
That's the sound of me and my clone laughing our heads off.
( ,
Sat 7 May 2005, 23:56,
archived)

class. I spoofed to a mate once that a wee man comes out in the morning and winds them things up (by turning it anti-clockwise for half an hour, then releases it...)
stupid fuck believed it too.
he's a hare krisna now.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:33,
archived)
stupid fuck believed it too.
he's a hare krisna now.

Why do people have little black lines through their animations?
I've always wondered that. I'd Google for the answer, but it's f*cked.
David
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:04,
archived)
I've always wondered that. I'd Google for the answer, but it's f*cked.
David

It reduces the filesize quite a bit. That said, that animation only has 8 colours, very little dithering and a lot of lossiness already - but the black lines trick knocked off a little bit more.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:05,
archived)

So what I do is create an image that's the right size to cover the entire animation in MS Paint, and draw alternating black and white lines (it's quick if you draw a few, then copy-paste in blocks). Then I stick it as a new layer on top of all the others and set the layer blending mode to "Darken" if I want black bars or "Lighten" if I want white bars.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:09,
archived)

to create a pattern in photoshop by creating a new canvas, transparent background, 1 pix wide, 2 high then make one pix black and that's its. Define the pattern in the menu then just fill that as a layer as you need it ;)
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:13,
archived)

I have a problem in that photoshop forgets my patterns when I close it. It also seems to forget which hotkeys I specify when I create an action.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:24,
archived)

as seen here
anyway... while in imageready
open up a new document, width 1 px, height 2 px. make one pixel black, the other leave transparent.
click "edit" and then "define pattern."
click the last layer of the animation (not the frame, the layer) then add a new layer to the end. right click and find another drop down menu ("layer style") and click "pattern overlay." when the new small menu comes up for pattern overlay, click the small down arrow and click "user defined pattern." now go back to "edit" and click "fill" then press ok for the pop up window.
so basically you're copying a layer of scanlines on top of all the other layers; the scanlines themselves are nothing more than a tiled version of two pixels. it's a great method.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:15,
archived)
anyway... while in imageready
open up a new document, width 1 px, height 2 px. make one pixel black, the other leave transparent.
click "edit" and then "define pattern."
click the last layer of the animation (not the frame, the layer) then add a new layer to the end. right click and find another drop down menu ("layer style") and click "pattern overlay." when the new small menu comes up for pattern overlay, click the small down arrow and click "user defined pattern." now go back to "edit" and click "fill" then press ok for the pop up window.
so basically you're copying a layer of scanlines on top of all the other layers; the scanlines themselves are nothing more than a tiled version of two pixels. it's a great method.

If you already have a scanline pattern all you need to do is put it to the top layer and keep it active all through the animation. nothing more needs to be done.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:17,
archived)

so i just did it step by step, as specific as humanly possible
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:25,
archived)

to reduce the filesize

without the scanlines it would be twice as big
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:08,
archived)

without the scanlines it would be twice as big

they half look nice but at the same time they whack a load off the filesize since the optimisation doesn't have as many different coloured pixels to work with.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:09,
archived)

scanlines don't always have to be horizontal, they can be vertical or even diagonal (making it look more like you're looking through a screen, sometimes it looks better, sometimes it doesn't,)
but diagonal lines don't always cut off as much filesize as horizontals. ah well.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:12,
archived)
but diagonal lines don't always cut off as much filesize as horizontals. ah well.

Never tried it those ways. Just horizontal. Must give it a go sometime for effect's sake ;)
also I think someone posted a link the other night to a PS plugin that does it all for you after you tweak some sliders a bit.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:15,
archived)
also I think someone posted a link the other night to a PS plugin that does it all for you after you tweak some sliders a bit.

and it does quite well at compressing runs of one colour. But it doesn't actually use run-length encoding as some people will tell you. So I've always thought there should be other alternatives to horizontal scanlines, that should work just as well. It's only looking for repeated patterns, after all.
Possibly dashed horizontal lines might work well. In theory the scanlines could be made out of some kind of repeating coloured pattern, if that was in any way desirable.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:18,
archived)
Possibly dashed horizontal lines might work well. In theory the scanlines could be made out of some kind of repeating coloured pattern, if that was in any way desirable.

while using gif movie gear that you can optimise so that repeated, non moving parts are completely removed from the animation. If you look at it frame by frame there's a lot missing. It doesn't affect the animation in any way other than file size but it's a pain should you need to turn the gif back into individual frames again.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:22,
archived)

tick "transparency" on the optimise palette.
Uses transparency to avoid repeating things in subsequent frames.
(from imageready help)
To optimize an animated image:
1. Choose Optimize Animation from the Animation palette menu.
2. Set the following options:
* Bounding Box to crop each frame to the area that has changed from the preceding frame. Animation files created using this option are smaller but are incompatible with GIF editors that do not support the option. (This option is selected by default and is recommended.)
* Redundant Pixel Removal to make transparent all pixels in a frame that are unchanged from the preceding frame. This option is selected by default and is recommended. The Transparency option in the Optimize palette must be selected for redundant pixel removal to work. (See Optimization options for GIF and PNG-8 formats.)
Important: Set the frame disposal method to Automatic when using the Redundant Pixel Removal option.
( ,
Sun 8 May 2005, 0:25,
archived)
Uses transparency to avoid repeating things in subsequent frames.
(from imageready help)
To optimize an animated image:
1. Choose Optimize Animation from the Animation palette menu.
2. Set the following options:
* Bounding Box to crop each frame to the area that has changed from the preceding frame. Animation files created using this option are smaller but are incompatible with GIF editors that do not support the option. (This option is selected by default and is recommended.)
* Redundant Pixel Removal to make transparent all pixels in a frame that are unchanged from the preceding frame. This option is selected by default and is recommended. The Transparency option in the Optimize palette must be selected for redundant pixel removal to work. (See Optimization options for GIF and PNG-8 formats.)
Important: Set the frame disposal method to Automatic when using the Redundant Pixel Removal option.