Q: Did you make all these gifs yourself?
A: Yes. All of the gifs you see in the Animated Gifs section were all made by me. ^_^
Q: What programs do you use to make your animated gifs?
A: I use the Microsoft Paint (MS Paint) program to draw and color the gif with the basic shades. Then to edit most
of my gifs for certain effects, shadings and retouching, I use Paint Shop Pro 8 (PSP 8), but for my older gifs I used PSP 7.
Then I animate the frames with the Animation Wizard program that comes
with the PSP program.
Q: How long does it take for you to make a gif?
A: It depends on the amount of detail I am dealing with in the character and the size of the gif. For example:
It took about 1-2 hours straight to make one of my DBZ gifs, but for Sesshomaru from Inuyasha for example,
that took probably up to 7 hours or more, because I kept stopping and then continuing (for breaks) due to the extreme amount of detail in it. Usually the ones I make now will probably take about a week or
more to complete with breaks included (varies), because they are more detailed and are more complex than the older ones, due to the new techniques I use now.
Q: When did you start making animated gifs?
A: I started making them around the year 2001, just around the time I opened this site, and hopefully I'll still continue to make more with the support and encouragement from the viewers ^_~.
Q: How did you get the idea of making these gifs or what inspired you to make them?
A: My main inspiration came from a desktop mate, Multi (which you can actually find in the Computer Goodies page), from the To Heart anime series. It inspired me to draw anime characters in MS Paint and to make them into animated gifs, since Multi also blinked and did her own movements.
Q: Why do most of the gifs just blink?
A: I get this a lot... But due to the lack of skills I have in animating images on the computer, let alone drawing them on MS Paint XD, I do blinking the most, because it's easiest to animate, takes up less space, and is the most natural looking. And to make them do anything else that involves the movement of a body part would be
very difficult to do with a mouse and also very time consuming (especially considering the size of the gifs). But as you can see from my collection, I have done animations that involves movement of the clothes, hair, mouth, etc. usually with the smaller gifs. But they are usually not all original ideas and I couldn't have done them alone without observing something with the same movement carefully. They also usually end up choppy looking or as failed attempts, so now I would just save myself the embarrassment and make the character more and more detailed and just have them blink.
Q: How do you make these animated gifs? I want to learn so I can make them too.
A:
There is now a tutorial on how to make the animated gifs in the Tutorials section. However it only shows how to make a smaller and more simple gif, compared to my larger and more detailed gifs (which would take many more pages to demonstrate). But it does give you an idea on the processes I go through to make one, so you could follow the same procedures for a more detailed gif. The real secret to making the gifs is to have skills in drawing. Depending on how well and accurately you can draw small details with the mouse, you'll know how your animated gifs will turn out. So people who draw really well with a pencil isn't
necessarily going to do well in this, so you'll also have to get used to drawing well with your mouse as well.
If you have both these skills, the time, the patience and the right programs to make them with, then you would
definitely be able to make gifs like these, because the rest is up to you and your creativity. ^_^
Q: Can you please make a gif of "******" for me?
A: I'm afraid I can't. I have stopped making personal gifs for people, because not only am I making them for free (some people actually charge you for them), but it also takes up a lot of my spare
time just to make one of them for one person to use. And after making a gif for someone, they might not like it and end up deleting it, wasting all my valuable time and hard work.
That's why I would rather have people picking gifs that are already created. Because after I make a gif successfully and put it up, they can see if they like it or not and choose what they want instead of having to be stuck with something I made for them. I don't really gain much from making personal gifs for people, though I do like making people happy. But going through all of that is just too much for me at this point, especially with the other work I have.
But if it's under special circumstances, at the right time or if you are a close friend/affiliate, then I may be able to reconsider.
Q: Why do you have to fill out a form to get a gif?
A: Since I put so much work and time into making them and because there also aren't many
gifs like these around the net, I decided to have people fill out a form and link back to me. That way, people who see them will know the original creator and will be able to get some for their own or see my other works. If I didn't try to protect my gifs by having people fill out a form to get one or have my site name over them, then people would just be taking them freely and forget where they got it from or think they can take full credit for making them (and to see that is not a good feeling).
These gifs weren't originally made for people to use on sites, because they were more detailed and bigger than the animated gifs you would usually see online, so they were only put here as a showcase. But after I got e-mails from several people
who asked me if they could use some for their websites, that's how "The Form"
idea came to be. All I ask in return for letting people use my animated gifs (free of charge) for their sites is to respect them and their creator and not to abuse the opportunity to use them, because
I don't want them to become those highly used gifs on the net which people don't even know the original makers of. It takes much less time to fill out the form and link back to my site to credit
me when using a gif than it is for me to actually make one of them, so it's really not a hard task on your part. ^_^
Q: Will you be making gifs for a long time?
A: Well, I have thought about "retiring" from my "gif-making" lots of times, because I have seen many people abuse my gifs and use them improperly by forgetting to
credit me when agreeing to or resizing them, making them look distorted. If things like that still
continue with future users, then I might have to stop making new gifs or take them off my site. But currently I am still making animated gifs and accepting suggestions, so I probably won't
stop making them until a while from now.
Q: Why do some of your gifs have little specs and dots in them?
A: This is a problem that results from my Animation Wizard program when exposed to too
much detail from files edited with other programs or from certain colors in my gifs.
When it animates the frames of certain gifs,
it might put dots and specs in certain parts of the gif to compress the colors and size of the file,
but for some other gifs, they won't have any at all. I'm not 100% sure why this happens, because
the original images didn't have specs in them, but I hopefully I can prevent the future gifs
from having specs if possible.
