Requirements: Adobe Photoshop/ImageReady

Learn to make avatars with movie clips in them with .AVI files and ImageReady.

This is my first tutorial, so I'm sorry if it's not too clear.

Want your avatars to have mini-animations like this?

First, you have to get your animation. To do this, open up your .AVI file in Imageready. You can do this step in Animation Shop, but it's easier for me to do it in Imageready; it's up to you, though.

Okay! Here's mine:

After fixing it up a bit...

The avatar I'm going to add the animation onto:

Now, it's time to resize your animation so it fits on your avatar! To do this, go to Image>>Image Size. Here's what it looks like now:

Okies, now we have to make the canvas the right size. Go to Image>>Canvas Size with these settings...

(The anchor can be anywhere, by the way.)

Now...this is the part you really have to pay attention to. It's rather easy to make mistakes here.

Use ctrl+shift to select all of the layers, then click the move tool, and move the animation where you want it to be placed.

Fiona's Note: I have been getting many questions about this step. I believe the CTRL+SHIFT action does not work for some of us because of different Photoshop versions (I am not exactly sure, however). An alternative way to achieve this step is to link all the layers. You can do that by clicking the all the "link boxes" (in this case, click ALL of them) next each layer name. Click [here] to see where/what to click. I have placed a blue retangular box around them.

Before going to the next step, make sure there's not a stray frame, or anything else that might mess up your animation by being a bit out of place.

Alright, now copy your avatar, and place it over your animation. Be sure to make it the last frame, like so:

This is the fun part. Click the eraser tool, and on your avatar layer, begin to erase the spots over your animation to reveal it. There's all sorts of shapes and sizes you can use.

This part is optional, but it's quite neat, so I included it anyway.

Want your animation to be a certain color? Here's how to do it...

Make a new layer. Make sure it's over the animation but under the avatar, and use the paintbrush tool to add color to it. Then, put the layer's blend mode on color (or another one that looks good), and voilà - you're done!