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[dharmavati.livejournal.com]

I guess, thank you guys, I got my icon muse back! :D I'm about halfway done with the requests but, in the meantime, here's a grab bag of icons I fiddled with.

[20] random icons: 2NE1, A:TLA, Chak De! India, Doctor Who, Kimi Ni Todoke, Phineas and Ferb, Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge

preview:



[01-01] 2NE1 (Try To Follow Me MV)
[02-02] Avatar: the Last Airbender
[03-04] Chak De! India
[05-06] Doctor Who
[07-08] Kimi Ni Todoke
[09-15] Phineas and Ferb
[16-18] Yankee-kun to Megane-chan (drama)
[19-20] Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge (drama)

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Created with angelamaria's Icon Table Generator @ Bauble

Other Notes:
-I'm not cool enough to come up with the concept of #2; the idea is from this Tumblr post.
-Comment/Credit/Provide feedback, please :) Textless icons are not bases unless otherwise noted.
-Resources
-Search the community
-Friend the community for updates

Comments

[hdluff4eva.livejournal.com]

Well. I use paint for my icons, but I also have photoshop CS4... I'm not sure if it works though...

[dharmavati.livejournal.com]

Well, if your CS4 works, you'll be needing that to make your animated icon. I use CS3 on my computer so hopefully most of these instructions should work for you but let me know if you run into any problems.
______

First thing I need is a good video for my animation. For example, for Phineas and Ferb stuff, I just go to YouTube, find a nice quality video and save it onto my desktop by pasting the URL of the video at keepvid (http://keepvid.com/).

Then what I do is open up the video with KM Player (http://download.cnet.com/The-KMPlayer/3000-13632_4-10659939.html) (it's freeware and deals with pretty much any video file in existence). I find and pause right before the scene that I want and press CTRL+G, which will open up the screencapping panel and look like the following:



What this tool does is save the images of your video into consecutive image files that you can then use to make your animation. Up at the top, where it says "Extract To" is where you specify where you want those image files to be save so you can access them later. You can also specify how you want them named with the prefix box. KM Player, by default, creates a KM Player "Capture" folder in your documents folder and saves stuff there but you're free to change the location. You want to make sure that you save these to an empty folder, though, because that will make your life so much easier.

For all the other settings, you want to have your settings the same as mine above. They basically determine how the program will take and save the files.

Next, you want to click "Start" and then play/unpause the video and it will start extracting the images. When the scene that you want is over, be sure to click on "Stop". For the purpose of making icons, you want to make sure the scene you picked isn't too long because LJ and other places have maximum limits on how big your final icon can be.

After you've got your screencaps extracted, open up Photoshop! Go to "Windows" at the top and make sure you have both "Layers" and "Animation" palettes open.

Then, I go to "File" --> "Scripts" --> "Load File Onto Stack". A dialog box called "Load Layers" will open up. Choose to load a folder instead of files and then click "Browse" to find the folder you picked to save the images. This will load all the names of your pictures in the box in alphabetical order. Click "OK" and let Photoshop do its thing. :D When it's done, you should have something like the following:



You'll have all the images saved as layers in this one big file. You're ready to create the animation!

The Layers palette is set up so that you have the first screencap of the scene at the top and the last one on the bottom. The little eyes next to each layer tells you whether that layer is visible or not. Since the topmost layer is visible in my example above, that layer will block all the layers below it and you won't be able to see them in the image yet.

You have to go the Animation palette and click on the button at the bottom that looks like a Post-It note (it says "Duplicate selected frames" if you hover over it). Then go to the topmost layer in the Layers palette (mine's labeled "cdi00015.jpg") and click on the eye next to it to make it invisible. You should then be able to see the layer underneath it. You then have to basically keep repeating these steps:

1) click on "Duplicate selected frames" in the Animation palette
2) Make the current top-most visible Layer

Mine looks something like this, with each of my layer having its own frame in the Animation palette:

rest of my guide :D

[dharmavati.livejournal.com]

When you're done, make sure the bottom left corner is set to "Forever" and not "Once" and test out your animation by pressing the play button on the Animation palette. Then you can crop and resize the file but going to the crop tool:



and entering "1 in" into both the Width and Height boxes at the top. Click and drag your mouse across the image, play around with the crop box so that everything you want is in the square, and press the "Enter" key. Then press CTRL+ALT+I to get the Resize dialog box and enter 100 px for the Width dimensions (the Height dimensions should automatically change).

If you're satisfied with the animation, go to "File" --> "Save For Web and Devices" and a big dialog box will appear:



You want to set the Preset to either "Gif 128 Dithered" or "Gif 128 No Dither" (you can press the play button in the bottom right to compare the settings). Also, pay attention to the size of the file (in the bottom left below "GIF") as you want to make sure it is under 40K for LJ use. If your file is too big, you can try deleting frames from your animation palette to decrease the size. And then save! :D

If you get used to this and get more comfortable with Photoshop, you can play around with image quality and coloring and maybe check out the Archive (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=icon_tutorial) at icon_tutorial for more tips. Otherwise, I hope this was newbie-friendly enough for you!

Re: rest of my guide :D

[hdluff4eva.livejournal.com]

YOU ARE AMAZING THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

Re: rest of my guide :D

[hdluff4eva.livejournal.com]

Finally got a chance to icon stuff. What do I do?

Fish custard