I don't really get how to make one of these. First off, does it necessarily have to be screens from a movie or something, and then you put it back into motion? Is there a way, that we can just rip that footage off the moment we want it, and make it from there?

Example: I want a Sesshoumaru Avatar, but it's hard to catch him slashing his sword in motion, so.... yeah, need a program which can do this...

Edit: I know you can clearly see I already have a Sesshoumaru avatar slashing his golden whip thingy, but those screens were found on a website, which I can find anymore. However, from the third movie, I found a couple of parts I like, but I need a program first... anything?

I know I plug it a lot, but GIMP 1.25 rocks for animation. I have Animation Shop (a paid program) and since discovering GIMP could import PSP files too I haven't touched it.

The basic principle in many programs (GIMP included) is to put the frames in order as layers-first one is first layer, second second layer, etc. In GIMP, timing is handled in the layer name in milliseconds- "layer 1 (300ms)" will make layer 1 show for that long.

Beyond that, there's a TON of ways to polish, optimize, and otherwise work with animations...if you want me to ramble, I can.

For capturing screens...what programs do you have, and what format is the video? DVD? An avi?

PSP7 comes with a program called Animation Shop 3, (;)) which is what I use to make moving GIFs. Its pretty powerful and well... isn't gimp :P

But you can edit/create frame by frame or import an AVI or MPG(?) video clip and play with that.

The rainbow color changey fox was created with Animation Shop

I honestly can't see any reason why I'd pay for Animation Shop now. I hate 2's interface and the way I have to update frames between it and PSP to edit them properly or use layers. GIMP gives me more control over optimizing stuff, too...good for cramming things under LiveJournal's 40k limit.

And now that I've discovered how the palette editor works, I can do more evil things, yes >_>...

Adobe Image Ready FTW

And they're "Animated Avatars", seriouslly SD you gotta learn computers one day.

Heh importing a movie into a GIF. Talk about compression, I tried doing a Flash -> GIF once, it was crap.

ZR, shoot me... I'm not a computer geek, okay? Just a person who likes to draw Custom Zoids.... :D

Thanks y'all, and Hatch, I'm getting to that...

Meh, kind of did it another way, but this is what I did... now since the spam topic about rating sigs, and avs are closed, I might as well start a new one. Thank y'all for your advise.

I know a good program located here ---> http://www.cursorarts.com/ca_imw_d.html it's free too. However it can be kinda tricky to use, so here's a tutorial --> http://www.deviantart.com/view/22273703/