Stick Figure Animation

We've all seen animated gifs and by now most of us are pretty annoyed with them. However, they can still be useful in some settings. ImageReady provides us with a very easy way to create animated gifs. We will go through an example of creating an animated GIF.

Example #1

We are going to go over creating an animation from a blank document step by step

• Step one, Create a blank a new document. Set the Width to 300px and the Height to 300px. Set the Background to White. Click OK
• Next, With the paintbrush draw a stick figure with no arms onto the blank document
• Create a new layer, draw the stick figures arms onto the new layer. The arms should be pointing to the ground.
• Create a new layer, draw the stick figures arms onto the new layer. The arms now should be horizontal.
• Create a new layer, draw the stick figures arms on the new layer. The arms should now be pointing to the sky
• Your layers palette should resemble this:

We have now created the graphical aspect of this animation. Now its time to move onto the animation side

• Open the animation palette if it is not already opened. Window > Animation
• In the layers palette, turn off layer visibility for layer 2 and layer 3. The toggle for layer visibility is the eye on the left of the layer.
• Next, create a new frame in the animation palette. To do this, click on the icon that looks like a page turning.
• Select the second frame in the animation palette. In the Layers palette turn off visibility for layer 1 and turn on visibility for layer 2. After doing this frame 1 in the animation palette should be the stick figure with his hands down and frame 2 should be the stick figure with his hands horizontal.
• Next, create a third frame in the animation palette and in the layers palette turn off visibility for layer 2 and turn on visibility for layer 3. After doing this frame 2 in the animation palette should be the stick figure with his hands horizontal and frame 3 should be the stick figure with his hands in the air.
• Finally, Create a fourth frame in the animation palette and in the layers palette turn off visibility for frame 3 and turn on visibility for frame 2.
• Our animation palette should now resemble this:

To view the animation you can click the play button in the animation palette or you can go to File > Preview in Browser . To save the animation go to File > Save Optimized As it will automatically save it as a .gif file.

Here is the finished animated GIF (yours should look very similar)