The scatter brushes in Adobe® Illustrator® provide a
good starting point for creating playful animated
patterns. By taking advantage of the brushes' ability to
scatter patterns at adjustable intervals, you can quickly
generate animation frames that proceed with seemingly
random movements. Follow along as we use scatter
brushes in conjunction with the Blend commands and
Release to Layers command to create a GIF animation
of dancing flowers. To complete this tip, you need
Adobe® Photoshop® 5.5 or higher.

1. Paint a path with a scatter brush.
Open a new Illustrator artwork window in RGB color
mode. Select the spiral tool in the toolbox in Illustrator,
and drag to draw a spiral. Set the fill and stroke of the
spiral to None. Then apply a scatter brush to the spiral
path. (We chose Window > Brush Libraries > Floral
Sample, and applied the Violets brush.)
Scatter brushes spread copies of an object along the
selected path.

2. Copy the brushed path, and adjust Scatter Brush
Options.
With the brushed path selected, choose Edit > Copy,
and then choose Edit > Paste in Front to duplicate the
brushed path. In the Brushes palette, double-click the
active scatter brush to display the Scatter Brush Options
palette. Drag the sliders to adjust options, click OK, and
then click Apply to Strokes to apply the new options to
the duplicate brushed path.
By adjusting scatter options for the duplicate path, you
alter the distribution of scatter objects along the path.
The two brushed paths represent the starting and
ending frames of your animation.

3. Blend the brushed paths.
Choose Edit > Select All to select both brushed paths,
and choose Object > Blend > Blend Options. For
Spacing, choose Specified Steps, enter the number of
intermediate steps you want in the blend, and click OK.
(We used 5 steps.) Then choose Object > Blend > Make.
The Blend commands let you automatically create
intermediate steps that blend the positions, shapes, and
colors of a starting object and an ending object.

4. Release the blend to separate layers.
In the Layers palette, select the blend you just created.
(You may need to expand layers to see the blend.) Then
choose Release to Layers from the Layers palette menu.
The Release to Layers command places each object in a
group or layer on its own separate layer. In this case,
each step in the blend is released to a separate layer.

5. Export the file to Photoshop 5 format.
Choose File > Export, choose Photoshop 5 for the file
format, and click Save (Windows) or Export (Mac OS).
In the Photoshop Options dialog box, make sure the
color mode is set to RGB. For Resolution, select Screen
(72 dpi). Select Write Layers and Write Nested Layers,
and click OK to the alert message that appears. Then
click OK to export the file.
When exporting an Illustrator file to Photoshop 5
format, you can choose between flattening or
preserving layers in the file. Because you are preparing
your file for animation, you want layers to be preserved.

6. Create animation frames in Adobe
ImageReady®.
Start Adobe ImageReady, and open the Photoshop file
that you just exported. Choose Window > Show
Animation, and choose Make Frames From Layers from
the Animation palette menu.
The ImageReady Animation palette makes it easy to
create and customize frames of a GIF animation. Here,
you converted the layers in your file automatically to
animation frames. You can use the Animation palette to
set further options for your animation, such as delay
time between frames and looping.

7. Optimize and preview the animation.
In the Optimize palette, choose GIF from the file format
menu, and choose other options to optimize the
animated file. Then preview your finished animation by
choosing your Web browser from the File > Preview in
menu.