by Mark Larmand

So... here we are again getting ready to talk some more about the infamous digital pixel. As I'm sure you've all seen by now, being the Web- and graphic-savvy individuals that you are, there aren't a whole lot of limitations on what can be done with a pixel these days. You can bend it, twist it, warp it, tear it, augment its colour, diminish its colour, even create large and small groups of them and choreograph their appearance to work in either harmony or discord. And then, when you've done all that, you can teach them to dance! Now that's a lot of versatility for something so tiny that it's dwarfed by the point of a pencil!
August 17, 1999

And if you had a few dozen million bucks, you could create a blockbuster movie where dinosaurs are cloned, and look real because there's so much detail put into the graphic work, and they take over a tropical island theme park, and you can make more than a hundred million bucks from showing it to people!!! Oops, got carried away there, sorry. But you get where I'm going with that, right?

What we'll be talking about in this article is how we "teach our pixels to dance" or in other words, animate them. Gif animation has become one of the Web's most popular and interesting characteristics. There are hundreds of animation contests going on all over the Internet at any given time, to satisfy the cravings of the average Gif animation enthusiast. It's definitely one of the more 'user-friendly' ways to add some excitement to a site (ala: no plugins required!).

In order to create an animated Gif image, you need to use a program that's been designed for that purpose. The more specific it is to serving that purpose, the better its performance will be in ease of use and file optimization. There are however a few new graphics programs out there that have been designed to fulfill more than just this one function, and still work nicely for creating animations. These programs are geared more toward the Web designer crowd, and will also help the Web/Graphic Artist to compress, compile, and even slice'n'dice images for placement within table cells on a Web page. And on top of all that, they also provide a small amount of painting and/or drawing capabilities for the more experienced artist.

Since I myself do not have every different animation program every made, I'll be referencing examples here from the ones that I tend to use the most. (Editor's Note: There are lots of animation programs available, many of them free, in our Web Tools Download Section.) Before you get started, have a quick look at these samples done with each program.

Corel Xara 2

Macromedia Flash 3

This article is in four parts:

1. Introduction
2. What makes an animated Gif, animated?
3. Behind The Scenes
4. Organisation and Efficiency