Animating pics

First of all, you cannot make animations in PAINT.NET. You have to use a seperate program along with PAINT.NET to do it. That program is called UnFREEz.



When making an animation you need frames. In PAINT.NET you can change you pictures with colors and effects and save them. Let's say that everytime you save your pic after changing it, it is a frame. Using UnFREEz you can animate those frames. Before using the pics in UnFREEz, be sure to flatten your images and save them a a .gif file type.



HERE is a well done PANT.NET forumer tutorial on animating with PAINT.NET.



In this tutorial I am animating the outline. The first steps are in PAINT.NET. This is a continuation of my adding a background and adding an outline tutorials. Starting out I have 3 layers. A character, an outline, and a background. In this tutorial I will be animating the outline layer.



1. First, go to effects and pick glow and use it on its default setting. Be sure you have your outline layer highlighted in your layer box when you do this.



EXAMPLE



2. Now flatten the image.

3. Now go to file, then to save as. In the save window look down where it says "save as type" change that to .gif. Save the file as whatever1.gif.



EXAMPLE


4. Now go to your history box and undo flatten and undo the glow effect.



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5. In your layer box, highlight your outline layer and use glow effect again except this time increase the radius to about 15.



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6. Now flatten the image and save as whatever2.gif.

7. Now undo flatten and the glow again and highlight your outline layer and use glow effect again except this time make the radius 25.



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8. Now flatten and save the image as whatever3.gif. Now its time to use UnFreez.

9. Open the folder you saved the 3 .gif files in.



10. Open the UnFREEz program.



11. Drag the files from the folder to UnFreez.



EXAMPLE

12. I usually do gif1,gif2,gif3,gif3,gif2,gif1 but you can just do gif1,gif2,gif3 if you want. Now be sure to put a number in the frame delay box. I usually put 10. Now click the "make animated gif" button and type in a filename and you're done.



EXAMPLE



FINISHED PIC


NOTES: This technique can be used with many of the effects on paint.net. You can use blur and distort effects on background layers, text, and characters. (Or all 3 if you want) and then just increase the effect with each .gif file you make. Then animate.