How to Make an Animated GIF

Hello and welcome to Benox Tutorials’ third tutorial: “How to Make an Animated GIF”. This tutorial will show you how to make an animated GIF without using ImageReady. In this example, I will use an avatar. 

To start off, make a new canvas that is 129 x 126 or any size you wish.

Press ‘D’ on your keyboard to reset the foreground and background colors.

Take the Paint Bucket Tool () and fill the canvas with black. 

Take the TEXT TOOL and write your first letter(I will only use two letters in this tutorial to avoid making the tutorial too long). For this example, the first letter is going to be ‘B’.

Right-click on the layer on the layer palette and click on “Rasterize Type”

Now, Ctrl + Click on the thumbnail of your text layer in the layer palette.

Your letter should now be selected.

Press ‘Ctrl + C’ to copy the letter and press ‘Ctrl + V’ to paste. Now press ‘Ctrl + J’ with the new layer selected to duplicate it.

Your layer palette should now look like this:

Note: Make sure the two new layers (Layer 2 and Layer 2 copy) are NOT visible.

For now, make “Layer 2″ visible. Then go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Use the following settings:

When you are done, hide the layer again. And unhide “Layer 2 copy”

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use the following settings:

Hide the layer again. Now, open up the Animation window by going to: Window > Animation

You will automatically get the first frame and your animation window will look like this:

Now click on the “Duplicate Frame” button () on the animation window 4 times. You should now have 5 frames.

Click on Frame 2 and make “Layer 2″ visible.

Click on Frame 4 and make “Layer 2 copy” visible. 

Now, select Frame 2 and click on the little arrow beside “0 sec.”

A little menu will come up. Choose 0.1 seconds.

Do the same to Frame 4.

When you click the PLAY button in the animation window, your avatar should look like this:

Now, for the second letter, select the Text Tool and write “X”

 

Right-click on the layer on the layer palette and click on “Rasterize Type”

Now, Ctrl + Click on the thumbnail of your text layer in the layer palette.

Your letter should now be selected.

Press ‘Ctrl + C’ to copy the letter and press ‘Ctrl + V’ to paste. Now press ‘Ctrl + J’ with the new layer selected to duplicate it.

Your layer palette should now look like this:

 

Then go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Use the following settings:

When you are done, hide the layer. And select “Layer 3 copy”

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use the following settings:

Hide the layer. Also, hide the layer named “x”.

In the animation window, click on Frame 5 and click on the “Duplicate Frame” button () 5 times.

Select Frame 6, 8, and 10 and make Layer “x” visible.

Select Frame 7 and make “Layer 3″ visible.

Select Frame 9 and make “Layer 3 copy” visible.

Now, select Frame 7 and click on the little arrow next to 0 sec. and select 0.2 seconds

Do the same on Frame 9. 

When you press the play button in the animation window, it should look like this:

You are basically done. When you make your own avatar, you could change the background from black to an image or something along those lines to make it less “blank”.

Thank you for reading this tutorial. Hope it was helpful! Have fun creating Animated GIF’s.

Download PSD: gif-animation-psd