larryb123456

I tried other settings in the animator to see if the file size could be reduced without sacrificing image quality. There were only 2 other setting combinations that gave acceptable results: 100 unique frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 127 colors, OO, ED, 337 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/FinalOldMananimatedGIFavatar_100frames010sec127colorsOOED337KB-1.gif and 100 unique frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, OO, NC, 330 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/FinalOldMananimatedGIFavatar_100frames010sec255colorsOONC330KB-1.gif In my opinion, I don't see any sense in using either of these animations since their file sizes (337 KB and 330 KB) are about the same as that of the top-quality animation shown in my last Post (401 KB).

In this Post, I'm presenting a little animated GIF mini-mini-mini "film" I made based on bphlpt's avatar, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/FinalOldMananimatedGIFavatar_100frames010sec255colorsOOED401KB-1.gif This is a frame-by-frame animation: 100 unique frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 200x200px, 401 KB. I tried different settings in my animator to see if I could reduce the KB file size without sacrificing image quality, and there were only 2 "acceptable contenders" which I'll present in my next Post, so that they don't compete visually with the animation presented in this Post. I am the one who made bphlpt's present MSFN avatar, so I had all the Photoshop goodies I needed to get started. In this Post, I'm going to present just a relatively brief -- (by my standards, lol) -- description of the steps I used to make the animation. I prepared a *totally complete* documentation for bphlpt, 53 MB (uncompressed), 27 MB (as a .zip file), with all the folders and files. The most important aspect, the circling of the binary sphere, was done first and all other aspects were "piggy-backed" on top of this circling. I made an aliased oval, 59x61px, and aligned the exact bottom-center of this oval relative to the center of the binary sphere as it is shown in bphlpt's avatar. Then I placed "position pixels" around the outside perimeter of this aliased oval with a spacing of 1px between pixels. It took 87 position pixels to complete the circling and return back to the starting point. Then I made copies of the binary sphere and aligned a copy -- (horizontal and vertical centers) -- on top of each position pixel. After the alignments, I deleted the position pixels, leaving all 87 binary spheres in place, characterizing the circular motion. A test GIF for this circular motion showed that a 0.10 sec display time per frame worked great, which was good, since text effects, such as letter pulsations and "typing text", look good at this display time. As will be discussed later, I wanted to use a 25-frame animated GIF "halo" around the binary sphere as it moves, so I knew from the outset that there would be 100 frames in the animation, with the binary sphere being motionless from frames 87-100. But first, I put an animated highlight on the binary sphere that gets brighter, then dimmer, then brighter, etc. I wanted it to be subtle, so I thought a 10-frame animation would work well. (The 10 frames in the highlight animation would be compatible with the 100-frame main animation total with regard to looping.) A little experimentation showed that a highlight 10-frame sequence of Photoshop brightness=0,5,10,15,20,25,20,15,10,5 worked well, giving a result that was rather subtle. In fact, if one weren't informed that the highlight was getting brighter, then dimmer, then brighter, etc., one wouldn't even notice it in the above animation. That's OK, IMO, because a brighter highlight would be out of place. In incorporating the highlights into the circular motion of the binary sphere, brightness versions 5,10,15,20,25 were made and copies of these versions were aligned relative to the appropriate binary sphere positions. After the alignments, the binary spheres were deleted, leaving the binary-sphere positions with highlights. The 25-frame animated GIF that I wanted to make a binary-sphere "halo" from is shown here -- as "yellow flames halo" -- after resizing (so that it wouldn't overshadow the sphere), http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/01_yellowflameshalo_25frames010sec255colorsOOED170KB.gif The display time per frame is 0.10 sec, and the GIF looks good, so I knew it would fit in well with the 0.10 sec per frame display time of the main animation. But it is clear that the yellow and orange are out of place in the color scheme of bphlpt's avatar. This was corrected after a yellow flames halo was first made around the binary sphere, by using the following steps: the appropriate halo squares shown above were aligned -- (vertical and horizontal centers) -- under the appropriate positioned binary spheres and then the black backgrounds of the halo squares were removed using the Magic Wand Tool (Tolerance:32, Anti-aliased setting). The colors of the yellow flames halos were changed in 2 steps: 1) the layers were desaturated; 2) a Color Balance was applied according to [blue(+100)] for the Midtones and [blue(+100), Green(+50)] for the Highlights. I really like the blue halo around the moving binary sphere. It looks like "vapor" to me. I moved the mushroom back and forth on The Old Man's beard during frames 87-100, when the binary sphere was stationary at its bottom-most position. That is a total of 14 frames. After a little experimentation, I found a scenario that works out well: the mushroom moves in increments of 3px up and 3px over to the left per frame on the way to the Old Man's nose, and then those exact movements are reversed on the way back to the starting point, which is the position shown in bphlpt's MSFN avatar. Denote this starting point by position0. Only 3 other unique positions of the mushroom are required to completely characterize the mushroom's motion on The Old Man's beard. Denote these positions by position1, position2, and position3. So, the following "associations" are made: frame87, position0; frame88, position1; frame89, position2; frame90,position3; frame91, position2; frame92, position1; frame93, position0; frame94, position1; frame95, position 2; frame96, position3; frame97, position2; frame98, position1; frame99, position0; and frame100, position0. This position sequence allows for the mushroom to move forward and back 2 different times. The reason the mushroom moves quickly, of course, is that it is moving in large pixel increments per frame. With the 3px up (or down) and 3px over to the left (or right) motion described above, the Pythagorean Theorem gives the diagonal distance in pixels that the mushroom moves per frame as (32 + 32)1/2 = 4.24. I think that this rapid mushroom motion is in good contrast to the slower motion of the binary sphere. It was just luck -- (i.e., God's reward to me for working so hard on this animation......lol) -- that the 14 frames (i.e., frames 87 through 100) allow the mushroom to move forward and back on the beard twice, before the binary sphere starts moving again. The simplest way to finish this discussion is to list what occurs in each frame and the rationale behind it. I knew that I wanted <coding/>since time<began/> to "disappear" via opacity changes -- (as I've done in earlier Posts) -- in the 9-frame opacity sequence of 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%, 50%, 40%, 30%, 20%, and 10%. After that 10% frame, only the background would be seen where that lettering had been. I knew that I wanted <coding/>since time<began/> to then appear as if it were "typed in", one character at a time, after "X" frames showing only the background. This "typing" would require 26 frames since this text has 26 characters. I tried "X"=20 frames -- (and the "math" dictated that <The Old Man/><coding/>since time<began/> would remain at 100% opacity for 45 frames) -- and a test GIF showed that this worked well. I centered these 45 frames around frame 93 so that the disappearance and typing of <coding/>since time<began/> would not compete for attention with the mushroom moving back and forth on The Old Man's beard. (Recall that the mushroom moves in frames 88-99.) So, the frame scenario is as follows: frames 71-15 (i.e., frames 71-100 and frames 1-15): 45 frames of 100% opacity <The Old Man/><coding/>since time<began/> centered around frame 93. (For these frames, I made the letter color the same as that of the outline around "bphlpt".) frames 16-24: 9 frames for <coding/>since time<began/> to disappear in an opacity sequence of 90%,...,10%. frames 25-44: 20 frames with just <The Old Man/>. frames 45-70: 26 frames in which <coding/>since time<began/> appears (i.e., is "typed in") one character at a time. As a final touch, I "pulsed" the letters in <The Old Man/> during frames 29-40. This centers the pulsing in the 20 frames during which <coding/>since time<began/> is not present. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The secret to film (or an animated GIF) is that it's an illusion. George Lucas The italicized parenthetical was added by me. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@ bphlpt: Corrections to your last Post: My enjoyment of simultaneous HarpTwin songs will increase at least exponentially with as many as will fit on my screen ... as long as I have the sound turned up to the maximum and I am taking a massive dose of L.S.D..

@ Glenn9999: I don't mean to harp on this, but I played each song individually, and each was just OK, IMO. I got a much better sounding HarpTwin-YouTube-RockFest by playing each song *at the same time*. Definite synergism !!! I wonder how playing 3, 4, 5, 6, ... HarpTwin songs at the same time would sound. Of course, there would be a maximum number of songs that could be played together before the combo would just sound like noise.

I saw an 8-frame animated GIF of a rotating Canadian flag that I liked, so I made an animated userbar with letter pulsations, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/AniMSUB007sec96uniqueframes255colors350x19pxOOED133KB.gif This is a frame-by-frame animation: 96 unique frames, 0.07 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 350x19px, 133 KB. 8-frame Canadian flag animated GIFs are scrolled vertically -- at the rate of 1px per frame -- on each end of the userbar. All aspects of scrolling animated GIFs have been covered in numerous earlier Posts. So................................

, a controversial 1984 hit by the British band "Frankie Goes to Hollywood". I liked the song a lot back in '84, and pretty much forgot about it until a clip of it was played at the opening ceremonies of the recent London Olympics. I've been listening to the song a lot since then.

In my Post # 344, concerning emoticons, I made an animated GIF which uses "bouncy text". I made another animation, concerning horse racing, which also uses bouncy text, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/AniMS010sec66uniqueframes255colors350x19pxOOED127KB.gif This is a frame-by-frame animation: 66 unique frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 350x19px, 127 KB. 11-frame animated galloping-horse GIFs are scrolled vertically -- at a rate of 1 pixel per frame -- on each end of the userbar. "Horse", "racing", "fan", "atic", and "!!" move up and down at a rate of 2 pixels per frame. I really like the galloping-horse GIF. It is so smooth, it looks like a little movie. All the aspects of vertically scrolling animated GIFs have been thoroughly covered in numerous earlier Posts. I made all the bouncy text precisely as explained in Post # 344. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace." Ovid "A horse gallops with his lungs, perseveres with his heart, and wins with his character." Tesio "The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip." Henny Youngman --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The smallest animation at the bottom of my Post # 349 is the one I like best for the bphlpt wavy letters. Unfortunately, when my animator reduced the size down to 50% of the original size, it also removed the top and right-side parts of the border, as you can see. So, in this Post I'm presenting a corrected version, which was easy to make. I simply saved all 10 frames of the incorrect version as .psd files and corrected the borders in these files to make the correct version shown below, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/bphlptwavyletterscorrectborder010sec10frames255colors97x26pxOOED17KB.gif Specs: 10 frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 97x26px, 255 colors, 17 KB.

In Post # 345 I presented an animation -- (194x50px, 255 colors, 72 KB) -- for a wavy-letter bphlpt, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/final_bphlptwavyletters010sec10frames255colors194x50pxOOED72KB.gif In Post # 347, I made some smaller versions of a rotating-letter bphlpt, which I liked much better than the larger version. So, I wondered how the wavy-letter bphlpt would look at smaller sizes. Here are the results: at 75% of the size above, 144x37px, 51 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/final_bphlptwavyletters75010sec10frames255colors144x37pxOOED51KB.gif at 50% of the size above, 97x25px, 18 KB http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/final_bphlptwavyletters50010sec10frames255colors97x25pxOOED18KB.gif I definitely prefer the smaller sizes. They are like little jewels compared to the larger sizes.

In my Post # 345, I made bphlpt a "wavy-letter" animated GIF. I'm going to continue my "vacation" from making userbars by making another animation for bphlpt, using an 8-frame "rotating-letter" animated GIF (which was on a transparent background) that I like. Here is what the "B" looks like (I put it on a white background for illustrative purposes), http://postimage.org/image/s3goudtnp/ The display time is 0.10 sec per frame, 255 colors, 60x60px, 6.3 KB. As you can see from this animation, the width of the letter varies from frame to frame as the letter rotates -- (unlike the wavy letters) -- so I'll have to use a different approach than in my last Post. Again, I'll detail the steps, thoroughly -- (even to the point of naming all the .psd files) -- for bphlpt's benefit, in case he ever needs to "revisit" this project. Step 1: Open the GIF for each letter and save the 8 frames as .psd files. Draw 1px wide red horizontal red lines at the top and bottom of each frame for the purpose of registration (i.e., proper alignment of the letters later). Step 2: Make a new .psd file with a white background, 400x150px, named A_adjusting.bphlpt.letter.spacing.psd. Drag all 8 frames of b into this file, align them (horizontal and vertical centers), and link them so that they can move as a unit. Repeat this procedure for 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Now, since all 8 frames of each letter are stacked, aligned, linked, and visible, we can see the extreme left and right side positions for each letter as they rotate. Position the 6 letter units to get a pleasing spacing for spelling out "bphlpt". Save A_adjusting.bphlpt.letter.spacing.psd. This is what it looks like on a white background (the red registrations lines are still included at this point), http://postimage.org/image/ij1isg6u5/ Step 3: Save A_adjusting.bphlpt.letter.spacing.psd as B_animation.frames.for.rotating.bphlpt.letters.psd. Link and merge all the frame 1s of b, 1st p, h, l, 2nd p,and t to get FRAME 1 of the bphlpt rotating-letter animated GIF. Link and merge all the frame 2s of b, 1st p, h, l, 2nd p,and t to get FRAME 2 of the GIF. Proceed similarly to get FRAMES 3 through 8 of the GIF. Step4: Now we can consider the background and border for the animation. Save "B_...letters".psd file and do a "Save as" to get C_FINAL.ANIMATION.FRAMES.psd. Delete all the "extraneous" layers to isolate FRAMES 1 through 8. Crop out the red registration lines and then increase the canvas size to 400x150px with the cropped portion centered on the canvas. Make only FRAME 3 visible in the layers stack to eliminate "visual congestion". (FRAME 3 shows a rotated view of the bphlpt letters which has a complete "inventory" of the pixels in the letters. If we make an acceptable background for FRAME 3, it will be acceptable for all the other FRAMES.) I used a light cream-colored background -- (a light-gray background competed with the letters) -- gave it a little texture, and added a hint of some scanlines and an ellipse layer to get the following 278x73px 8-frame animated GIF, which has a display time of 0.10 sec per frame, 255 colors, and 98 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/rotating-letteranimation010sec8frames255colors278x73pxOOED98KB.gif Step 5: I really don't like the way all the letters are in sync as they rotate back and forth. The image is just too predictable. I wondered how a little "staggering" in the frame sequences would make the animation look. The starting point is to go back to Step 2, open "A_adjusting.bphlpt.letter.spacing.psd." and save as "D_staggered.rotating.bphlpt.letters.psd". I applied the following staggering scenario: In the notation, the number to the left of the arrow for each letter represents the present frame number (i.e., that used to get the results shown in the above animation) while the number to the right of the arrow represents the newly assigned frame number. That is, X-->Y is read "frame X becomes frame Y".for the b frames: they stay as they are for the 1st.p frames: 3-->1, 4-->2, 5-->3, 6-->4, 7-->5, 8-->6, 1-->7, 2-->8 for the h frames: 6-->1, 7-->2, 8-->3, 1-->4, 2-->5, 3-->6, 4-->7, 5-->8 for the l frames: 8-->1, 7-->2, 6-->3, 5-->4, 4-->5, 3-->6, 2-->7, 1-->8 for the 2nd.p frames, 5-->1, 4-->2, 3-->3, 2-->4, 1-->5, 8-->6, 7-->7, 6-->8 for the t frames: 2-->1, 1-->2, 8-->3, 7-->4, 6-->5, 5-->6, 4-->7, 3-->8 After the staggering, save "D_staggered.rotating.bphlpt.letters.psd" and save as "DA_staggered.rotating.bphlpt.FRAMES.psd". Step 6: Repeat Step 3 above for the staggered frames b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Save "DA_staggered.rotating.bphlpt.FRAMES.psd" and save as "DB_staggered.rotating.bphlpt.final.FRAMES.psd". In this .psd file, use the background made in Step 4. The result of the frame staggering is shown below, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/rotating-letterstaggeredframesanimation010sec8frames255colors278x73pxOOED98KB.gif The specs for this animation are identical to those for the above animation. The frame staggering gives a much better animation, in my opinion. I didn't anticipate the "H" and the "L" to be in sync, but I like it, since it provides a little "stability" to the animation. I felt that the pixel size of the image was a little large, so I made 2 additional versions by reducing it in my animator to 75% of the original size and then to 60% of the original size. (A smaller reduction than 60% lost too much detail in the letters.) 75%, 208x55px, 64 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/rotating-letterstaggeredframesanimation75010sec8frames255colors208x55pxOOED64KB.gif 60%, 167x44px, 43 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/rotating-letterstaggeredframesanimation60010sec8frames255colors167x44pxOOED43KB.gif I really like the delicacy of the smaller images. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are numerous websites that offer free animated GIFs of letters in different styles. I saw a "wavy-letter" version that I liked, in which each letter was a 10-frame animated GIF with a transparent background. Here is what the "B" looks like (I put it on a white background for illustrative purposes), http://postimage.org/image/6uwawejcb/ The display time is 0.10 sec per frame, 255 colors, 45x30px, 6.0 KB. I thought I'd make an animation for bphlpt using these letters. I knew that he *always* wanted the .psd files and complete documentation of the work that I do for him. So, as I made this animation, I wrote down all the steps. Normally I don't work as I've outlined below, since I often combine lots of steps in a file and it's somewhat hard for another person (and even me...lol) to follow. But here, I layed out the steps in such a way that even Forrest Gump, in a coma, could understand them. Step 1: Open the GIF for each letter and save the 10 frames as .psd files. Draw 1px wide red horizontal red lines at the top and bottom of each frame for the purpose of registration (i.e., proper alignment of the letters later). Step 2: Make a new .psd file, at a convenient size, say 300x100px, on a white background. Name the file "Frame 1 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 3: Open frame 1 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag each of these frames into the new file of Step 2, "Frame 1 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Align each of the frames so that the horizontal red registration lines are at the same vertical position. Adjust the spacing between the letters to get a pleasing look. Save "Frame 1 ... GIF". Do successive "Save as" and create "Frame 2 ... GIF", "Frame 3 ... GIF", "Frame 4 ... GIF", "Frame 5 ... GIF", "Frame 6 ... GIF", "Frame 7 ... GIF", "Frame 8 ... GIF", "Frame 9 ... GIF", and "Frame 10 ... GIF". Step 4: Link and merge the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t in "Frame 1 ... GIF" to get "FRAME 1 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 5: Open frame 2 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 2 ... GIF". Align b from frame 2 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 2 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 2 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 2 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 6: Open frame 3 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 3 ... GIF". Align b from frame 3 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 3 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 3 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 3 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 7: Open frame 4 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 4 ... GIF". Align b from frame 4 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 4 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 4 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 4 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 8: Open frame 5 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 5 ... GIF". Align b from frame 5 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 5 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 5 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 5 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 9: Open frame 6 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 6 ... GIF". Align b from frame 6 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 6 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 6 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 6 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 10: Open frame 7 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 7 ... GIF". Align b from frame 7 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 7 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 7 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 7 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 11: Open frame 8 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 8 ... GIF". Align b from frame 8 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 8 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 8 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 8 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 12: Open frame 9 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 9 ... GIF". Align b from frame 9 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 9 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 9 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 9 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 13: Open frame 10 of each of the letters b, 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t and drag these frames into "Frame 10 ... GIF". Align b from frame 10 with b from frame 1 (horizontal center and vertical center). Repeat this alignment sequence for the remaining frame 10 letters 1st.p, h, l, 2nd.p, and t. Once all the frame 10 letters have been aligned, link and merge them to create "FRAME 10 of the 10-Frame bphlpt animated GIF". Step 14: We now have all 10 FRAMES of the bphlpt wavy-letter animation. It is a good idea to test the animation, just to make sure everything is copacetic. The FRAMES are on a transparent background, but for the test I put them on a white background as 10 JPEGs. Here is the result, which looks good, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/zbphlpttestanimation010sec10frames255colors193x30px27KB.gif Step 15: In looking ahead to putting the animation on a colored background, I made a JPEG of FRAME 1 on a black background, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/zzFRAME1onablackbackground.jpg As you can see, the letters have a rough outline of light-colored pixels, which means that the final animation can't be put on a dark background. It needs to be a color light enough so that these problematic outline pixels don't show up. Step 16: Make a new .psd file, 300x100px, on a white background. Name the file "Animation Frames". Drag FRAMES 1 through 10 into this file and align them relative to the background (horizontal and vertical centers), for convenience. Make only FRAME 1 visible, to remove the "visual congestion" from the overlapping layers below. In this file the red registration lines are removed and the background for the animation is made. I thought the animation in Step 14 above made the letters look somewhat like they were "swimming", so I keyed the background to blue. First, I made a vertical linear linear gradient fade, with the blue being lighter in the middle. Then I textured this layer, added white 3px spacing forward facing scanlines, and an ellipse layer at the top. I made the background to be a 2-frame animated GIF with moving scanlines to further disguise the fact that the bphlpt letters have those irregular light-colored pixels around the letter border. I made this background GIF as follows: background "B" was made from background "A" by moving background A's scanlines to the left by 2px. Background A is used for the odd-numbered FRAMES, and background B is used for the even-numbered FRAMES. As these backgrounds alternate from frame to frame, the illusion of motion is created. Here is the final result, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/final_bphlptwavyletters010sec10frames255colors194x50pxOOED72KB.gif

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preface: The following really doesn't have a direct connection to the main aspects of this Post, but I thought I'd include it for possible interest and amusement. It ties in with Andy Warhol's famous quote, "Art is what you can get away with." The world-renowned artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) was famous for making what he called Combines, which were simply mixed media and/or assemblages. He picked up trash and found objects that interested him on the streets of New York City and brought these back to his studio where they could become integrated into his work. Oftentimes he put restrictions on himself, such as saying that he would only use what he found in a 1-square-block area. Perhaps his most famous Combine was Monogram, whose main feature was a taxidermied angora goat, dabbed with oil paint, and stuffed through a tire. In my last Post, I used an emoticon provided by dencorso. I wanted to make an animated GIF userbar involving emoticons, which can be downloaded from many internet sources. But, like Rauschenberg, I chose to put the restriction on myself that I would only use what is available from the MSFN text editor. (This explains, I hope, the inclusion of the above paragraph.) So, the rest of this Post shows my result. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://postimage.org/image/6dakhroqn/ This is a frame-by-frame animation: 28 unique frames, 0.20 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 350x20px, 64 KB. The emoticons are in a 4-frame animated GIF. "Emot", "Icon", and "Fan" move up and down at the rate of 2px per frame. I'll go into some detail as to the construction of this animation just in case someone is interested. Constructing the 4-frame animated GIF for the 9 emoticons: Most of the emoticons were 4-frame GIFs, as downloaded from MSFN. If I wanted to use a GIF that had more than 4 frames, I simply deleted some of the similar frames so that I wound up with 4 frames. For each GIF, I saved each of the 4 frames as a .psd file, and drew a red horizontal line on the top and bottom of each frame -- (extending the width of the frame) -- for registration purposes. The height of each GIF, excluding the red lines was 18px, so I wound up with an animation 20px tall. I used the "Welcome" emoticon on each side of the animation, so I simply made the right side "Welcome" from the left side by flipping it horizontally and "staggering" the frame sequence. So, I made Frame 1 showing the 9 emoticons by first positioning frame 1 of each of the component emoticon GIFs as they are seen in the above animation. Then I made Frame 2 by aligning frame 2 of each of the 9 component emoticon GIFs relative to each respective frame 1 of Frame 1. (This is where the red registration markers were invaluable.) I did this for Frame 3 and Frame 4. Once I had everything positioned for each of the Frames, I linked and merged the 9 component emoticon GIF frames for each individual Frame to wind up with a 4-frame GIF for the main animation showing the 9 emoticons. Construction of the frames for the "bouncy text": Refer to the JPEG diagram below, http://postimage.org/image/k1u4p8lyx/ Consider the top part, outlined in red. It should be clear that *all* the information necessary to construct bouncy "Emot", "Icon", and "Fan" is contained in the 5 rectangles shown. "0" refers to the "baseline position", where no movement up or down is happening. I moved the 3 phrases up and down in increments of 2px per frame. Each rectangle is labeled with the amount of pixels moved relative to the baseline position. Now consider the bottom part, outlined in red. This shows the 4 rectangles (i.e., frames) having the bounce for "Icon" from the baseline position -- (i.e., labeled 2px, 4px, -2px, and -4px). I'll discuss how the top frame for a 4px movement up from the baseline is made. (The procedure is exactly the same for the other movements.) "0" in the bottom red-outlined rectangle is made from "0" in the top red-outlined rectangle by erasing "Icon". If we erase "Emot" and "Fan" from the 4px rectangle in the top red-outlined rectangle, we are left, of course, with "Icon" moved up 4px from the baseline. If we then take this frame and link and merge it with "0" in the bottom red-outlined rectangle, we arrive at the desired result, that being the frame labled 4px in the bottom red-outlined rectangle. This frame, of course, shows a 4px bounce of "Icon" up from the baseline. Examination of the bottom red-outlined rectangle shows that there are just 4 unique positions for the "Icon" bounce, again, these are labeled 2px, 4px, -2px, and -4px. This is the same for "Emot" and "Fan". So, we have 3 phrases and 4 positions in the bounce for each phrase for a total of 12 frames describing bounces. When we add the baseline position, this gives a total of 13 frames to describe the whole scenario.The frame sequence describing the complete motion in the bounce of a phrase is 2px, 4px, 2px, "0", -2px, -4px, -2px, and "0". Thus, it takes 8 frames to make each phrase bounce. The rest of the details are comparatively simple and relatively straight-forward, and they have more-or-less been discussed in earlier Posts.

In dencorso's Post # 816 in the "What Are You Listening To?" thread, he presented an 8-frame transparent GIF emoticon of a musical group having a drummer, a singer, and 2 guitarists. I wanted to make an animation using this emoticon relevant to Brazil, since that is where dencorso is from. The musical emoticon had a great deal of yellow in it, and I balanced it out by using a lot of green, since green and yellow are the main colors on the pretty Brazilian flag. FYI, on the flag the green represents the forests of the country and the yellow rhombus its mineral wealth. So I wanted to make the green background interesting, and perhaps evoke "forest" or "vegetation". In the background: 1) I used a green, linear gradient fade, darker at the top; 2) I gave it a grainy texture; 3) I used a scanline pattern; and 4) on top of all this I used an ellipse layer at the upper part of the image. I'm pleased at how this background turned out. I imprinted the part of the flag with the yellow rhombus on a heart shape via Photoshop Clipping Paths, and gave it a 1px yellow stroke (i.e., outline) so that the green part of the heart would show up well on the green background. The results are shown below. In the order of increasing complexity, I present a static JPEG, an 8-frame animation with no letter pulsations, and a 64-frame animation with letter pulsations. All the images are 190x60px. The animated GIFs are frame-by-frame, the display time per frame is 0.10 sec, and 255 colors are used. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JPEG, 36 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/RockininBrazilstaticJPEGimage.jpg -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8-frame animation with no letter pulsations, 17 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/AniRockininBrazil010sec8frames255colors190x60pxOOED17KB.gif -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 64-frame animation with letter pulsations, 87 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/AniRockininBrazil010sec64frames255colors190x60pxOOED87KB.gif -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) is one of my favorite historical figures, having led the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He has many famous quotes, and the one on the animated GIF userbar shown below is the one I like best, http://postimage.org/image/aagalialz/ This is a frame-by-frame animation: 90 unique frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 350x19px, 207 KB. A 6-frame animated GIF British flag and a JPEG of Churchill are scrolled vertically at a rate of 1px per frame. This animation is similar to that presented in my Post # 338 (i.e., Usain Bolt) where an animated GIF and a JPEG are scrolled together. So, where I say "There were 2 main requirements in making this userbar" in that Post, that also applies to the animation in this Post. In the Churchill animation, "Winston Churchill" (linked and merged on the background) disappears via opacity changes in the frame sequence 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 30%, 20%, and blue background (i.e., 0% opacity). The reappearance is simply the reverse of this frame sequence: 0%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 60%, 80%. and 100%. I didn't use opacity changes to make the 3 lines of text on the blue background appear and disappear, since there weren't enough total frames in the animation. The whole appear/disappear sequence is given by: 6 frames of the blue background, 13 frames of the first line of text, 6 frames of the blue background, 13 frames of the second line of text, 6 frames of the blue background, 13 frames of the third line of text, and 6 frames of the blue background. I put a 1px medium-blue-gray stroke (i.e., outline) around the Churchill JPEG -- (of course, I had removed the background first) -- and around each of the 6 frames of the British flag GIF so that these images would show up well when on the dark blue background. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A few more Winston Churchill quotes: "Never, never, never, never give up." “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.” --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@ Tripredacus: I made another version of your animated avatar, eliminating Ravage all together and just focusing the attention on the Tripredacus title page, to which I applied the animator spiral effect. I really like the way the spiral works with the title page. Again, this is the 100x100px version with perfect lettering. 255 colors, 348 frames, 551 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/VERSION1wTripspiralfx_Tripredacusanimatedavatar_simpleversion348frames551KB.gif If you want me to fiddle with it a bit to suit you, I have my fiddle all tuned up.

@ Tripredacus: I made a new version of your Ravage animated GIF avatar, using the "spiral effect" in my animator. Flacko, in his animation shown in your Post # 324, also used a "canned" animator effect to achieve his result. My new animated GIF is 100x100px, the size you prefer, and it has *perfect* lettering. It has 250 frames and a whopping file size of 1.26 MB. (But Flacko's animation also has a large file size of 886KB=0.886MB.) Here it is, in all its glory, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/VERSION1wspiralfx_Tripredacusanimatedavatar_simpleversion250frames126MB.gif If you would like to use something like this, but need a smaller file size, I can fiddle -- (and I play a mean fiddle......lol) -- with it to eliminate a few frames. Or maybe just using fewer colors might do the trick. Just let me know.

I was prompted to make the animated userbars shown below from watching the London Olympics with all the pretty flags and the athletes' pride in country. As I mentioned before, I really like strong, simple, bold colors and nowhere else will you find them than on the flags of different nations. All the userbars shown below are frame-by-frame. The number of frames for each userbar is around 50, and the file size for each userbar is around 25 KB. In each userbar: 1) the bright highlight on each flag is displayed for 0.07 sec; 2) each letter pulsation is displayed for 0.10 sec, since I had to increase the display time so that the pulsations could be seen better; 3) 255 colors are used; and 4) the image size is 350x20px. In the presentation below, I have purposely left a lot of space between userbars so that each userbar can be seen more or less by itself and not be "visually interfered with" by its neighbor. As a note, these types of animations are very, very simple to make, which explains the fact that I made so many of them. The bright highlights on the flags were achieved by increasing the Photoshop Brightness, and the letter pulsations were achieved in the usual way, by coloring them in with the Pencil Tool. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eastern Europe http://postimage.org/image/60yxklfgb/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: Poland, Hungary, Romania, Russian Federation, Belarus, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Czech Republic. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Western Europe http://postimage.org/image/4fbat99qn/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: The Netherlands, Liechtenstein, France, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Austria. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Northern Europe http://postimage.org/image/5uc08fbpp/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: Norway, Lithuania, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Great Britain, and Finland. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Southern Europe, Version 1 http://postimage.org/image/tdi6kdwy1/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: Albania, Malta, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Serbia. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Southern Europe, Version 2 http://postimage.org/image/dxb1tavf3/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: Italy, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Andorra, and Croatia. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Africa http://postimage.org/image/xb2scbx01/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: Egypt, Congo, Algeria, Ethiopia, Angola, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Asia http://postimage.org/image/vgz1b8zv3/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Japan, and China. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- South America http://postimage.org/image/ktv64y66z/ From left to right on the userbar, the flags represent the following countries: Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of color beneath the sky: Hats off! The flag is passing by.” Henry Holcomb Bennett “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.” Pierre de Coubertin -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I made this userbar to honor the great Jamaican sprinter, Usain "Lightning" Bolt. A few hours ago, he won the gold medal in the 200 meters at the 2012 London Olympics. Earlier, he also won the gold medal in the 100 meters at these Olympics. He might win another gold medal in the upcoming 4x100 meters. He won gold in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He holds the world records in the 100m and 200m, setting them at the 2009 World Championships. Currently, then, he is the fastest man on earth. http://postimage.org/image/6wif538y5/ This is a frame-by-frame animation: 78 unique frames, 0.06 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 350x19px, 126 KB. A 6-frame animated Jamaican flag GIF is scrolled on the left side of the userbar and a JPEG image of Usain Bolt is scrolled on the right side, both scrolled at a rate of 1 px per frame. There were 2 main requirements in making this userbar: 1) The height of the 6-frame animated flag GIF scrolling unit has to be the same as that of the JPEG image of Usain Bolt. Recall that a GIF scrolling unit consists of all frames aligned and linked so that they scroll as a unit. At each vertical position in the scrolling, the appropriate GIF frame is copied (i.e., released from the scrolling unit) and becomes the image in the main animation for that vertical position. 2) The total number of frames in the main animation has to be an integer multiple of the number of frames in the scrolled sub animation. This integer multiple is the number of loops of the sub animation for 1 loop of the main animation. In this case, there are 78 frames in the main animation and 6 frames in the sub animation, (78/6)=13, and the integer requirement is satisfied. Here is Bolt's famous trademark "Archer's Pose", which he assumes at all his races. He holds the pose for 20-30 sec and it's fun to watch him since he's quite a showman, http://postimage.org/image/xvc9bao01/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Usain Bolt quotes: "I was looking at myself and I'm like, 'that guy's fast.' " "I've written history, pretty much." "I'm now a legend. I'm also the greatest athlete to live." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was in the process of making some userbars in which I scroll animated GIFs -- (as I've done in my most recent Posts) -- when I came across a great JPEG of a smiling chimp. The image was on a solid white background which was easy to remove with the Photoshop Magic Wand. Scrolling static images, such as JPEGs, is very easy compared to scrolling animated GIFs, so I thought I'd take a little break and make the 2 userbars shown in this Post. Notice how I used the xenotron font for the word "Smile". This is the font I used in making Tripredacus's animated Ravage avatar. I figure the chimp is smiling full-blast like that because one of his jungle compatriot chimps told him a great joke about a banana. First is an animation on a flowered background. It's hard to recognize it as flowered, since I manipulated my resource image so much in order to have the word "Smile" on a light part of the background. So, the background is more or less "abstract". IMO, nothing wrong with that. http://postimage.org/image/jyjoihndj/ This is a frame-by-frame animation: 90 frames (80 unique), 0.07 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 350x19px, 185 KB. Chimp JPEGs are scrolled vertically -- at the rate of 1 pixel per frame -- on each end of the userbar. I really like bold, simple colors, and purple is my favorite, so I made the second animation shown below: http://postimage.org/image/wswpanlxh/ This is also a frame-by-frame animation: 90 unique frames, 0.07 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 350x19px, 363 KB. Chimp JPEGs are scrolled vertically -- at the rate of 1 pixel per frame -- on each end of the userbar. The background with the moving scanlines is a 2-frame animated GIF. This background animation is what makes the file size of this GIF so much greater than that of the first-presented image in this Post. Frame 1 of the background has blue diagonal scanlines with a 5px horizontal spacing. Frame 2 of the background was made from Frame 1 by moving Frame 1's scanlines to the left by 3px. When these 2 Frames alternate back and forth in the main animation, the illusion of motion is created, like this: http://postimage.org/image/wjku8iyp5/ Because I used letter pulsations that were dynamic and showed up well, I was able to scroll the chimps at a relatively fast rate (i.e., at a display time of 0.07 sec per frame). These are the type of energetic animations that I really like.

@ Tripredacus: Just curious. For the 15 frame, 88x31px animation you presented in your Post # 333, I'd guess that you had the bottom layer (i.e., white "Tripredacus.net" on a black background) and simply "overlayed" it with a "vibrating smokey black" animation that was on a transparent background. Am I correct? Or did you use some type of voodoo magic, the details of which you are not at liberty to discuss ?

@ Tripredacus: In my Post # 327, I made your animated Ravage avatar at 150x150px. I also presented one version at 100x100px that was re-sized in my animator from the 150x150px size. Unfortunately, this downsizing really blurred the lettering. I wanted to correct this blurriness, but I made a *mistake in strategy*. In my Post # 330, I took this 100x100px image with the blurred letters and tried to correct *that image*, with results that were not perfect. Garbage in, garbage out !!! I should have started from "scratch" at the 100x100px size to make a good image. So, that's what I did to create the ABSOLUTELY PERFECT Ravage animated avatar presented below. Notice how all the lettering (i.e., Tripredacus, please wait, and endure !!) is taller for a given letter width. It should be clear that this allows for easier "correcting" of the output from the Photoshop Type Tool. I've presented below 3 animations using the top quality settings in my animator for 255 colors, 127 colors, and 63 colors. I've also presented the actual JPEGs used in the animation, at 100% opacity, for the Tripredacus title page, please wait, and endure !! In case you're interested, my fade-outs occurred with an opacity-change sequence of 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 30%, and 20%. My fade-ins were simply the reverse of this sequence (i.e., 20%, 30%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100%). Here are the results: 255 colors, 316 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/Tripredacusanimatedavatar255colors316KB.gif 127colors, 250 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/Tripredacusanimatedavatar127colors250KB.gif 63 colors, 229 KB, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/Tripredacusanimatedavatar63colors229KB.gif Tripredacus title page, 100% opacity, http://postimage.org/image/c334g9x51/ please wait, 100% opacity, http://postimage.org/image/8yfbds5a7/ endure !!, 100% opacity, http://postimage.org/image/a0ocpegu5/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light." Matthew Arnold --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@ Tripredacus: Since it didn't take long to do, I went ahead and made another version of the "Sparkly T" shown in my last Post, http://postimage.org/image/q3qeabl5f/ This is a frame-by-frame animation: 25 unique frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 255 colors, 83x70px, 23 KB. It was fortuitous that the pixel letter "Tripredacus" worked great in size with respect to the sparkly T in my last Post, so that I didn't have to re-size it. The colors of "Tripredacus" and the pulses were sampled from the "T". In the 25 frames, the sparkly T 5-frame animated GIF loops 5 times. 11 frames are used to pulse "Tripredacus" and the remaining 14 frames serve as a "pause" so that sparkly T is not overshadowed by the Tripredacus letter pulsations. I made the pulsations very subtle, so that they would not overshadow the sparkles on sparkly T. I hope you like the animation and can use it someplace.

@ Tripredacus: Before I decided on exactly what I wanted to do in making your Ravage animation, I spent some time gathering a bunch of resources. One website had letters on a transparent background, animated in different ways. One animation I liked was a 5-frame "sparkly T". I saved each frame as a .psd file, so I could add a colored background. A black background worked great. A red background didn't work well, because it showed the outline of the "T", which was very ragged. (This ragged outline didn't show up on the black background.) I prepared a "sparkly T" animated GIF for you -- (it only took about 15 minutes) -- http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/SparkleyT5frames010sec60x55px255colorsOOED51KB.gif Specs: 5 frames, 0.10 sec display time per frame, 60x55px, 255 colors, 5.1 KB. I hope you like it and can use it someplace.

@ Tripredacus: In my last Post, I said I didn't want to fool with the Ravage image. (See my comments at the end of this Post.) But the blurry letters in the 100x100px GIF really bugged me, and I did my best to correct the blurriness so that you and I would have an animation that we would be proud to display anywhere, http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa403/larryb123456/04_Tripredacusavatar_fixLOGOPleasewaitendure100x100px_OOED89frames255colors313KB.gif The major difference between this image and the 100x100px GIF presented in my last Post involves the word "Tripredacus" on the title page. At 7px tall, it stretched out to about 130px (if I remember correctly). A numeric transform to get it below 100px introduced blurriness. So, I did my best to correct it, pixel by pixel, by looking at the structure of the letters in the 150x150px image. My manipulations (i.e., drawing with the pencil) resulted in a bolder font -- (nothing wrong with that, IMO) -- but I did the very best I could. This took some time to do. The corrections to "please wait" and "endure!!" were easy by comparison. I redid *completely* all the fade ins and fade outs of the 3 phrases. This required me to make 6 new JPEGs per phrase for a total of 18 JPEGs. Then I had to insert these good JPEGs into the animator, and that required replacing 33 out of the 89 frames. So, I hope you like it. I don't know about you, but I'd be proud to display it on forums or websites. Can you do me a big favor? Whenever you display it on a new website or forum, can you please send me the link? I'd enjoy seeing how the animation fits into the different "environments". Comments about the Ravage image: I don't think even the most die-hard Transformer freak would notice any difference in the appearance of Ravage. IMO, for someone to notice, they would have to have a strong background in Art or Graphics, like you. The way I see any differences in appearance can be explained like this: the differences can be explained by "lighting effects". In bright, harsh light Ravage will appear lighter and in a not-so-bright light, of course, he/she/it will appear darker. So, IMO, the Ravage image in the the animation is satisfactory. But, if you don't like the animation and don't want to use it, it makes absolutely no difference to me. Added in edit: It still bugs me that "please wait" and "endure!!" are not *perfect* in the animation. Please see the pixel letters in my Post # 332. These letters are 7px tall -- (as are those letters in the animation) -- and they look *great* with a 1px spacing between letters, as E N D U R E ! ! If you have plans to use the animation, I'd like to redo the 2 phrases with the fades. I think it would improve the animation 100%. There is no "law" that says you have to use the xenotron font throughout the animation. I think in the next couple of days, when I finish up some other stuff, I'll redo it accordingly, so that you (and I ) can see the improvement. Have pity on me. It's hard being a perfectionist !!! (lol) I just had a thought: With my Photoshop 5.0, I'm a little limited in getting *crystal clear* letters at a small size, such as 7px, with the xenotron font. *All* the lettering in the 100x100px animation is 7px tall. "Tripredacus" is 91px long on a background colored (r,g,b=241,0,0). If you could get a better "Tripredacus" than mine, just put it on a "sliver" of this red background and Post it, and I could position it where it goes on the title page. The same with "please wait" and "endure!!" on the black backgrounds. By doing this, I could make the animation *perfect*. Of course, you can make these letters a pixel or two taller if that helps the clarity. I do believe I'm getting OBSESSED with this rascal !!! (lol)

@ Tripredacus: Now what in the world do you expect me to do with the image in that link? I took the image I used in my animation directly from your avatar and sharpened it a tad to remove the blurriness. In my opinion, it looks much better. I gave it my best shot, and I'm not going to "revisit" it, with all due respect. I hate getting bogged down in needless (IMO) minutia (and minutiae also). The main thing, Tripredacus, is that I can't read your mind to discern what exact "corrections" you want to make to Ravage. After all, I'm not Carnac the Magnificent. (lol) Please open the 100x100px GIF in your animator. Better yet, use the animator I'm using, Jasc Animation Shop version 3.11, which you can download online from many web sites. I say this because then you can see the frames and display times exactly as I made them. There are just 2 frames where Ravage is displayed at opacity=100%. The other frames involving Ravage deal with the fade in and fade out and they can be safely ignored in your "correction" to the 100x100px Ravage image. But, of course, you would have to have your new Ravage image *align perfectly* with the images in the fades, or else you would get an "image discontinuity" when viewing the animation. The 2 Ravage frames at opacity=100% are labeled F:31 (i.e., frame31) with D:320 (i.e., display time = 3.2 sec) and F:72 (i.e., frame 72) with D:200 (i.e., display time = 2 sec). So all you need to do is get one 100x100px Ravage image that suits you and replace frames 31 and 72 with that "perfect" JPEG. I hope you don't think I'm "blowing you off", but I have many other projects I'm working on. Sincerely, Larry Added in edit: Recall that in my Post # 325 I asked you "How big (i.e., pixel dimensions) would you want me to make it ?" and you gave no response. If you had said 100x100px, maybe all this "present situation" could have been avoided.