I've decided to make this tutorial due to the fact everyone is bugging me for these "firey" heads. As of now I refuse to make any more of these heads because I am lazy. Now feel free to make your own firey heads and carry on the trend, or even use this tutorial to make a different style of animated heads/bodies/whatever. Use your imagination dammit!
Our first step is to actually HAVE a head for animating. I recommend a heat that isn't too detailed. The more detail the is, the more slaving we have to do for the start. So for this example i've chosen head77.
Nothing too special, but whatever. Our next step is to open the head in MSPAINT. I'm sure you know how to do that.... Right?
As you can see, the background colour is green, which in this example is going to be the transparent colour. But before we can start animating like crazy, we have to show where we want the animation (in this case, the hair). To do this, we simply have to make it one colour. Since there are different shades of yellow in the hair, we have to make sure ALL of those shades are the same.
I think I managed to get every bit of yellow out of that. Two notes though. Like I said earlier, depending on the amount of detail in the head, the longer it will take to make it all one colour. This is why I recommend using a tool such as paint shop pro with it's colour replace function. And finally MAKE SURE THE COLOUR YOU USE HERE IS NOT USED ANYWHERE ELSE!!! It doesn't matter what colour you use, just make sure it isn't used anywhere in this first step.
Next we have to get the animation we want in the hair. For this I'm going to use my usual red flame, feel free to use it if you want.
That is all the frames of the animation. They are all 32x32 which is perfect, as heads are also the same size. Make sure all the animation frames are here, and are next to each other in order (the order doesn't matter here but it helps a lot).
Make sure you have it aligned with the head, enough to cover the parts that need animating (in this case red). Also, it doesn't matter if that red colour is in the animation that you use. Now we have to repeat this step so it covers the hair on every frame of the head.
You should end up with something like this. As you can see, they're all lined up right. Now it's time for the part which baffles everyone to death. So prepare to be amazed at how easy this is!
Now the first part of this trick requires your secondary colour to be the same colour as our animation colour (Which you should know by now, is RED!). To do this simply click the pick colour tool and right click on the red.
The bottom left should look like that. Now the next phase is to make a selection around our head. But ONLY the head, which doesn't include the rest of the image. So you should end up with a 32x560 selection.
I don't care how you get this selection, but copy it anyway. MAKE SURE IT'S THE RIGHT SIZE!! Also while we're here, it's vital that you click the bottom box of this option.
Right let's begin! Paste down a copy of what you copied, which should be a 32x560 selection of your head, WITH the colour we picked earlier which should also be your secondary colour on paint. Now drag that pasted selection over the first frames of your animation and..... GASP!! Your head will seem like it has a hole in it!
If you're not getting this, you made a mistake. Take a few phases back. If you did get this then well done. It is of the UTTER most importance that you get this at the RIGHT position! Make sure it's aligned with the head base at the left and that it's covering the 32 wide box for our animation frame. Now follow that step until you've got your head pasted onto all the other animation boxes.
You should end up with something like this. If you haven't realised yet, the frames for your animated head are all done! You can scrap the base one on the left. Once you've done that, you can copy each of the 32x560 head frames into your gif creating program. As I stated earlier, I cannot give help with gif creation. Just make sure that you get ALL the correct sizes right.
And here is the finished product ready for turning into MNG format and uploading.
I can't just take all the credit, so here's some thanks to give out.
The easiest way is to catch me on N-Pulse. Otherwise you can email me at [email protected] or aim me. My SN is Cutmanmike.
Don't mock the power of MSPAINT!!