I have a "thing" for animation. I woulda loved to be an animator, had I been given the push to study it when I was younger. Digital scrapbooking had a thing for it too- a few years back when "blinkies" were the rage. Now I use it to make unique pages. And it is soooo stinking easy that ANYONE could do it! It takes more time than skill, lol. It is a GREAT way to use those smart phone photo bursts! I told @Stacy that I would explain how here in the forum. 1.First, I create the page based upon the photo(s)- it is the inspiration! I use Photoshop or Photoshop elements, but this can be created in any program that uses layers. Gimp is a free program that animates as well. The page created can have a scrap frame for the photo, or an X where each photo goes. Your first page or layer is your first animation "frame". 2. Now you add your photo in your reserved space on the page. Every new photo is a new layer. So if you have 3 photos you want to show like slides, you have at least 3 layers. You MUST put each consecutive photo in the exact same space as the first one! If there is a lot ( like a jump) in the desired final animation -you will need more layers so it isn't choppy. 3.In PS/ PSE, click on every layer and link the layers so that you can easily resize them for the gallery. Save the PSD version of your page. I then copy it inside of my machine's folder. EX: WatchMeDance.psd >> WatchMeDance-copy.psd. This makes it easy to edit without losing all your hard work ( yeah, I've got that t-shirt!) Too many layers increases the image size and you won't be able to post it in the gallery. So keep checking your megabytes! I had to split my last page like this into two pages because it was tooo big! 4. Save each new "frame' with photo as a jpeg. I name mine with the page name and layer number. 5. Open a new document, and each drag each of your frame layers onto the document. 6. Then save for web- animation, set the speed-0.2-0.5 (5 being slower) and choose if you want a continuous loop or just once. You can preview it before clicking save... If has to be under 1 mb to load in this gallery at TLP. Here is a link to a video tut if this was not clear enough for you!
This is too cool! I hope you share your creations with that little dude! I'm sure he'd get a kick out of it!
Thanks for sharing! I have a little dude that animates all the time. He'd love to see pages with him moving.
So is the final saved as a .gif? I didn't know you could post those here--and I didn't know you could go over 250Kb!
The gallery limit is 250 KB, so you shouldn't post layouts larger than that. Here's the "GALLERY RULES: Layouts must contain at least 50% TLP products. (Templates count as 15%.) Uploads must be less than 250k. List all credits; no off-site linking allowed." The animated layouts are a really cool idea. Just remember to post in the TLP gallery, you would need to save your animated layout as a gif and at 250 K or less to fit within the gallery guidelines. Hope that helps.
What I've done for the gallery is posted the still, and then hosted the .gif at imgur or flickr (or another hosting site) and pasted that in the comments. Like this one: If you click over, you can see this in the comments:
