GIF Animation WITH MICROSOFT GIF ANIMATOR

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With the formation of the two corresponding dimensions of 2D and 3D design a new type of web magic has formed. This new form of magic is the magic of animation. Animation, like most people know, is nothing more than a bunch of images shown one after another. Frequently they are shown rapidly to give the impression of movement. People wonder how much time it takes to make an animation and how much money the programs are to make this magic.
Unlike animation found in a Disney cartoon where the animations are drawn frame by frame by artists and then fed through a machine that takes the images and makes them into a movie or short film, I think that computer animation is fairly easy. In computer animation the frames still need to be drawn with the "Hand on Mouse" method of drawing but the animation part can be a bit easier. The most common computer animation that can be seen easily today is the animated GIF. This type of animation requires only three things. A program to draw the images, a program to animate them, and an imagination.
The following section will teach you the user how to create animated GIFs easily with only two basic programs.
How to Start

The first thing that you need to do is to obtain the proper programs. First, you need a program to draw all your frames. A good easily found program to start with is Microsoft Paint (Win 95) or Microsoft PaintBrush(Win 3.x or OS/2). If you are using a Macintosh system, find an equivalent program. With these programs you can draw the frames necessary to create a simple animated GIF.

Now that you have a drawing program, you can make frames for the images. The next step is to obtain a program that will accept the images and can show the images in the proper order and speed. If you have Frontpage 98, you can use Microsoft GIF Animator. Otherwise, I suggest the GIF Construction Set. These programs have been used by Team WWS to create all of the animations found on this site.