Creating the Animated Gif File Marquee select the elements in frame 1. From the Arrange menu select Create Bitmap Copy... Click the Palette Options tab and set the color to 24-Bit. Click the Bitmap Size tab and change the resolution to 96dpi (Windows resolution) Click Create A This creates a bitmap copy of the first frame. Repeat this process for the other three frames. Choosing 24-bit color (16.7 million colors more or less) opposed to 8-bit (256 colors) will give Xara more colors to chose from when we Export the final animation. Click the Bitmap Gallery icon (shown here) on the Property Bar . Click-select the first animation frame. Click the Properties button. Change the Delay setting to 15 1/100s. Click OK Select the third frame and use the same process to change the Delay to 7 1/100s. This adjusts the frame timing so that the ball will appear to fall slower and accelerate upon the up bounce. Saving the Animation With the Bitmap Gallery still open, hold down the Ctrl key and click-select each of the four animation frames. Click the Save... button. Choose Animated Gif (the default) for File Type: Name your animation and click Save. From the Gif Export Bitmap Options dialog make the following settings: Color Depth: 8-Bit Palette: Browser (this is the safest way to save your file since it uses only browser colors to create the animation and will display the same on any computer). Dithering: Error Diffusion Click Export That's it. You've created your first animation! (If it's not your first animation just pretend, OK?) Get out the corkscrew and get ready to celebrate. But first, you'll probably want to screen your animation, which we'll do on the next page.

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©1998 Gary W. Priester
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