These instructions are for dummies (like myself) and they describe "how-to" in the way I personally make emoticons. The methodology is not my zone of expertise, so humour me - I am doing my best. I would like to thank Karen Bridges from Emotipad team for transforming my very own english into it's official version. :)

Making a smiley

The process of creating an animated smilie consists of the following phases:
1. An idea
2. Sketching
3. Realization
4. Animation
5. Optimization and cropping
6. Presentation of an immortal piece of art to mankind.

"An idea" is more or less as it says - each of us is a naturally born 'idea generator', so I'll skip this part and save my bla-bla-bla for another occasion.

"Sketching" is a drawn visualization of an idea, roughly on paper, with rice kernels, Lego and so forth. I prefer to make brief sketches on paper - keeps things clean and tidy.

Here's how it looks:

*You may be more talanted than I (yeah, right...) if so - you'll need all that sketching stuff like you need a hole in the head!

Software

The Author of this article does not provide any software!

There are lots of programs for animation which I'm not going to tell you about - don't know, don't care. :). Though I would love to lie, I won't. I personally use Adobe Photoshop and built-in animator ImageReady.

Here's what the Photoshop palettes we are going to use look like (for those who haven't seen it before):

...and, in addition to the previous palettes which are practically identical in both programs, here are the palettes for ImageReady:

Animation

Optimization

Color Table


All other palettes can be closed as they are not needed and will provide more working space.

Copyright: Fool
Article source: http://www.foolstown.com/lesson_en01.htm
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