I have spent the entire day making the Geara gif got posted earlier. It is been a hard road to make that gif using GIMP. I gave up after 20 attempts and use GIPHY instead. The only issue now is that DeviantArt requires me to have a thumbnail (preview image) for my gif.

I have no idea how to create one. I have made smaller 137x150 versions of the gif as a preview, used .png images and random gifs. Yet it all failed. I cannot post my gif on DA until I solve this.

Any ideas?

What's your specific issue?

The way I created the GIFs I made was doing them on Photoshop (which was fairly easy), and then selecting just one of the frames as a single thumbnail.

That said, Deviantart recently rolled out a dumbass update which completely changes the layout, with no way to go back to how it was before, so it's possible their GIF implementation is broken, it honeslty wouldn't surprise me.

My biggest issue is submitting GIFs to DA because they require a preview image (thumbnail). I have a thumbnail pre-created under GIPHY. I uploaded the same GIF with no problem here on the Hub. It may be DA's broken submission system.

The GIMP GIF issues are due to the GIMP program. GIMP is a free version of Photoshop. I only use GIMP for a bit of touch up on my renders.

It’s actually not that hard. Upload the gif to the DA submission page, when it’s finished click on the icon next to where it says “Preview image required”, and choose “Upload preview image”. Your preview image can’t exceed 150 x 150; it can be smaller if the dimensions aren’t exact, it just can’t be larger. Then you should be able to upload the gif. I upload my gifs to DA like this without any problems, I’ve only run into difficulty when trying to upload Flash animations and mp4s.

Well that is just the thing. I put preview images that were 137x150, and it still did not allow me to submit my gif. I reduced them through Daz renders, and GIMP. Still nothing works.

Maybe the gif you’re uploading itself is too big? I’ve never encountered a problem with size limits regarding the actual gif file, but that could be it.

I actually found a very effective method of making GIFs through GIMP. I HATED it before finding this info. If you size the canvas down to 1080p or less, it works amazing. Just DO NOT touch anything while rendering, even if it looks like GIMP crashed (it didn't, it's just eating ALL your system resources for a bit). Just note the obvious, but often overlooked... the lower resolution the gif is, the less storage it'll use. But it's exponential in how much this changes, so keep that in mind. You can also just export a frame as a PNG for preview and have that be it, or move it to another project pretty easily to edit if you want to make a flashy thumbnail.

It's going to render top to bottom. Meaning the lower the layer is in the list, the later it will show up in the animation.
Once you have all your layers set up, go to Image > Mode > set to indexed. This will hang up your computer for a minute, but bear with it.
Select Generate Optimum Palette
Set maximum number of colors to 256
Set Color Dithering to Positioned
And check the box labeled Enable Dithering of Transparency

There's some way to remove the subtle graininess of the finished product, but I haven't experimented enough to find it yet.

Once you're done with all that stuff, go to export, set it to animated gif image, and play with the frame timing delays until you get the result you want. I also set each frame to replace the last, not be drawn over it, but you might like it differently.
It'll make your computer cry while working, but the end result is worth it. Again, do NOT touch the computer while rendering, even if it seems like it's frozen. Unless you blue-screen or similar, it's okay.