Making an animated banner

[jcket]

Hi...

I would like to make a banner for my gaming clan...I have an idea, but am not 100% on how to get the resulz i want.

we are mainly a call of duty 4 clan...So i was going to base it on that theme, What i wanted to do was, When you start the game call of duty 4 on the main menu, there is a silhouette.of a soldire with smoke slowly moving past...this is exactly what i wanted to do...

The effect looks really awesome, I tried to follow the animated rain tutorial, but got stuck when i got to animating the rain, cos i dont have the extended version of cs3, so someone do a tutorial with the normal animation tool?

Is this possible at all to do with cs3....

this is a video of the menu.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uamh1l_tmeI&feature=related

thanks in advance.....and i will keep trying to see if i can get it done myself :D

PS: I love this site, i have taken so much from it....COREY ROCKS :D

[jcket]

Ok...

I have managed to come up with something so far...if you would like to see it...click this link:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b392/carldt/test-1.gif

And it looks pretty cool....But when i saved it as a gif...the size was over 4.8MB i have managed to optimize it down to 950Kb...But it has lost a bit of quality.

I want to know if they is a good easy way to optimize without loing to much quality...and get it down in size even more?

Any tips tricks would be greatfuly appreciated..

Thanks you,

jcket

[mitzs]

the only way I have learn so far is to flatten it and save as a jpeg. But I don't know if you can flatten an animation without effecting it. Maybe Nem would will be along soon. Or you could send a privy to lesa asking her for help. She would know to. However, she is a busy lady and I don't think she stops by everyday, hence the reason for the privy.

[jcket]

thanks for the quick reply....but i was to understant that you can not animate jpeg???

I will wait a few days and see if some one comes up with something....and if nothing comes back..ill take your advise on privy :D thanks mate :D

[NEMESIS]

Well firstly even 950Kb for banner is huge size. Concerning that is animation with that banner dimensions i doubt you can squeeze it some more. Now here comes the other part. Who are the viewers of your site, what kind of connections they have... If they are above 1Mbit line you can even pass with that size but still way too big by my opinion.

Now you can't flatten animation to be like as jpeg for example. When saved as animated gif it will record number of frames per second. So to squeeze it more i would suggest you to shrink the physical size and to lower the frame per second since every frame is image for it self. Then play with Lossy feature and Colors and Dither in Save for Web dialog when optimizing your gif animation. Lower the amount of those properties till is acceptable for you for size/quality ratio.

[jcket]

well....after all my trying and persistance....i managed to come up with an ok banner i think for my level of understanding...I made a banner with a flash movie inbedded with the image...looks kinda kewl and took me a few days to get it right...but anyways i thought i would share it with you guys...

here is a link to the site where the banner is :www.born-2-conquer.com

Please let me know what you think :D

[Jason_The_Adams]

Pretty good, man. The load time isn't bad, it looks good, the video runs smoothly - good work.

My only thought, from a design perspective, is that it's admittedly a bit distracting from the rest of the site; no matter where I look on the site (without scrolling it out of sight), my eyes are naturally drawn to the banner, which can be a bit frustrating when trying to look at something.

Generally, videos as such are used mainly for introductions or are simply given full-attention until the video's conclusion, in which it either goes away, or prompts the user to watch again upon their choice. It wouldn't be bad to have it begin as such, but I'd suggest having it ultimately transition to something less distracting.

I can give more specific suggestions if you'd like, but those were my first thoughts. But again, it does look good.

Hope this helps. :)

[Lesa]

Or you could send a privy to lesa asking her for help. She would know to. However, she is a busy lady and I don't think she stops by everyday, hence the reason for the privy.
LOL Thanks Mitzs :)

This book deadline is SUPER nasty so although I look at all the posts, I don't have time to respond to many of them, unfortunately. Thank goodness for you, Nemesis, Jason, Profeivan, and Geezer!