October 2014 Tips and Tricks - Big GIFs, Tiny Animations

[wizard509]

After seeing what cshez did I was reluctant to post this. But never the less here you go.

[csehz]

Larry that is really a good idea, changing the flashing rhythm to a pattern, after it is ready to solve with the Morse Codes table what the pumpkins say



So reached the point how to add 'sound' to a gif

[csehz]

Just in the tryings it seems for me an important start parameter selecting the background pictures, also that basically it should not have gradients because of course that is tricky looking in 256 colours. But in this one some small sun at least has to be, unfortunately still can be seen the limitations, anyway it is 114 Kbyte



Originally planned with this picture in the background below, but that looks good strictly only in flash and also interesting test that it is 22 Kbyte. This has no chance to be in gif because of the lighter gradients


YogaAnimation1.swf
YogaAnimation1.xar

Just flash did not come back and maybe never into fashion

[Rik]

Wow, csehz!
I think, I can just about get into one of those positions.
The rest of them? No chance.

I wonder if the silhouettes might look a bit better if they were slightly softer.
To me, they look rather sharp.

[wizard509]

I love it cshez. Like Rik, I shouldn't even try to get in those positions. I like to think I can but really know better.

[Gare]

Just flash did not come back and maybe never into fashion

I think you did wonderfully with the concept of a photo with only a small part changing, but yes, GIFs suck at gradients....too many unique colours and if you try reducing the colours, you get banding. The only workaround is to use diffusion dithering, but this then increases the GIF saved file size.

One thing I probably didn't stress enough in this tutorial is that very quickly, the world is going to mobile devices. People look at websites and the graphics while out of the office and they don't have access to their desktop machine or a workstation.

And that means that if you use SWF files (Shockwave, commonly called Flash...which is entirely a different structure but who cares), you'll miss a lot of your audience because 99% of your mobile devices don't support Flash. Thank the late Steve Jobs for this one...he presents Flash as a security risk and banned them from Apple hand-helds.

Um, PDFs are just as susceptible to malware as Flash files, people.

Nevertheless, brilliant work, csehz. Three thumbs up!

—g

[csehz]

I wonder if the silhouettes might look a bit better if they were slightly softer.
To me, they look rather sharp.

Thanks for your opinions, yes true that first of all the silhouettes should not have absolute black color, as probably that does not exist in the reality as RGB 0,0,0.

Eventually also could be feathered, would not like to tire you with the same picture but tried that adding 1,8px feather to the six silhouettes, that did not increase the size at all. But adding lot of feather 29px for a short test, it looks a bit like only a soul practicing yoga by that , but so that increased the size to 281 Kb.

I will also note for myself to remember that Feather so can be added to gif animations, but of course not for flash as that would bring an error message 'Feathering can not be exported'. So maybe that is a small plus beside the gif options yet

[Gare]

@csehz and everyone interested in Flash:

I posted a list of "you can do this" and "you cannot do this" in Flash as a written part of the third tutorial I ever did on the Xone.

Scroll down a little to READ ME FIRST, for Flash limitations

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

I think the bouncing ball was your second tut. in the Xone Gary after the little guy falling or parachuting one.
I still use the boncing ball one for ref. as it has it all, squishing, shadow even how to make the ball and shadow and position it for each frame, I enjoyed that one

Stygg

[Egg Bramhill]

...you'll miss a lot of your audience because 99% of your mobile devices don't support Flash.

Then convert your Xara swf's to HTML5 files, these are then accessable on mobiles

SEE HERE File size 24Kb