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Animated Avatars?

2K views 34 replies 20 participants last post by  fishnxtc 
#1 ·
Ok, where do you all find those animated avatars. I am looking for a silver similar to one I saw posted by ***.
 
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#8 ·
Do a search for "animated gifs", not avatars. That might give you better results. You'll find sites that have collections by catagory. Look under catagories like sports or animals but finding that "particular" one that tickles your fancy will take a little time, unless you're lucky. Also, need to be aware of size restrictions here. Ifish limits you to 48x48 pixels. If you use a larger avatar, it scales down so if you use one larger than 48x48 pixels, try to find one that is proportionate or it might look odd when scaled down.
 
#14 ·
Alert:!!

I have gotten a couple of complaints from people who created some of these avatars. They can be copyright. You should ALWAYS ask or look for "free use" marks.

Even so, it is considered bad etiquette to link to their site, unless they give you permission.
See, every time a person loads ifish, and you are linking to another site, it uses their bandwidth, with no benefit at all to them...

So, think carefully before you right click and link to their site. Using it once is often alright, but as an avatar, you are accessing their site multiple times a day.

So, with avatars:

Make sure the file size is not huge. Sure, ifish shrinks it to 48 by 48 pixels, but I still have to load the entire image, so the file size is not shrunk... just the size, or pixels... Fishing Geek has offered to help some of you with that. If we all use smaller images, ifish will run alot quicker!

Make sure you are not using someone's copyright work. Chances are slim you'll get caught, but it is a matter of ethics.

Don't link to someone's site directly, unless they suggest that. Some sites tell you to do it, so that's ok... If not, upload the .gif or .jpg to ifish's upload center.

To set it in your profile, go to

Profile
View Update Profile
Scroll down to the avatar image,
Click on "select a different avatar image".
Where it says use custom url, paste the location of your image into the text box.
Then press "Set Url".
Close that box, scroll down on the profile page, and click on "update profile".

There, easy, eh?

:smile:

Jen
 
#15 ·
Using someone else's image on their server costs them money, and it sets you up for embarrassment. They could very easily replace the Avatar that you are using with a picture of very different content just by deleting the old image on their server and replacing it with a new image of the same name.

Server space can be had for $4/month. Dang cheap.

Oh, and I roll my own Avatars. :wink:
 
#20 ·
Personally I use Gimp, but it does have a bit of a learning curve for those who aren't so inclined. It's a very powerful program, and being that it is free that makes it all the better.

There are some programs that can be purchased for $50 or less that do good work as well, but is the price worth making a couple animated GIF's? You can check out free trials of products like Swish, Ulead's GIF Animator and Cool3D from the websites to check them out. Sometimes you can pick up older versions of this software on the Internet from much cheaper than the newest version, and they work great.

Hope those ideas help. It really does depend on how much time and money you want to invest into it.

[EDIT] A quick stop over at eBay shows that version 3.0 (current version is 3.5) of Cool3D can be had for less than $20 shipped. GIF Animator version 4 (current is version 5) can be had for the same price. For quick and dirty GIF animations I like Cool3D, personally.

[ 12-02-2002, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: The Fishing Geek ]
 
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