GIF Animation:  Drawing

Draw the individual frames that will make up your animation.

1.  Open Photoshop (Photoshop Elements works fine, too).

          

2. Click File-->New-->Blank File. 

A window appears.  Make it look like the picture below, and click OK.  If you're doing the long pictures (320 x 120), type 320 instead of 160.

                

3. Zoom in. Create your first picture. Here are some useful tools on the left-hand side:

 

 

4. When you're happy with it, name it 1.psd and save it to your desktop:

5.  Now, click on File-->Save As... and save the same picture again as 2.psd (also on your desktop).

Here's why you're doing this:  if you were to draw every one starting with a blank image, you would never draw the next picture in exactly the same place on the image.  Once you put all the pictures together later as an animation, the animated figures would jump around in a way that would not be pleasing. If you make the second picture by altering a copy of the first, it's easy to make it line up with the first one.

6.  Change the picture with Photoshop and alter it to make it look like the next sketch in your sequence.

7.  Save the picture.

8.  Click on File-->Save As... and save it as 3.psd (or whatever the next number is).

9.  Repeat 6-8 until you're finished drawing and saving all the pictures for your animation.