3 Ways to Make a GIF: Adobe Photoshop Basics

If you have always seen GIFs and thought: 

...but you don’t know where to begin, then this is the class for you!

Animating your drawings, even in a really simple way, can be a great way to engage your audience and bring something new to your portfolio.

In this class, I will show you how to make 3 different types of GIFs:

• Color Changing GIF: the image stays static but the colors change in each frame
• Wobble Effect GIF: the image stays the same but some subtle ‘wobbling’ movement is introduced
• Image Changing GIF: where the image changes in each frame 

This course is aimed at beginners or anyone who would like to try making their artwork move.

We will be working by hand on paper, then taking our drawings into Photoshop to create the GIF’s, but you don’t need any prior knowledge of Photoshop to take this class. It’s useful if you are confident with drawing, but don’t worry if you're not as I’ll be giving you lots of ideas and templates for how to complete the drawing parts of the class project too.

In addition to learning how to make GIFs, if you are new to Photoshop as you follow along with me you will pick up lots of key Photoshop skills including, how to:

• digitize your hand drawings and clean them up
• use layers
• select parts of an image
• Fill, color-match and adjust colors using different methods

The skills you will learn in this class can be applied to a wide variety of artwork styles, and can boost several areas of your creative practice — from creating social media campaigns, making your website, newsletter or emails stand out from the crowd, or simply using them as standalone artworks. 

Once you know how to make GIFs you will have so much fun making your artwork move! Let’s get animating!

Adobe Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries.

• Introduction
• Class Project
• Tools and Materials
• Sketching Your Letters: Part 1
• Sketching Your Letters: Part 2
• Preparing to Animate
• Choosing a Color Palette
• Color Changing GIF: Part 1
• Color Changing GIF: Part 2
• Wobble Effect GIF
• Image Changing GIF: Part 1
• Image Changing GIF: Part 2
• Bonus: Exporting as .MP4
• Final Thoughts