Create a simple animation using Photoshop in GIF file format

October 30, 2008 · Filed Under Photoshop

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Animation is really a fun thing to do. This article explains how to create a simple 2D animation using Photoshop. Generally Photoshop is considered the best image manipulation software. An often overlooked feature is the ability to create animated GIF files. This tutorial doesn’t demand any previous knowledge of photoshop. For this example, let’s work on our prehistoric friends – the Flintstones, in a scenario that’s quite popular since their times- Wilma bashing Fred with a club! The final completed version looks like below:

Firstly download the starter Photoshop file at the end of this tutorial and open it.
The file composed of two layers the background and the club. The layers palette sits at the lower right corner of your Photoshop workspace by default. If you are one of those inquisitive types, don’t worry you can get back the default workspace by clicking on “Window” in the menu bar ,then on “Workspace” and finally on “Default Workspace”

Now coming back to the animation part, right click on the “club” layer in the layer palette and select duplicate layer, and give it a name so that you can easily identify it. I have named it “club intermediate” as it is an intermediate position between the raise and the strike

Now with the club intermediate layer highlighted in layers palette click on Edit menu, and then on Free Transform (you can use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+T”)

Set the anchor point (it’s that small crosshair ) to the base of the the club by dragging it to make the club rotate about Wilma’s hand)

Now move to the upper right corner of the box around the club so that the cursor becomes curvy, now click and move the mouse pointer to rotate the club and leave it in an intermediate position

Click on the tick button in the free transform button to commit the position of the club in the “club intermediate” layer

Now duplicate the “club intermediate” layer, and name it “club final”.Repeat the above steps on a similar note and this time make the club overlap Fred’s head. If you are doing it right, your image should look like below

Now click on window menu, and then on animation to reveal the animation properties

Right click on animation properties

Then choose “Make frames from layers”

Make sure that the background layer is visible in each frame. To do this click on each frame and see that the eye is visible beside the layer name in the layers palette. Left click in that small boxed area to toggle visibility

In our case four new frames would be present now but we wouldn’t need that background frame, hence delete it by selecting the first frame and clicking on the trash bin icon

You can preview the animation by clicking the play button in the animation palette, if the animation seems too fast you can set a frame delay time for each frame and 0.1 sec is fine in this case. Change the duration to 0.1sec from no delay by clicking on the inverted triangle to the left of 0 sec.

If you couldn’t get any of the above steps right, there’s a final version of my work at the end of this article that you can download. Now to export the animation click on “save for web & devices” in the file menu and save it as a GIF file. The animation can be viewed in windows picture and fax viewer. You’ve created a “Perfect perpetual pounding” ! This method of animation is one of the oldest, and is taught at animation classes even today for starters, with sheets of paper which work like frames. As always with animations more number of frames mean smoother transitions,but also bigger file sizes. An interesting use of a GIF file is that you can set it as background image for your desktop and then you’ll have an animated wallpaper!Leave comments or contact me if you need any help!