I Have. A Problem

I have. a problem

Some Christmas gifts for friends! Featuring @halfusek‘s Magenta, @metallicartist‘s Scratch the Cat, @junebird24‘s Roman and E-L-A-R-A’s Azura!

bleghghgh original video: (x)

I just,, love them a whole lot,,,

I can’t stop doodling them,,

I love your animations so much they make me happy

Thank you so much, I certainly will!! :)) Tumblr never told me about this message but I appreciate it!! 

wondering what program you use to animate? i saw your minish cap link gif on youtube and the quality looks SO CLEAN! ive been animating in photoshop (lol) but i have looking for a new program to use and potentially buy.

Hey, I have no clue how long this ask has been here becausetumblr never notified me! Thank you for the kind words though! :))

The short answer is I use Paint Tool Sai for drawing framesand backgrounds, photoshop CS6 for additional effects or color corrections, anda site called gifmaker.me which puts together your frames at the speed you wantwith extremely minimal quality loss (unlike Photoshop CS6 even at its highestexport settings >.>)

I’ll add more specifics of how I animate below if needed! (Thoughgoing in full detail might require a more in-depth tutorial with pictures)

If I’m going to use a gif as a base to animate like the MinishCap one, I’ll open the gif up in CS6 which splits it into frames- then I’ll copythose frames into sai.

Since Sai isn’t made specifically for animation it’s a bitof a hassle to set up but if you choose to use it my method is:

Make a folder for each animation frame containing: A layerfor your lineart, a layer for the animation base if using, your background, andone blank layer filled in with white so your lineart frames don’t all show onthe canvas at the same time. I can mimic onion skin mode to check betweenlayers by lowering the opacity of the current folder I’m working with, and alsochange the color of the lineart by selecting “Preserve Opacity” andcoloring/filling the lineart with the color I want.

When I’m done making frames, I export the file into CS6 andplay with the colors if I need to. One effect I always use is making a copy ofthe frame I want, giving it an overlay and Gaussian Blur effect with 20-30%opacity, and merge than with the original layer.

It’s tedious, butonce I do that with every single frame, I save each frame as its own image (basicallyjust pasting in MSPaint and saving as 1, 2, 3, etc.). I go to a site that putstogether frames without compressing them (or very small compression) like GifMaker.me,choose the speed I want the gif to play at, and save the gif! An alternative to gifmaker is EZgif, though I prefer the former.

A thing to keep in mind is that tumblr (at least the lasttime I checked) will NOT play gifs that are over 3MB, so if it goes above that,you may have to risk a bit of quality compressing your gif (I use EZgif forthat because I can choose the compression level I want!).