Use this .jpeg as your source art.
For the beginner, the simplest way to animate cartoons on a computer is to create a series of two-dimensional images that will "play" in sequence: the animated .gif. Animated cartoons created in this format will display on virtually any platform and will generally work in all browsers. An animated .gif can also be sent as an email attachment. By learning these fundamental principles, you will have an excellent foundation for producing advanced cartoon animations using specialized software.
Instructions
1. Copy the .jpeg image of the cat shown here by dragging to your desktop or selecting and saving to your computer. Open Photoshop and then open the cat, selecting "all" and copying the image to your clipboard.
2. Open a new document of 110 pixels wide by 156 pixels tall at a resolution of 72 pixels per inch. Paste the image of the cat into your new document, positioning it at the bottom of the document.
3. Create two additional images of the kitty by accessing the pulldown menu for Layers and selecting "duplicate layer." In the layers pallette, reduce the opacity of both new layers to approximately 50-60 percent.
4. Arrange your layers in the layers palette so that the original image of the cat with curled tail is at the bottom of the stack, directly above the background layer. Select the first duplicate layer, and with the Marquee tool, draw a box that contains the cat's tail all the way down to the base of the tail, taking care not to select any other part of the cat.
5. Delete the selection in both duplicate layers. Select the pencil tool in the color black and outline a new tail on the kitty in your first duplicate layer, extending it upward, but with a slight curve to the left of the frame and connect the tail to the truncated black lines where the original tail was removed.
6. Select the eyedropper tool and sample the body color of the kitty, then fill the new tail outline with the bucket tool; repeat the process for second duplicate image, drawing tail in straight up position. You may also select the green color for highlights and pencil these in so the tail better matches the body.
7. Select each layer separately and copy into three new documents; save each as a .gif file. Name each frame cat1.gif, cat2.gif and cat3.gif, beginning with the image of the cat with curled tail, followed by the slightly curved tail and then the straight-up tail.
8. Use GIF building software such as GIFbuilder (see Resources) to import or add your frames in the following order: 1, 2, 3, 2. Set your new file to "loop" and save as "catoon.gif"
