How to Create an Animated Twitter Avatar

Want to catch people's eye as they are scrolling down their tweets, or looking at other people's Followers? Then give an animated avatar a try!

The trick is, however, to find the line between eye-catching and annoyingly distracting. I've seen web cam video used as well as screen recordings. Slide show videos would work as well.
My first attempt was annoyingly distracting, and a Follower asked me to tone it down a bit - which I did. Some people will simply stop following, but that doesn't bother me. I love looking at other people's animations - it's like looking through a virtual window to their soul!

1. If you are going to use a video clip, pull it into a video editing program to grab about 4 seconds worth (Twitter avatars must be under 700 kb). Or create one from scratch, like a slide show video, web cam recording or slide show video. REMEMBER that it will LOOP over and over, so watch to make sure there isn't a jarring jump between the end and the beginning of the video. Windows Movie Maker, the Commercial Creation Center (http://www.CommercialCreationCenter.com) or Camtasia are great creation and editing tools - you just decide which one is easy enough for you to learn quickly. Save the video as a .wmv if you are NOT creating it in Camtasia. You'll see the directions below for how to "produce" it in Camtasia.

2. The most important thing Camtasia will do is produce the video as an animated GIF. If you have Camtasia (there's a free version available), you can do the creating, editing and outputting in there as well. Choose 150 x 112 pixels as the final size, which is the standard thumbnail size. If you don't want to use Camtasia, there is a site that will convert the video to GIF for you (http://www.gifninja.com), but the final file sizes are larger, so you will have to cut your video down even further, possibly to 2 seconds or so.

3. Upload your saved, animated GIF to your Twitter Account Photo. We've seen Firefox give error messages that Twitter is overloaded, but just keep going or switch to another browser. It will take eventually.
Get feedback from your followers about whether or not it is too busy, and refine your photo until you and your favorite followers are happy. But remember, you can't please everyone, so don't bother trying. If you're happy with it, then let yourself enjoy it, and change it around from time to time to break up the monotony.
Penny Haynes has served as Podcasting Consultant for Lifetime Television for Women and hosted the Online International Podcasting Expo. She is the designer of the Commercial Creation Center, which allows ANYONE to create, upload and post audio, video and images to Social Media & Social Networking sites.

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Create Your Own Animated Videos With Machinima Software

Whether you've just started creating your own animated shorts or ready to go pro, creating machinima is very easy to do if you have the right tools at your disposal. From text-to-speech programs with avatars, recording skits with your favorite video game characters, to making everything yourself, there's a way to create your own show no matter which technique you use. As long as you know how to edit videos for YouTube, you can create an animated video with the right tools in your hands.

For those who can write a short script, but don't play video games or know how to draw, Xtranomal.com is a good place to start. Their text-to-speech program lets you create machinima videos using pre-made avatars, settings, and sounds. You can even change the camera angle to get specific shots if needed. As for the speech, the web-based program uses the same speech voices found on your PC. This means that your actors will sound like robots more than actual people. The web-based program is free, but the site also offers a desktop program that you can purchase downloadable content for extra avatars and other items that you'd like to use.

If you wish to film some stunts or skits in a video game, you'll have to do so by recording the action and using a video editor. All you have to do is either hook up a camcorder (or PC) to your TV's video output or by using a video capture card if you're using a computer game as the setting. As long as you know what to do and which camera angles to get, you can make a machinima video within an hour. For cameras, you'll need friends spread throughout the game world to look in certain directions. The video editing software will cost around $40 and you can find help making these types of videos online on various blogs.

If you know how to make animated videos from the ground up, you can create machinima by using Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. Both programs can be used to create and edit videos through Flash and can be formatted to be played online or even on DVD. Some artists have even done videos using avatars just as detailed as their video game counterparts using just these two programs. You can get them both for $100 bundled or buy the pro version separately, depending on how far you want to go with your videos.

You can find all sorts of programs and editors to make your own machinima videos online. You can also find advice on various blogs and podcasts as well. They provide tips and techniques to those who wish to make animated shorts for the first time or to help take their videos one step further. Regardless of how you decide to create it, making these types of videos can be fun for you and your fans to create and watch.

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