I: What is an Animated Gif?
- An animated gif is a series of images created in the GIF format. The separate images, which are called frames are loaded into a browser on top of each other. The browser automatically cycles through them creating the illusion of movement and animation.
- An example of an animated gif.
- When this animated gif is loaded into a program such as ImageReady you can see that 24 separate image(frames) make up the animation.
- Not all animated GIF's have this many frames but notice the smooth rotation movement. Smooth movement is created by increasing the number of frames.
- Animated GIFs were the first animations that were created for the Internet. The technology or code within the GIF format allowed browsers to cycle through the consecutive frames.
- These animated GIFs were constructed using such software as GifBuilder and Gif Animator. Photoshop 5.5 and later versions came bundled with a program called ImageReady, which allowed the user to create animations and to add some control to their timing.
- Animations built for Web pages were later replaced by animations created in Flash. These animations were vector based making for a much smaller file size and there shorter download time. Only the moving object is replaced in each frame. This allows for larger size animations and animations that have controls built into them allowing the user to control the playing of the animation.
Copyright © 2006, Christalene Loren. All rights Reserved.
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