Have you ever wondered how to make animations that you see on many www pages throughout the world? Do you want to make your own? Well, of course you do if you're reading this now. Below are the easy steps to creating your own animation for your web page.

Before you start you must download the freeware program GifBuilder from my software page. Next make or find an icon to use as you animated gif. (Sorry, jpegs don't apply)

Open up GifBuilder and under the File menu make a new gif. Now paste the icon into the windows that appear. If no window appears pull down your Window menu and select both Show Frames and Show animation.

Now you should see your icon in the window on the left. Save your file and quit. Then go into your graphics application like Adobe Photoshop. Paste the icon a few times scattered on your page. (I'll paste 3 more icons in my animation) Now magnify your view so your looking at the pixels of each icon that you pasted. Edit each of them so that they vary in steps, just like it seems like it would be moving. See image below.

  

Open your saved gif file from GifBuilder and paste each icon individually in order that you want them to appear in the animation. When you're done pasting them, pull down Animation menu and select start animation. You'll see your icon moving and then come to a stop.

Now you can configure your animated gif however you want. You can add more frames, to make the animation look more realistic, or have it loop a designated number of times, or loop non-stop forever using your Options menu.

If you wish to convert a quicktime movie into an animated gif, then get the shareware program Smart Dubbing. You can find it at http://www.xs4all.nl/~polder/

Congradulations! Just add a link to it like you normally would with any graphic you put on the web. Have Fun!