Make Your Own Animated Buddy
Icons
To do this you need to create a 48x48 pixel
animated GIF image. The procedure for making an
animated buddy icon is quite a bit more complicated
than making a still buddy icon and you are less
likely to already have the software necessary
to produce an animated GIF image on your system.
 I
would recommend you get a copy of Paint Shop Pro
from Jasc Software.
An evaluation copy of the software is available
to download and use completely free for thirty
days.
Paint Shop Pro, a part of the Paint Shop family
of digital imaging and photography products, is
the most complete, easy-to-use software for creating
professional digital imaging results. It includes
an integrated learning system, so it is incredibly
easy to learn and use. The bundled Animation Shop
enables you to produce animations from still images.
Animated buddy icons come in two styles: the
cartoon style animated icons and icons where the
icon switches between two or more different images.
Both styles are created by linking a series of
still images, called frames, together and depending
on the frame rate can look like a moving image
or a series of static images.
The main restriction for your animated buddy icon
is that the final animated GIF file must be no
larger than 7k (7168 bytes). This means that your
animation must be really simple in style. Bold
and simple graphics in the buddy icon, with large
areas of flat colour in the frames work really
well, because they result in small file sizes.
Unless your pictures are extremely simple, you
probably won't be able to fit many frames into
your animated buddy icons.
When you have created your animated GIF file
go to our How
to Include Your Personal Buddy Icon in AIM
Page.
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