the projects are hugely instructive-and in many cases, they're fairly easy to adapt to your own software. From easy bouncing balls in Photoshop to cool GIF Construction Set special effects, from movie marquees in Paint Shop Pro to "simulated" animation in Microsoft Image Composer, the options are virtually endless.