GifGun for After Effects: A closer look at the revolutionary After Effects plugin making animated GIF creation easier than ever.

GIFs are constantly gaining in popularity, and now they can be easily integrated and embedded into Facebook posts, blogs, and websites. The technology behind the animated GIF has been around for a long time.

When motion designers want to showcase their work, sites like Dribble and Behance help them share small bits of content as animated GIFs.

Even though GIFs are incredibly popular and essential for many designers to share their work, there hasn’t been a straightforward way to create them. Typically, an artist will have to render out an image sequence from After Effects, and then open those images in Photoshop to save them as an animated GIF.

Also, there are other methods available to create animated GIFs, including online tools and sites, but perhaps nothing is as simple for an After Effects user as the GifGun plug-in for After Effects.

This plugin makes animated GIF creation extremely simple directly from After Effects.

GifGun Animated GIF creator for After Effects

GifGun is available as a .zip file containing both MAC and Windows versions. On the MAC, simply click the installer to set up the plug-in. For Windows, you need to first move the files to the appropriate After Effects subfolder before installing.

Additionally, on either operating system, it’s crucial to first open After Effects. Navigate to Edit > Preferences > General and turn on “Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network” if it isn’t already enabled.

Once you’ve installed the script, restart After Effects, click on the Window tab, and open the script.

Note that the GifGun plug-in is compatible with After Effects CC 2015, CC 2014, and CC. The developers state that it also works with CS6 and CS5, but they haven’t extensively tested it on these platforms.

How To Make A GIF With GifGun

The GifGun interface is straightforward. There’s essentially one button labeled “Make Gif”. Set your in and out points, then press that button. Your composition will render a GIF around those in and out points.

There are also some control options:

  • You can designate a folder for your GIFs to render to.
  • You can set the GIF width, and the height will adjust accordingly.
  • You can define the frame rate and also save it as a video file.

Pricing And Download

While GifGun doesn’t offer functions you can’t achieve with a mix of other tools and websites, if you create many animated GIFs, it can certainly save you time. The plug-in is priced at $29.99.

You can also download a free trial to test it out, although you’ll be restricted to GIFs only 350 px wide with the trial.

Visit the GifGun product page for more information on the GifGun plug-in for After Effects.