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Mike's |
Resources
Table of Contents
Below are some tutorials that have helped me by supplying practical
information and techniques, useful links, or sometimes, just good old fashioned
inspiration!
Mike's Animations Gif Optimizing Tutorial
- A simplified explanation of how an animated gif works, that will help you master
the art of gif optimization.
Animated Gif Artists Guild
- Has a collection of tutorials, an online forum and a members' site list, as
well as a lot of other animation info.
Webmonkey
- Lots of general Web authoring and design topics and an excellent animation section.
Look in the 'How To Library' under multimedia that includes Gif animation, Flash,
dHTML and others.
Idleworm
- Has a tutorial to create an animated bouncing ball and an excellent tutorial
explaining the animated walk cycle. Also, there are lots of Flash animations (Flash plugin available at Idleworm).
Graphx Design
-
Has some general beginner's information on animated gifs and a tutorial that
shows you how to make a spinning globe.
Animation Meat
-
Has a collection of notes from professional animators regarding their craft.
It is somewhat unorganized information, but definitely contains good advice.
Also has some animation trivia and a few other neat tidbits.
Aimee's Studio
- Has some good tutorials on drawing and principles of animation.
The Animation Learner's Site
- It's just what it says, good information on all aspects of animation.
Raul's Animation Page
-
Animator with a long list of credits has some good animation tutorials.
Larry's Toon Institute
-
Professional animator with lots of animation tutorials.
Chronophotographical Projections
Site contains early animation studies and contains lots of animations that
show animal and human bodies in motion. Great way to learn the finer points
of how things move. Make sure you check out the Eadweard Muybridge link especially.
He is known as the grandfather of motion pictures.
Cartoon Animations - by Preston Blair
This site actually is an online book that has excellent info on traditional
animation techniques by a master Disney animator.
Below I've listed software that I have found useful for creating animations
and creating this web site. None are very expensive... many are freeware.
Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop
- When it comes to 'bang for your buck', nothing beats Paint Shop Pro for
a graphics tool. A 30 day fully working demo is available on their site. It comes
with Animation Shop.
Ulead Gif Animator
- A really good gif animation package that does an excellent job optimizing
animations. More complicated to use than Animation Shop, though. Ulead also
has free working demos to download.
Batch Thumbs
- A handy freeware batch thumbnailer program I use to create the animation thumbnails.
Harm's Wares also has a seamless tile generator that is free, although I've not
tried it yet.
Alchemy Mindworks Inc.
- You can download the shareware version of Gif Construction Set (reasonably priced)
and they also have some good information on creating ad banners on
their 'Articles' page.
1st Page 2000
- Free HTML editor that has four different user interfaces: Easy, Normal,
Expert and Hardcore. The tags are all configurable and there are lots of
predefined scripts. I use this all the time now. Can't beat it for the price!
Arachnophilia
-
Another good free HTML editing tool. Somewhat simpler than 1st Page 2000 but
also allows custom extensions of tags and scripts.