How do you make animated GIFs... - for your avatar?

[squashmypastry]

I envy scar's avatar on FMS, so I was just wondering how to make an animated avatar...

[Scarz]

ah ha! that a very good question.

you'll need a program, that animates, and saves to gif.
I used "macromedia flash" to create the aninmation.
Then i used a generic gif editor to crop it to the proper size.

[squashmypastry]

dang... I knew it...

I think my trial period for flash already expired on my computer, and im not about to spend $300 to buy the full thing, just so I could make an avatar...

Do you think windows movie maker could work if i made something on it?

[Scarz]

if it saves as, or renders .gif then it might work.
remember, 64x64 pixels max on avatar. movie maker might not output that small, or if it does, it might look not look good. you can do a search for free gif animators, that will crop it to the right size.
theres a lot of gif animators out there, most leave a watermark. i tried a few, before i found one that just had a time limit, without the watermark.

good luck