zerographic | ZOMGWTFBBQ! It's an animation tutorial!

How I made this: - in 9 easy screen captures ;)

I started with the two finished frames (obviously your animation may have more frames, but I wanted this to be fairly simple:

Click this way!!! (*air guitar*)

File > Jump to... > Image ready

Important! Always start you animated icon on a new file, don't build off your first frame:

Do a flood fill in this new document with whatever color is prevalent in your icon, so that when you Tween the icon is fairly smooth and the transition is not jarring.

Choose you first frame. In the upper left of the animation bar is a small blue arrow, click that and choose copy frame. You can see this option in the capture below, you can also see my flood-filled new document:

Return to your New Document, click on the same small arrow and choose "Paste Frame..."

Below you will see the dialog box that pops up. For your very first frame, choose "Paste Over Selection." For all subsequent frames, choose "Paste After Selection."

Below you will see my two frames pasted into my New Document. If you hit Play on the animation bar right now, you will see it goes ridiculously fast. More on that later!

Let's address Tweening. This is the button on the animation bar that is four bubbles (it is chosen in the capture below). It makes the transition between frames smoother and prettier. The dialog box shown below will pop up. Leave the Layers and Parameter choices as they are. In the capture below I want to Tween the first and second frame. So I choose the first frame in the animation bar and hit Tween. I accept three frames added, and tweening with the Next Frame.

Continue this for however many frames you have. NOTE: A good rule of thumb - for colored icons, aim for no more than 8 TOTAL frames, this includes all your tweens. For B&W icons, you can obviously increase this.

When you want to tween the final frame with the first frame (for a seamless loop), choose your last frame and in the Dialog box, choose Tween With > First Frame.

below you will see the end result of my tweening for this icon. You can also see I have adjusted the timing for each frame. Your tweens should go very fast, while original frames would take longer. Obviously if you are looking for constant motion, or a mini-movie look, or timing will be different. Experiment!

So! We have a lovely icon that is so cool it will win at every icon community EVA created! But, we need to save at a size that LJ will actually take. This involves "optimizing" your icon. Referring to the capture below, you will choose the Optimized tab. This will show you the file size of the icon as your currently have it. if your icon is over 40k, you have two options. Remove tween frames OR play with optimization options. The optimization options are at the top right of the program.

I usually drag my New Document right up next to the box so I can really see the changes in the icon as I adjust settings. Refer to the pic for a quick and dirty on how to lower file size. You can alter the dither also, but I do not generally like the look it gives your icon.

Final SUPER IMPORTANT step! Always size your icon as File > Save Optimized As. If you don't do this all your hard work will be lost!

Other icons made using this method:

This icon was made with no tweening, I made a long image and carefully made frames of the long image and then strung them together:

Hope this helps someone! If you have any questions, please let me know :)

ZOMGWTFBBQ! It's an animation tutorial!

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