Creating Animated GIFs

[Shaggy Hiker]

I suck as an artist, but I was looking for some suggestions as to how to go about making an animated gif? Are there specific tools (cheap tools, especially) that would be used, steps to go through, etc? Also, if you wanted an animated gif, how would you go about getting one if you didn't have enough artistic talent to draw a circle that looked round? Would you be bribing friends for the art work? Hiring somebody?

[Clanguage]

Here is a free tool.
http://www.anim8or.com/
I do not know much about it though. I also remember using an animation tool from Microsoft in the early 2000 but I am not able to find it anymore I cannot remember the name of the tool either.

[Clanguage]

I found a bench of resources at TechRepublic that will most certainly interest you.
http://search.techrepublic.com.com/s...nimations.html

[chris128]

Havent looked at the links but I have always had an interest in video/photo editing so I've got things like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Image Ready and Adobe After Effects on my pc, which I use for making things like that. So if you've got any programs like that then look for tutorials online that explain how to use them for creating animated GIFs

[RobDog888]

You can also use Adobe (used to be Macromedia) Fireworks. Its a high end vector graphics animator program. I'm sure its not cheap but ...

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'm not just interested in cheap, I'm interested in FREE, including not doing the work, because I know from repreated experience that I am incapable of doing anything even vaguely related to art. However, with free tools I can bribe more artistically gifted friends, and may have managed to do so. We'll see.