Doodly Beginner Tutorial

Learn the Pros and Cons of GIF Animations

Beginner Tutorial #15

GIF Animations

Displays facts, color range and image examples for gif animations.

GIF Acronym: Graphic Interchange Format

Note:There are drawbacks and limitations to understand about GIF animations prior to using them in your doodle. There is a lot of misinformation and misguidance out there when it comes to GIF animations. My Working with Images video tutorial will teach you all about the different file types, including GIF, that are supported by Doodly.

Examples of potentially bad advice and misguidance


Working with Images

Inexperienced User Question: How do I add a movie to my doodle?
Answer Received: Convert your .mp4 file to a .GIF and then insert that into your doodle.
What you are not being told in that answer about GIF Animations is the following:

  1. They don’t save audio.

  2. They only support a maximum of 256 colors whereas your .mp4 files support millions of colors for a more detailed look. Although, while that may sound like a huge difference, for most images you may not be able to see the difference.

  3. They loop more than one time but this can be set to not loop more than once. Doodly ignores the settings for your GIF animation upon creation and those settings must be set again in the asset settings.

Note: We speak in more detail about inserting a video into a Doodly video production in our question #19, Can I insert, add, or import a video into Doodly? in our Top 50 Doodly F.A.Q. page.

Enhancement or Detraction

GIF animations are a double edged sword. While, if used correctly, GIF animations can really help keep your viewers attention they can also drive the viewer away if used incorrectly, such as inserting low quality clip art type GIF animations in your doodle.

Most Free GIF animations tend to be very poorly created so it may be better to leave them out of your professional looking doodle unless you know how to edit or create them yourself.

Using GIF Animations in Doodly

The items to remember when using a GIF Animation in Doodly


Delay on the next assets in combination with their duration.

OR

Adding More End of Scene Time

Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to the most common questions regarding this topic.

Converting a video file to a GIF format is generally not recommended because you will lose all the audio. Additionally GIFs only support two hundred fifty six colors while standard video files support millions of colors. This can result in a noticeable drop in visual quality for highly detailed images.

When you bring an animated image into the software it completely ignores any previous playback configurations. To stop the continuous repetition you must manually adjust the loop settings within the asset properties to a finite amount.

The duration setting only controls how long it takes for the animated graphic to be drawn or revealed on your screen. It does not account for the actual time it takes for the animation sequence to play out completely.

You need to make sure sufficient time remains in your current scene for the graphic to complete its motion. You can achieve this by adding a delay to the assets that appear next or by increasing the extra time at the very end of the scene.

Using free animated images can often detract from your project because they are frequently of poor quality. Unless you have the skills to create or modify them yourself it is usually better to avoid using low quality clip art animations in a professional environment.

About the author

Wayne Leiser
Wayne Leiser
Editor & Contributor
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