Your mission is to create a new, exciting emoticon sticker. It can be funny, moving, or emotional - it's up to you!
You may enter as many times as you like.

Emoticon Stickers are fun and unique animated emoticons, like the ones that are used in WeChat. They portray different emotions and activities.

Create an original character or characters for your emoticon sticker.

Pick an emotion or activity for your original character(s) to portray in the emoticon sticker.

Make an animated .GIF featuring your original character(s) going through the emotion or activity. Be sure to read the technical requirements for the .GIF below.

Submit your animated .GIF to the contest gallery by clicking the "Submit" button on the contest page.

Each emoticon sticker file must be in the form of an animated .GIF that measures 360x360 pixels exactly and the total file size must be no more than 200 KB
Entries must be drawn and/or painted using a digital tool of your choice or by scanning traditional drawing or painting. Photography, live action film, sculpture, and artisan crafts are not allowed.
Your animated emoticon sticker must be an original character created on your own. Third party characters such as Disney Princesses, Minions, My Little Ponies, and so forth are examples of what are not allowed.
Please read the Official Rules for additional guidelines on content.

Step 1: Open Your Frames

Once you have your character’s frames drawn, open all of your animation frames in Photoshop. They will most likely all be in separate windows if they’re separate files. This specific animation consists of 8 frames but yours can be as simple or complex as you’d like as long as the filesize remains under 200kb.

Step 2: Arrange The Frames

Now, we’ll place all of the individual frames into the same 360x360px image. Your layer palette should look something kinda like our layer palette to the right, and your image should look somewhat like the window below.

Step 3: Set Up The Animation

Once you have all the frames in the same document, open up the Timeline. You can find it in the “Window” menu under “Timeline”. You will want to click “Create Frame Animation”. Once you’ve done that, you should see the first frame of your animation show up in the timeline.

Now that you’ve started your animation, adding the rest of the frames is ultra easy with the New Frame button — the frames will only show visible layers, and each frame can have different layers visible. Let’s take a look at our layer palette...

So, as you can see here, we have 8 layers, one for each frame. As we progress through the frames, we can turn on only the layer we want to see (or multiple layers for special effects). In the image to the right, you can see that layer 1 is the only one on. Above, you can see in the timeline, the first frame is also layer 1. Let’s add the rest of the frames with the New Frame button...

Once you get all of your frames set up in the Timeline, you’ll be able to set how long each frame appears for and how many times the animation should loop. You can find the Loop Control near the bottom left corner of the Timeline window. Set it to “Forever” if it isn’t already. If you’d like to change how long each frame shows for, you can set that by opening the Frame Length dropdown at the bottom of each frame in the Timeline window. Using the Play button on the Timeline window, let’s preview our animation...

Step 4: Export The Animation

Once you’re satisfied with your animation, you’ll want to export it as a .GIF. For that, we’ll need the Save for Web window. It can be found in the “File” menu under “Save for Web...”.

In this window, you’ve got options to increase or decrease the color set and change how colors are displayed in addition to whether the file has any transparency — all of these controls can be utilized to change the filesize and as a result, can also change the appearance of your work.

Make sure your animation is 200K or below by referencing the filesize readout in the bottom left of the preview pane. It will update as you change options to help you optimize your animation if needed.

Along with the settings for your color options, you’ve also got the ability to preview the animation in a browser. Once you’ve got your colors all set and the filesize is below 200K, hit the Preview button in the bottom left corner. This will open the animation in your default browser so you can see it running at actual speed — this may sound weird, but sometimes the animation doesn’t run at full speed in Photoshop, so previewing it is important.

At this point, if everything is to your liking, you can hit the Save button on the Save For Web window and that’ll open up your OS save dialogue where you can name your file — you’re all done!

Step 1: Open Your Frames

Once you have your character’s frames drawn, open all of your animation frames in Gimp. They will most likely all be in separate windows if they’re separate files. This specific animation consists of 8 frames but yours can be as simple or complex as you’d like as long as the filesize remains under 200kb.

Step 2: Arrange The Frames

Now, we’ll place all of the individual frames into the same 360x360px image. Your layer palette should look something kinda like our layer palette to the right, and your image should look somewhat like the window below.

Step 3: Set Up The Animation

Once you have all the frames in the same document, take a look back over at the layer palette. See the layer names in the palette above? In Photoshop, you have a separate Timeline for formatting the animation. In Gimp, the layer palette is your Timeline. The first frame is the bottom layer and the last frame is the top layer.

Formatting the animation requires writing the information in place of the layer names.

The syntax for that looks a little something like this...

Frame 1 (1000ms) (replace)

There are three aspects to animating in Gimp. First, you must name your layers with different names. Gimp may do weird things if the layers have the same names. Using Frame 1, Frame 2, Frame 3, etc. should suffice. Second, you must specify a frame delay, or how long each frame shows up for. I’ve used 1000 milliseconds here (one second), but you can use any timing, provided it’s written in milliseconds as shown above. Third, there’s the frame visibility mode. This determines whether the animation throws out frames as it goes through them, or keeps them in the background throughout the animation. I’ve chosen “(replace)” so each frame is just the layer I want to see. If you need to make an animation where certain parts stay in place from frame to frame, make sure those are included in each frame, or use the “(combine)” method instead.

Let’s go back to our layer palette and get those values in there...

Now that we’ve formatted the animation frames, we can preview the animation.

To preview the animation, you’ll want to open the “Filters” menu and look for “Animation”. In that menu, you’ll find an option named “Playback”. That will open the Playback window.

Here, you can see the animation playing back in the Playback window. Once you’re satisfied with your animation, you can then optimize the frames and colors.

Step 4: Optimize Frames & Colors

Optimizing an animation in Gimp is a little different from Photoshop — you can do it before saving the file. In the “Filters” menu, under “Animation” (the same place the Playback option is), you’ll find “Optimize (for GIF)”. This will build a completely new document that is optimized for the smallest filesize possible based upon animation data only. This step does nothing to the color data.

We do however, need to do something about the colors. The maximum amount of colors the .GIF format supports is 256 (including transparency) and at this point, your character could have millions!

We need to set the image’s color mode to “Indexed”. You will find that option in the “Image” menu under “Mode” (RGB will be selected by default). When you select “Indexed...” this window will appear. This is where you can choose how the colors are treated in your animation.

At this point, you can choose any color options you’d like, but they, just like Photoshop’s settings, have the power to greatly impact the color presentation in your final file. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ve used the “Generate optimum palette” option. Once you have your options set, hit the “Convert” button in the bottom right corner of the window. This will update the colors in your previously optimized file. Now we’re ready to export.

Step 5: Export The Animation

Select the “File” menu, and click on “Export”. Once you’ve named the file and set a location for it to be saved, you’ll be presented with the “Export Image as GIF” window shown below.

This is where you finally tell Gimp that you’re making an animation and how long it should be. Make sure As animation and Loop Forever are selected. You also have control over some of the parameters we’d previously edited. If you want to update any of that at this point, you can do that as well. When you’re ready, click “Export”. This will save your animation — you’re all done!