Part 1

Come up with a theme and find 5-10 animated gif's that work well together with that theme.

Open your first gif in Photoshop

To View/Edit the gif go to Window - Timeline

This brings up the frame animation timeline, from here you can choose how many of the frames you would like to use. For this particular gif, I'm going to use the first 9 frames of the animation. To select and delete the rest of the frames, click on the first frame you do not want, hold shift and click on the last frame. Then click the little trashcan button on the bottom of the timeline window.

Next, Click on frame 1. Look at your layers window, it will have an eyeball by the layer you will edit. Make your selection any way you can and delete the background from your image. Click frame 2, select your background and delete, frame 3, select, delete, frame 4, etc, etc. Until all your backgrounds are gone.

Do this until all your frames have no background

Click your first frame, shift click your last frame then change the timing to No Delay

Next, Export all the frames. File - Export - Render Image Sequence

There are a few settings to change in the Render Image Sequence window.....

1. Change folder location

2. Change format is PNG

3. Alpha Channel to Straight - Unmatted

Repeat these steps for each of your gifs.

Part 2

Download the Phenakistoscope 8in template.ai from our canvas page. Open the template in Illustrator. You will notice there is only one layer with the circle and guides.

Create a new layer for your first animation. You will be creating a new layer for each of your animations

Select all the images for your first animation from the folder they are in, drag them onto the illustrator canvas

When you expand the layer with the new images you will see all the images in your animation on separate layers. The bottom most layer is the first frame in the animation, the top most layer is the last frame in the animation.

Here is where some math is going to come into play....

My animation has 9 frames. I want it to look as if it is staying still so it needs a total of 54 frames around the circle.

Maximum width of the images is as follows for the different frame rates 50-58:

50 - .5026

51 - .4927

52 - .4833

53 - .4742

54 - .4654

55 - .4569

56 - .4487

57 - .4409

58 - .4333

because my animation needs 54 frames, I'm going to change the width of all images to .4654 inches

go to your Properties tab, make sure that the link for height and width is checked and change the width

This will make your images look tiny, that's ok!

Grab all your layers and move them to the top of the circle

Go back to your layers tab, the first frame stays where it is, so leave it alone.

highlight the second frame, go to your Rotate tool, Option Click the center (where the guide lines meet)