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Apr 21 2026 10:16am
FERDIA'S LITTLE GUIDE TO MAKING ANIMATED SIGNATURES

This is an end to end guide for creating images and turning them into a short animation, to use as a sigature, on the website, D2JSP.

I will be touching on Midjourney, the file type, .AVIF, GIMP, IMGUR, Universal Sig Rotator, EZGif and Catbox.

STEP 1 β€” Midjourney. Midjourney is an AI tool that generates images from text prompts. There are multiple tools like it. You simply describe what you want, and it creates an image for you.
STEP 2 β€” Midjourney - Animate. Speaks for itself really!!
STEP 3 β€” .AVIF .AVIF is a modern image file format (like .jpg or .png) that offers very high compression. It is now supported on D2JSP. Why it’s useful:

πŸ“Έ Smaller file sizes
🎨 High image quality
🌈 Better color support than older formats
🌍 Based on modern video compression technology

Limitation:

Not all apps support it yet (though support is growing)

πŸ‘‰ Think of AVIF as a highly efficient way to store images without losing quality.

STEP 4 β€” EZGif. EZGif is used to convert and compress animations. This is where the main optimization happensβ€”it reduces file size significantly so the animation can be used on D2JSP.
STEP 5 β€” GIMP. GIMP is a free image editing program similar to Adobe Photoshop. We use it to: Edit images, Combine (or delete) frames. Prepare animations
STEP 6 β€” Catbox. Catbox is used to upload and host your final GIF or image. It gives you a direct link you can use elsewhere.
STEP 7 β€” Universal Sig Rotator. This tool lets your signature rotate between multiple images (or short animations!), so you can display more than one signature. (You simply paste your hosted image links into it.)

add-on: IMGUR. Imgur is an image hosting site. It is not banned in the UK, but it currently does not serve UK users due to regulatory issues. It’s still used in other regions (The UK is simply difficult).

===========================================================================================

STEP 1 β€” Lets create an image on Midjourney, -Aspect Ratio 8:3, i.e. --ar 8:3

I won't bore people with the length of my prompt. It can take 100's of generations before you create the image that you want. It is a bit like fishing. You have an idea of the fish you will catch but sometimes you catch another fish. The below image is using --niji 7


STEP 2β€” This is the tricky part for creating an animation - you will sometimes have to refine your prompt while editing a dead area, in order to ensure that the AI does not either "BREAK" your original image or animate it in some non-human, bad anatomy manner. Full disclosure : Midjourney struggles with Hands, Eyes, anatomy and all kinds of motion involving limbs. Its a trail and error process. This is NOT a guide on how to write a prompt for image/animation, ergo my comments here are brief.



STEP 3 β€” We have now created a short animation. Download it as .gif. The file size is 3.8Megs. WAY! too big for D2JSP. No problem.

STEP 4 β€” EzGif β€” I usually bypass GIMP and go directly here to see if I can bypass the editing process (hoping the compressed file is small enough). Go directly to : https://ezgif.com/avif-maker
Open the original .gif file that you had downloaded from Midjourney, and select Upload Files!



We want to see if we can get the file size down without cropping the animation (deleting a segment or frames). In this case, using ezgif, the filesize is reduced from 3.8MEGS to 1.04MEGS. Still too big! OK


This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 21 2026 10:23am
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Apr 21 2026 10:16am
STEP 5 β€” GIMP
(a) Open GIMP.
(b) Open the downloaded .Gif file that we created on Midjourney
(c) As a rule of Thump - NEVER touch the first frame. You CAN crop the file by DELETING the end frames, but another way of doing it is to simply DELETE even, or odd frames.

In the below image of GIMP you will see there are a total of 125 Frames. So you could (i) delete 25-50 Frames or (ii) (What I prefer to do) delete odd frames (layers), like 5,7,9,11,13,15 etc etc. Or you could delete frames (layers) at the end of the gif (shortening the gif) Note that you have to be careful not to "Break" the animation, so always test the animation after you have made changes to ensure its not "Broken" I purposely never touch the starting frames, and I purposely make small edits first.




Now, back to STEP 4 β€” EzGif, Upload, Make .AVIF, reduce the Output Image Quality until such time as it meets D2JSP's allowed file size. If it won't reduce enough, you need to go back to the drawing board.



This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 21 2026 10:39am
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Apr 21 2026 10:42am
STEP 6 β€” Catbox. Catbox is used to upload and host your final animation. It gives you a direct link you can use elsewhere. (there are various sites like this).
So in our case we get a link: https://files.catbox.moe/fdb850.avif(this is our animation).

STEP 7 β€” Universal Sig Rotator. Get an account, its Free. Here we take the above .avif link and insert it into a blank line for URL's



Finally, we update our D2JSP signature with the Universal Sig Rotator Link



You now have an animated Signature, with way more then 4 frames. Enjoy.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 21 2026 10:48am
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Apr 21 2026 10:48am
Thank you.
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Apr 21 2026 10:56am
They are in my signature but here are 2 more examples of what can be done with this method:

https://files.catbox.moe/hqtoro.avif (Black and White animation, girl surfing)
https://files.catbox.moe/n0ifsc.avif (Everyone loves a Pikachu animation)

And again, you would simply follow the steps then use the Universal Sig Rotator site to upload the animation you created (obviously, don't use mine).

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 21 2026 10:57am
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Apr 21 2026 12:56pm
I do alot of this and my sigs still turn out poopy 🀣
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Apr 21 2026 05:36pm
sometimes no matter what you do, you cant get the file down small enough for JSP. here is an example of a tiger approaching. I cant get it below 300kb ~

https://file.garden/aegIlL1aKQol7axr/tiger7.avif

I had cropped the animation by 50% and then i removed dozens upon dozens of frames, and yet still, no joy. some animations are simply too big. One option here would be to try to do the same animation but in monochrome.

the original: https://cdn.midjourney.com/video/2fee385f-b784-4fea-82fb-cfc0fc3be33e/2.mp4

The overarching "trick" here is to use GIMP to reduce the frames all the way down to about 20. otherwise, if your not using .avif, your stuck on 4-5 frames.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 21 2026 05:57pm
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Apr 22 2026 02:31am
sometimes no matter what you do, you cant get the file down small enough for JSP. here is an example of a tiger approaching. I cant get it below 300kb ~

https://file.garden/aegIlL1aKQol7axr/tiger7.avif

I had cropped the animation by 50% and then i removed dozens upon dozens of frames, and yet still, no joy. some animations are simply too big. One option here would be to try to do the same animation but in monochrome.

the original: https://cdn.midjourney.com/video/2fee385f-b784-4fea-82fb-cfc0fc3be33e/2.mp4

The overarching "trick" here is to use GIMP to reduce the frames all the way down to about 20. otherwise, if your not using .avif, your stuck on 4-5 frames.




If you don’t mind a little quality loss, try tuning the compression down to like 20–30
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Apr 22 2026 02:42am
https://cloud.neverspace.org/2026/04/22/e77aa0d666592b53.avif

If you don’t mind a little quality loss, try tuning the compression down to like 20–30


bless, I forgot to add:



Reducing Quality and Frames worked. credit to Eruptix to remind me that its not just quality, but also frames that can be reduced!

Full credit here:



This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 22 2026 02:43am
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Apr 22 2026 03:36am
adjustments -

1. Download the raw movie file from Midjourney
2. Resize it to JSP's 400x150
3. Then Video to .AVIF, reduce Quality until you meet JSP's file size. (if needed, reduce frame rate).

i.e.

The entire size of your signature shall not exceed 400 pixels wide by 150 pixels high.
Total size of the images contained in your signature shall not exceed 70 kilobytes.

https://file.garden/aegIlL1aKQol7axr/tiger3.avif

and then stick the .avif link into the Sig Rotator URL.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 22 2026 03:37am
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