I seem to be in a bit of a pickle!

[Eternal_December]

Well, here's my dilemma. I decided to make an attempt at OOTS-Style artwork. I'm terrible with anything else even remotely resembling shapes, but I took on to it quick. This is my first attempt:
http://img276.imageshack.us/img276/428/firstootsgiffq6.gif
As you can tell, this is where my dilemma lies. Just getting it from its beautious (That SO should be a word), whole-colored form on Inkscape to a .gif format by saving it as a pdf, going to Adobe Acrobat Reader, snapshotting it to copy to clipboard, pasting to Microsoft Paint, and finally saving it as a .gif completely robbed it of its former... good-looking-ness. To the point that it looks like it has acne because of all the partially shaded squares that a lower resolution pwnt it with. Ok. So, I need some suggestions. How can I get a good resolution .pdf or .svg image into .gif? I tried IrfanView, but it doesn't read anything that I can save the image as on InkScape. Freeware or Shareware only, please. My wallet is already about to float away because of how light it is.

[Bryn]

If I were you, I would export it as a .png and use the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) to convert it to a gif. That is if you really need to convert it to a gif, since pngs are now supported in most browsers now IE7 is out.
A good tutorial for doing such is
here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=185496&postcount=99)
This covers installing the GIMP, and how to convert to a gif with it.

[Eternal_December]

Thanks. You're my new hero.

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9017/firstootsdh7.png

There's the finished product, than. Can I have some constructive criticism?

[Bryn]

It looks good.
The head should probably be slightly bigger, and the body shorter.

[The body should be]about half the width of the head, and the same height
The eyes might do well being larger as well.

Nice detail on the shirt edges.

Finally, the background could do with being transparent. In GIMP, use the colour select tool to select all the white, then go Filters>>Colours>>Colour to Alpha.

The sword looks good, I like the way it gets smaller slightly at the bottom.

Only other thing is at the bottom of his shorts, the lines seem thicker than all the other nearby lines. I'm not sure why that might be, but if all the lines there were the same thickness it might look better.

Excellent work for a first try though!

[Brianfowler713]

I just tried deleting .png and writing .gif in importing screen. Here goes nuttin.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p127/Brianfowler713/BaldElan.png

[DarkCorax]

I just tried deleting .png and writing .gif in importing screen. Here goes nuttin.
*snip*
it is still a .gif


http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p127/Brianfowler713/BaldElan.png

[Tussy the Druid]

Is that supposed to be Elan, or just a guy you made that happens to have Elan's clothes?

[Dire Penguin]

You can export bitmap off of inkscape, and upload on imageshack.us

[Brianfowler713]

Is that supposed to be Elan, or just a guy you made that happens to have Elan's clothes?

Not-Nale really smooth as baby butt.