Create an animated Avatar

This guide will show you how to make a small animated GIF, for use as an avatar in web forums.

Step 1: Get everything you need.

First of all, you need to get a copy of the show you want to make a GIF from on your computer. I can't tell you how to do this, but try finding another guide that describes how to rip a DVD into an AVI.

Next, you need a program that will allow you to take screenshots from a movie file. There are many programs that do this. The one I'm using is a free program called "Movie Snapshot," which is available here: http://www.cd2html.de/moviesnapshot.en.html
UPDATE: Another program I would reccomend for this task is VirtualDubMod. It's less simple, and a little more daunting than Movie Snapshot, but I also find it to be a little more stable and compatible with opening movie files. It also has many more features than Movie Snapshot. You can get it here: http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/

Last, you need the GIMP, a free Image editing program, which you can get from this website: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

And some example of image in image avatars: <a href="http://gif-in-gif.com/" rel="nofollow">Create animated avatar</a>

Came across this site/tutorial/thread when I 'Googled' "how to create an avatar" - One question I would like to ask is - Are there no copyright issues with 'ripping' images (stills) or animations from a DVD? E.g. I quite like your 'little yellow robot' favicon, but wouldn't dream of using it for my own purposes!

OMG I LOVE YOU!!!!! Been looking for something like this for months! And it Worked!! Thanks soooooooo Much :D

who is oshey?

Thank you SO much for this. <3

ok so i fixed that problem, pictures are fine, but now that its complete, how to i get it onto a forum that requires it to have a url (its just saved as a picture) how can i convert it to a url?

Most likely, you have to upload it to a photo sharing service like Photobucket, or a similar service. After uploading it, you should find a URL of the image under or beside the image.

i cant figure out how to take a picture on the movie snapshot i read the help andit says nothing about screen shot or taking a picture out of the video

Hi. I had the same problem and found Video Avatar. This is simple tool for making moving userpics and staff loke this. Really liked it! http://www.geovid.com/video_avatar/ - link-)

I cant downlode it

Yeah When I tryed to do this to make a Toushiro Hitsugaya animation for my Avatar, it didn't squish it, it just cut off the rest.

What if you want to make an original GIF image? What then?

 Then you skip to #3 except you draw the images yourself.

 Thanks a lot for this! It's quite simple once you know how to do it. :D Thanks to you, I've made my first moving avatar!

 Here it is:

Is there a way to save a whole section? like if I don't wanna keep going forward and press save over and over. If I could let it play and it saves as it goes until I stop. Is there a way to do that?

i have used programm video avatar very easy and comfortable

I did it! Thanks for the instructable. Thank you also for the comments on vidgif. Definitely a lot easier than screenshots. Now I'm addicted making <a href="http://www.wegif.com/browse/" rel="nofollow">animated pictures</a>.

very helpful article.I have developed my avatar using the guidelines.Only problem i am experiencing is that of the size of the file.My file has the size of 136 KB and the allowed file size on the website is 11Kb.How do i reduce the size? thanks!

this is so cool

here is site where you can make real avatar of yourself <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ceveni.com/2009/01/create-your-own-animated-avatar-using.html">http://www.ceveni.com/2009/01/create-your-own-animated-avatar-using.html</a>

I saved the pictures from MovieSnapShot, but I can't find them to load onto GIMP. Am I doing something wrong, could you explain how I should save the pictures from MSS? Where do they go? Last does a person's OS affect this? My OS is Windows Vista.

Wherever you saved them. When you click the little save button in movie snapshot, it should open up a dialouge for you to select where you want to save the picture, and under what name. Wherever you save it during that part, that's where they'll be.

when I try to open a movie in movie snapshot it says the pins are not connected... help please?

If that happens, it's probably a codec error. What type of movie file are you trying to get frames from? If you're having too much trouble with movie snapshot, you can also use VirtualDubMod. Just push Shift+1 to save the frame as a picture, and the left and right arrows to advance frames.

Umm Im trying to use a music video... and where can I get virtualdubmod?

Before you ask questions like that, try googling it.

i like mine its about 15 frames from a music video by g-unit it LLoyd Banks in my buddy

nice

I made a demo one, but i didn't use AVI pictures, so it failed. so I guess that to make these, AVI pictures are necessary. thats a bummer, gotta actually convert my pictures

I use GeoVid Video Avatar. It can create avatars from video files. Many options and very easy! <a rel="nofollow" href="http://geovid.com/Video_Avatar/">Link here.</a>

Also you can use VidGif...

I made an .avi file of the video but it wont open up on the Moviesnapshot it says "Class not registered" so its not giving me crap. I've tried all of the other things people have said they used and it still won't work. I'm getting really ticked off because everyone else seems to be having success and i can't!!

There are plenty of guides out there on how to rip a DVD to an AVI. I know atleast one nice program is "Handbrake." As far as other programs for taking screenshots, you can use VirtualDubMod, too. To save a frame in that, just push Shift+1.

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.topshareware.com/Video-Userpic-download-53974.htm">UserPic</a>I use Video UserPic! =)

ty its cool but i found another good prog its Video User pic.its not expansive but enyway its have demo without timelimit!this prog for creating video userpics from any digital video files.very easy and very helpful here more info <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.visifly.com/">here</a> before i worked with <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.geovid.com/video_avatar">Video Avatar</a>it was very good too and this prog have demo with out timelimit too. you can downlode demo of this progs from links:) both progs very comfy and easy.i advice you to try them!

so know that i've seen it all, will it work on Holly Dolly from youtube or is there already an 'instructable', for that? 3173 ÃªÎ±K34

Before you scale it, make sure you canvas it so that the height and width are the same. If you don't want to do that, and don't mind the image getting squished, then just make sure you break the little chain link next to the dimensions, in the scaling dialog.

When trying to scale the image, whenever I try to set it at 100 x 100, it automatically defaults to 133 x 100 or 100 x 75. I can't get it to stay at 100 x 100 pixels. What am I doing wrong?

on step 3 i dont know how you meen drag the picture in to the main window ? form which program do i drag the picture from and which part of the gimp? i tryed from my picture folder but it doesnt work ! please help :)

You want to drag the picture, from its folder, into the window that says "the GIMP" in the title bar. If its not working for you, you can always jsut go File>Open instead, like Steve C says.

I had to use 'File' and 'Open' to load my background picture, the rest dragged in just fine. Nevertheless, this was really really helpful. There was only one disappointment; GIMP didn't allow me to slow my animation down as much as I would have liked. Thanks

Thanks for posting this! Very handy and very easy to learn :)

hm... i more like <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.geovid.com/Video_Avatar/">this one</a>

very good instructable, i never realised how easy it is to make these

very nice, instructables users should note that animated gifs arent yet enabled in instructables

Animated gifs do not need to be activated, do you mean blocked? This user's animated gif seems to function: joejoerowley

I hate You Ashfaq!