1. There are two ways to create an image that will work for animation shop:

a: Begin by making an image in PSP. Make it small 50 x 50. Then you are going to duplicate this image. Open the PSP editing menu and choose duplicate. I create five different images from the same one. Each one has a slight difference. Usually, I change the color. Make the color different for each image. Save each image by naming it like this example:

picture1.gif, picture2.gif, picture3.gif, picture4.gif, picture5.gif.

You now have the basic images to create an animation.

or

b: An easier way is to use animation shop effects and use one image.
Create one image about 50 x 50, no larger than 100 x 100 and save it as a gif file.

2. Open animation shop

3. Choose animation wizard. These are the settings that I have been using and they appear to work the best. Each letter represents the screen that comes up when you push next within animation wizard.

a. Dimensions: Use anywhere from 100 x 100 down to 50 x 50 and if a background, go smaller if you like to 25 x 25.

b: Default Canvas Color: transparent

c: Aspect ratio: centered in the frame, with the preceding frame's contents and scale frames to fit

d: Yes play indefinately and choose 1/20th of a second

e: Add image. Here you either add the five separate images you created above, or choose the same image and add it five or six times. When you work with the one image you will manipulate each frame within animation shop to make it animated.

f: Click on finish

Now if you chose to add five images, you will see five frames on your screen, select the view animation button on the toolbar and watch it come to life.

If you are working with one image, then you click on each frame and use animation effects to change each frame so it looks different from the previous frame to create your animation.

Play around with the animation effects menu until you slow it down, change colors or whatever you desire to do, using the view animation button to see what is happening with it.

Finally, you want to save this animation. Choose save under the file menu and another wizard comes up. It will show you your animation, how long it will take to download and optimize it for the web. If it takes longer than 30-60 seconds to download then remove some of the animation. I have found that most people will not wait for animation to download if it takes too long. You want people to stay at your site and not get bored so make those animations small.

Save the newly created animation image in FTP and send it up to your editing page at your web site. Use the img src="picture.gif" code just like you would a graphic to put the image on your page.

This program has help files within it, but I choose to use the animation wizard and let the program do most of the work. PSP made it easy to create my own animations. Go to my "ICQ Messages" and "It's Alive" pages to see original animations made with the wizard. Just hit the "Back to LadyMitchee's Creations" button above.