[center]
Making a basic animation based on frames with Gimp
By Sean-Michael

First off Id like to say that you can get smother results useing the (GAP) but this is often fine for most applications.

This will be very basic and I will leave you to of corse add you own twists and flares!



1. To get started I want you to make a new image of your own preferance below is an example of what I did.




2. You need to duplicate this frame as many times as you need to add the differnt "frames" you want. In the above example I duplicated the background four times making 5 layers



3. Here you can see the layers I made and you can also see I named the layers so I had reffernce to what was on them. Once you are done I want you to optimize your work, this is the step that saves excesive data and makes your animation load faster on web application.

4. From the image window I want you to select Filters/Animation/Optimize Gif... You will get a new layerd image that looks like the below image... at this point you can change the timing. That is the (1000ms) part of the layer name make it what you want.



Optimizing is what Gimp and other programs do to sort out the change in frames... Then the whole frame doesnt have to change just the effected area and thats how you save data size.

5. You can do whatever you want with the first Un-Optimized image but I want you to save the Optimized as YOUR_NAME_4_IT.GIF at any location on your computer. A window will popup and I want you to make sure you check the Save Animation and you will need to convert to Indexed color because that is what .gif supports. Click Export and then save and you should be done!



Questions and comments are always welcome here
so ask away!

Yeah, I used layers instead of GAP to do this:



I am going to toy with GAP to see if I get better results, but GAP has so many variables that it is quite overwhelming.

Lol Good idea!
I see a connection there! :w:

With (GAP) you could probly get them too strech acrost using the "Perspective" settings.

I have no idea how to use the perspective feature in GAP and in fact have only done your GAP tutorial example. I have alot to figure out regarding GAP.

that a use full tutorial

are there any GAP tutorials out there

Yes Blur11 Ive made one and have it listed here@ .:GimpTalk:. this is the thread http://www.gimptalk.com/topic.php?a=v&t=149&f=8 I think I might be adding to soon also.

i question


how do i get the -=NSDQ=- not to move

Good job Blur11,

Two ways...

1. If you wanted it to apeare in the second frame and then stay for the rest of the animation you have your background with out it then in the next frame you add it and you can then duplicate that frame till the end of animation and the "-=NSDQ=-" will be constant.

2. Add it to you background and duplicate it for as many frames as you need

cool thanks

I love you man...this really helped.

Im getting better at the GIMP.

Is this good?

BTW, that signature was made completely in GIMP...what do you think?

Welcome to .:GimpTalk:. Raven ant thank you for you kind words!

This looks good! Good job on incorperating the blured effect!
You might want to change it a little by bluring a little one direction and back to focus because to me the bluring was a little trickie on the eyes, dont get me wrong this is great work and it only gets better with practice!
I look forword to seeing more! :l:

Yeah i realized that. I added a border and made it look awesome.





How's that?

Well, there is a border that is white, because Im using it on a dark site.



So you cant see it here, but when you put it on a dark site you can see it.

Looks great! Much better!
I think you would like the text tut fencepost has...http://www.gimptalk.com/tutorial.php?t=163
I think you text needs some color other than white, there is also some cool Script~Fu that makes some great logo text that you would enjoy playing with, You can find those in you Gimp tool box under...


[*] Xtns/Script~Fu/Losos

Yes, I know...but I cant really get gimp to work good with text.


You've probably worked with PS before, so Ima ask you this.


You know how people use pixel fonts, then add a 1 px black stroke around it, that looks good on signautres?


2 questions:

1. Gimp seems to SUCK at pixel fonts, any help? They look absolutley disgusting.

2. Anyway to do what I just described above in gimp?

Very nice thanks as you can see I forgot to fix the speed LOL but hey it's all new to me and my first try at this I love this site thanks :l:

This is my second I am trying to make blood look like its running down the pic

Reply to BR7 and Raven,

Good work BR7, dont worry about the speed thing, whats cool is that you have your first and it only gets better from here! :l: Thank you for sharing, now you graduate to the GAP tutorials A' :w:

[*] Raven, Im sorry I didnt reply sooner! I was working on the New Tutorial for GAP. It looked like you found the info you needed for the Font!?! Here http://www.gimptalk.com/topic.php?a=v&t=306&f=14

That must be an artery if the blood is moving that fast!!! Please put the knife down and step away from the victim :w:

Nice job!

Art

LOL thanks I am getting tha hang of things slowly but surely I just have to work on the speed more

Ok now I have a problem no matter what I set the speed at it still goes like its at the indy 500

Edit: I see you have it now, goodjob!:l:

Below step 4 you see the values I have...

(1000ms)= 1 second I think Lol
(100ms)= 1/10th of a second

When you first save you gif and there is no value for speed
youll see a selection for Gimp to add a value to each frame..
Handy when you have 10 or more frames, Ill try to get a screen
shot if you think its needed!

Very nice hats off to you your tutorials are great and you have been very helpful its is appreciated. one last one I did fooling around

It didn't work for me. When i went to animation and when to Optimize another layer came up and there wern't any layers except that one. Will it work with a white background?

Yes, itll work with any background! For Animated .gif you need...

[*] Save with .gif extension, "work.gif" and a window will come up asking you...

[*] Flatten Image or Save as Animation You want animation,

[*] The next part is weather to use Indexed Color or Grayscale, Indexed is what I use

The thing I can see happening is if you forget to specifie to Save as Animation...?

I dont see any kind of text on it before i save it .


edit:I saved it and the thing popped up and i saved it on how yu said. I dont see any text on it when i open it up. I saved it to my pictures, is that ok?. Do i need to save it to somewhere else?