How to make a Character Rotation .GIF in photoshop

Hello students, welcome to class 3 of freshman animation seminar.  Today we will -

8 - 9:30 : crit our characters!  Ask questions about these characters.  Asks follow up questions!  Be curious!  Remember!  This process isn't a game of "gotcha!" - with the intensions of exposing you of not fleshing out our characters.  No!  This is an exercise in flexing the inquisitive mind.  We want to get to the bottom of who these people are, what this environment is ... we want to develop a fully fleshed out world so that our animations have internal logic, specific details, elements that will make them more individual and far removed from a cookie cutter replica of a pre-established environment that is handicapped by the trappings of industry, genre or commodity culture.  This is art school!  Let's experiment!

9:30 - 9:45 : Break

9:45 - 10:15 :

Demo:  HOW TO MAKE AN ANIMATED GIF IN PHOTOSHOP

1.  Open up a new document at 1920x1080 pixels.  Get in the habit of knowing these dimensions as they are used for youtube, a forum you will be using often as an animator.  

Here we have your homework, completed and opened up in photoshop.  A minimum of five heads, drawn with a computer mouse the night before class.  Hey, points for getting it in on time, and not too bad with the proportions!

2.  Make sure that each face is on a separate LAYER.  Your LAYERS window can be opened by clicking WINDOW at the top of your photoshop controls and hitting LAYERS.

3.  There are multiple ways of putting each different frame into a separate layer.  I suggest scanning all five images in at once, hitting M for marquee tool, and cutting and pasting (shift C+ shift P) on top of one another.  Once each drawing is copied and pasted onto a separate layer, delete the original underdrawing.



4. Open up timeline in photoshop by clicking window in the top controls. Click "Create Video TImeline".

5.  In the bottom right hand corner of the timeline function, there is an icon of 3 squares.  Click it.  This shifts how the timeline is visualized.  For audio, you would switch back to the other timeline.  I have always been more comfortable with the three square method, feel free to use either one and experiment.


6.
  

Congratulations!  You're half way there.  Your timeline should look like this.  The bottom time of the frame indicates how long of a pause should remain on that frame.  The picture shows what the frame looks like. These are interchangeable.  Click on the tab right next to the trashcan to make new frames.
7.  From here, align you frames with your layer.  Hit the eyeball on the side of the layer window to make them visible and invisible.

Your end product should look like this:


10:15 - 10:30:
Q & A plus description of the homework
Homework:  Complete an animated GIF. for NEXT MONDAY.  Wednesday there will be a seminar and workshop as well as additional homework assignments.  Please bring drawing materials to the next class.