http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4936/srkv.gif
How in the hell can this be 76.3 KBs? Any help?
Probably all the colors and the tweening in and out of your name. How many frames are you working with in that?
The avatar has 12 frames.
As far as I’ve come to understand [which could be wrong so feel free to correct me anyone], each frame is a chunk of file size, as instead of just focusing on the name fading in and out, it’s also repeating all the images and effects of the picture in the background as well. So if you save that as a .GIF with only 1 frame [i.e. no animation], the filesize should be cut drastically. And for an avatar such as that, 12 frames is a bit much for a name fade. Try 3-4 frames, set a time lapse [.01, etc] and see if the results are acceptable.
OK, thanks Sasmaster. Another question. I’ve gotten the animation/border animated. My issue is trying to have the border animate smoothly without using more than 3 frames to keep an Av under 50kb. How many frames does it look like the Av’s here have?
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=5440731&postcount=121
Edit: Nevermind, I got it worked out. This thread is greatness!
Quick random question. In photoshop can foreground/background colors be set to transparent? If so, then how?
Edit: Nevermind that question.
I’m looking now to find this, but is there a way to determine/see in an animated sprite provided by someone where each movement is in a frame in photoshop? Or do you guys use another program for that? I’m making an animated AV for someone who’s provided said sprite.
2nd Edit: I guess I seem to answer my own questions…ImageReady can do that lol. I guess the only thing I really need to know at this point is how to use Image Ready in conjunction with Photoshop. How do I import back and forth an animated Background to this sprite between programs? :wonder:
theres an option under one of the menus (file?) that says “edit in imageready/photoshop”
opening a .gif in imageready will show you the frames, going to “edit in photoshop” will give you each frame as a layer.
doing “edit in imageready” on a multilayer photoshop file will take you to imageready where you have the option of making frames out of those layers.
Well, this is my first time making a signature. What do you guys think I could improve?
EDIT: I just now realized this is too big, what size should it be if I wanted to use it here?
well you cant put images in your signature so…
Ok, what’s that supposed to mean?
You can’t use signatures here, premium or not.
About the signature, idk, I don’t think I should give advice since I’m still pretty new to it myself.** So take this with a grain of salt.** You’re doing a hell of allot better when I started though, so yeah Good Job, considering it’s your first ever signature. Now on to the critique.
I honestly think it’s better to just have one subject (character/thing) in the signature, since having more than one sort’ove takes away the attention.
But you can still pull it off and have it just as good if you place it right, use the right effects etc.
::Didn’t Make these:: Examples
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/2059/playerky4.jpg
I think you should work on your text, try to make it go with the color scheme of your signature or blend with your signature. Cause imo, text can make or break the siggy.
There’s more stuff I could say, but I feel Like that’d be a bad idea; So, look around Deviantart for tutorials. OR, join a graphics commmunity like www.PremiumRenders.com and ask them for advice on your work.
Is there a thread for critique here on SRK? This seems more or less like a how can I do this, instead of how did I do/ what I should I do to improve type thread.
Oh wow, so you can’t use your own signatures here? I didn’t know that, anyways thanks for the help Okuma 
I’ll have to go on DeviantArt and look up some tutorials.
Still think you should register at PremiumRenders, the people there helped me allot,
and I think you should take a look and see if you like the community. If you don’t that’s cool, if you do even better. :china:
I’ll be sure to take a look at that website. Thanks :china:
Try very hard not to squish or stretch things, its almost always a bad idea. Hold shift and resize by dragging the corners. If you can’t get the picture to fit, then adjust your canvas size or do something else.
Ok, a lot of people have told me that so I guess I just have to keep working at it.
Question, how do you guys get flashing lighting effects? Matter of fact, Token686 has it in his AV now…
No idea how you got that, but I just opened it in ImageReady and saved it again and it’s like 14k here:
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/812/srkv3.gif
Check your Optimize settings?
the same way you get any other effect really; draw each frame. you can “paint on” varying degrees of light with the brush tool and clever manipulation of opacity, flow and blending mode. or you can use filters. or do a bunch of duplicate layers and mess with opacity and brightness/contrast settings. im sure there are other ways as well.
if you want “sparkles” there are brush sets that have varying degrees of…sparkliness?; just make a few layers of a tiny sparkle gradually turning into a big one and run it through your animator tool. save it as a transparent .gif and you never have to do it again since sparkles arent really all that different anyways.
of course if you have actual draw/painting ability then most effects become trivial since you can just draw the stages of how you want your animation to look
Got it.
So let’s take this image for example:
If I wanted to make a lighting effect like the sparkles in the lightening to where it lights/darkens, does that involve the same process or is there a shortcut? I could only image that’s a lot of work to make a lighting effect on something like this.