Tutorial #001
Animated Icon Tutorial
or
In this tutorial I am going to explain (hopefully in a way
that is easy to understand and follow) how to make this animated icon.
Program : Photoshop CS4
Steps : 12 steps
Difficulty : Intermediate
01. The first thing you want to do is pick out the images that you want to use. I choose five images from the same photoshoot which gives the icon an almost photoshoot effect.
02. Create your icons as you normally would, on a 100x100 canvas, ensuring that the images are all in the same area (this is so that, when the icon is animated, the images will stay in the same place and not move around which would look messy)
03. To create the 'fade' or 'flash' you need to create an icon that has the same area as the image from your previous icons either coloured black or white. Save this image the same as above.
04. Save your icons as either jpeg or png - whatever you normally save your icons as.
05. Okay, this is where the fun bit starts - begginning to create the animation for the icon.
First open the animation panel by going to Window » Animation
06. Now go to File » Scripts » Load Files Into Script
This window will appear :
Once you choose 'Ok' you will need to wait for a moment as the images are processed.
07. As you can see the 'flash' icon is only at the top, when it actually needs to be between each image.
Duplicate the 'flash' layer so it looks like this instead :
08. Now we can set about animating the images. The first thing you need to do it to 'Make Frames from Layers' as they are currently just one layer in the animation timeline.
Once that is done, your timeline should look something like this :
09. Now we need to tween the layers to give it a nice, smooth flow between the images. To get the 'Tween' option click on the same box as you did to 'Make Frames from Layers' but choose the 'Tween..' option this time. A box like the one below will appear. Key in the settings as shown.
You will need to do this for every image icon NOT for the flash icon.
10. When you play the icon through you can notice that the image becomes less opaque, which leaves a transparent background behind. To get rid of this you need to create a new layer and fill it with black, moving it to the BOTTOM of your layers.
Your layers should now look something like this :
11. Now we need to set the delay on the frames. For the 'flash' and the tweened frames, we are going to leave them on a delay of '0', but for the original 5 icons (or however many you have made) we are going to set them to a delay time of '1.0' seconds.
You can set the time for all the images as once by holding down the Ctrl button when clicking on the frames. Once you have selected all of the frames, on any of the frames, click on the small arrow below the frame beside the time and choose 'Other' before keying in '1' into the box that appears.
SAVING THE ANIMATED ICON
When saving your animated icon, you can not save it like with other oridinary, static pieces of art as a .jpeg or .png file, it needs to be saved as a 'gif or it will not play.
To save your icon go to :
File » Save for Web and Devices
The following window will open, telling you the size of your animated icon and showing you a preview of what it will look like.
The limit for Livejournal icons is 40.00KB so you may need to adjust the settings, such as the Colors before it is a small enough size.
The more you reduce the colors the more the quality is reduced, so using fewer images will help preserve quality.
FINAL RESULT
Once you have finished you should have something like looks like
or
Well, that's how to make and save an animated icon.
Please leave a comment and let me know if you found the tutorial use, even showing me what you made.
If you have any questions just ask and I will try and answer as best I can.