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So you want to learn how to make your avatar blink smoothly like this? Well I am here today to teach you how.

First of all you need to get you picture of the avatar.

Next, I took the avatar and separated it into eyes and base. Note that when hair overlaps the eyes you may need an above layer for the hair and anything that goes over the eyes.

I took the layer for eyes now and reduced it's height to about half.

I took another set of the base and eyes. This time, I flipped the eye layer vertically. I then took a 5 pixel soft eraser and erased away the white and blue parts of the eye( eye white and iris and also the pupil). I make sure it matched up well with the half size eyes from the previous step.

I took the set of a base and the eyes and reduced them to about 1/3 height here.

I took another set of the base and the eyes and reduced them to about 2/3 height now.

Now you will begin to animate. I use 1/10 of a second as the speed for most of my animations. I usually do open, open, open, open, open, 1/2, closed, closed, closed, closed, 1/3, 2/3 and then I will loop. Another option I sometimes do is open, open, open, 1/2, closed, closed, 1/3, 2/3 and then it loops. The one displayed above is a 5 open, 1/2, 4 closed, 1/3, 2/3 blink.

Yes another blinking tutorial. This one is more MS Paint Friendly for frame making.

Again, you need a picture of the full avatar

Noting the main skin color erase the first pixel of the eyes.

Again erase a pixel line

Keep erasing until you have 1 line of the eye pixels left.

Take the eye pixels and color them black. Then attach on both eyes a 1 pixel diagonal of it.

Time to animate. Take 5 opens, and then work your way down the pixels, 4 closed, and then work your way back up. The timing is best at 1/20 of a second a frame.