Animated Gifs

Animated gifs contain a series of images (or frames) that are displayed one after the other and give a semblance of animation, just as in traditional animation techniques. Also, in animated gifs you can control the time for which each frame is displayed. Consider the image below:

The image consists of 8 frames each playing for 10 milliseconds.

Frame 1 : 10 milliseconds

Frame 2 : 10 milliseconds

Frame 3 : 10 milliseconds

Frame 4 : 10 milliseconds

Frame 5 : 10 milliseconds

Frame 6 : 10 milliseconds

Frame 7 : 10 milliseconds

Frame 8 : 10 milliseconds

Animated gifs can be created or modified using any of the freeware or shareware available. I'm particularly fond of Animation Shop from Jasc (http://www.jasc.com). The program comes bundled with Paint Shop Pro. Most animation programs have many built in effects for images. Here is the Explode image effect from Animation Shop.

Want to more about animated Gifs?

I've created a separate section for animated Gifs that contains several articles such as:
What are animated Gifs?
Creating animated Gif images
Creating animated Gif banners
Programs and Software to create animated Gifs
Various animation effects that you can add to animated Gifs through the Animation Shop software
Ulead Cool 3D animation effects
Creating animated logos using Xara 3D
Standard sizes of animated web banners