Thread: animation problem!

Why would you even want an animated wallpaper?

I wasn't going to say anything, since I don't make wallpapers or sigs myself, but I agree. Animated wallpapers are a resource hog, as well as a distraction. If you think about what animation is, being a collection of still images played around 24 fps (for traditional animation), a good animated wall would need to be constantly cycling through at least 48 images at 24 fps for a 2 second looping animation (on ones). If you make those images large, like high quality wall size, you're not going to get smooth animation on any system, not to mention causing the entire computer to slow down as it tries to deal with it. IMHO it's better to just focus on making a good, normal wallpaper.

As luck would have it, while I don't make wallpapers or signatures, I do animate. I've seen your wallpaper, and I'm not exactly sure what to say. It's really cool that you want to get into animation, but instead of diving headlong into unknown territory, it might be best to do a little research first. There's a really awesome book by Richard Williams (art director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit) called The Animator's Survival Kit. There's a lot of things I want to say about the wall you have up, but that really doesn't belong here.

Lastly, the problem isn't Vista. Your animations are sluggish because, if the wall you have up is any indication, you're trying to export relatively high resolution animated gifs. The gif format was never intended for stuff like that, even animated gifs. Good animation lies first and foremost in understanding what you're doing and why you're doing it. Take a little extra effort to understand animation, which includes understanding the media your going to animate with (animated gifs, for instance) and the quality of your work will improve.