This animated GIF represents a mock up of the possible Social Media advertising (in this particular example, on Facebook application on the iOs platform).
Mobile phone and its shadow to the right were downloaded from the Mockupworld website.
Background frame is a composite of the ad screenshot taken by me of the actual Facebook iOs app, with text and logo altered.
Strip of six images was created in a separate Photoshop file, with individual images added in and drop shadow applied to each layer. The end result was saved as PNG file and added to the animation PSD file.
Six frames were created initially - one for each image. In order to facilitate movement, 5-frame tweening was added. Duration of these in-between frames was set to ‘no delay’ and frames where it would temporarily stop were set to 0.5s duration. The resulting 31 frame animation was set to loop forever.
Final result was produced using the Save For Web GIF, with 256 (maximum) colours.
In order to appreciate the full potential and smooth playing of the animation I have also rendered a video from Photoshop, in H.264 format.
P.S. I have also created a small animated gif on the home page to link to this page. This is the same image file that was used for the website logo and favicon. Base image was created and flash effect was drawn in the Adobe Illustrator. Flash effect ‘star’ was scaled up 50% three times and each image saved separately.
Animation consists of eight frames, one blank and four differently sized stars, with frames 2, 3 and 4 repeating as frames 6, 7, 8 in reverse order with 0.2s duration, looping forever.
Final result was produced using the Save For Web GIF, with 128 colours.