This is a beginner skills GAP tutorial and a moderate skills GIMP tutorial.

This is the outcome of the tutorial.



To give credit where credit is due. This is an offshoot of Plasma Snake's fog tutorial here.

Downloads that go with this tutorial. You don't have to use the same font but having the animation settings script will make it much easier and faster to time the animation. The tutorial will not be possible to do without GAP.

Get the Trick or Treat font here.

Get saulgoode's animation settings script. Right-click to download and save in /.gimp(version#)/scripts.
anim-settings.scm]

Download GAP if you need it.
Get GAP here.
A little knowledge of GAP before you do this tutorial is helpful. See the Sticky GAP tutorials in GIMP Tutorials and Tips.

Open a new image and make it 400 x 400 pixels. Fill the image with white.

Foreground color black. Click the Text tool icon in the toolbox. Find the Trick or Treat font. Click in your image and type a "p" in the text box, press <enter> and type an "o." Use the settings in the image below for the font size, leading (spacing between rows of text), and center align. Or use a font of your choice.



<Image> Layers > Autocrop layer. The text has a layer boundary tight around it now. Click the Alignment tool, click the text in the image then click both center icons.





Right click the text layer and select Layer to Image size. Duplicate the text layer and move the new text layer below the white background layer.

Select the text layer at the top. Filters > Alpha to Logo > Neon. I set the effect size to 80 and left the Glow color the default blue. You can use a different color. Be sure it's a bright color. A dark one may not show well. Click OK.

Delete the Neon Tubes layer, duplicate the Neon Glow layer and merge the two Neon Glow layers. Move the text layer that's below the white layer up to the top. You will see your ghost surrounded by a blue glow.

Merge the text layer down to the Glow layer. Autocrop the image, then merge the text down to the black layer. Delete the white layer.



File > Save As. Name your image ghost_000001, browse to where you want your animation folder, and over near the right top of the save dialog, click Create Folder. Type the name you want to have for the folder and press <enter>. Save your image and an xcf extension will be added automatically. It is important that your file has _000001 (that's and underline, 5 zeros, and a one) after the name so GAP will recognize the file. See the save image below. I have truncated the image - your save dialog is much larger. It is important to put your GAP files in a separate folder because it takes a lot of files to make an animation in GAP.



Drag the Layer preview window over to the toolbox and drop it on the toolbox. Fill the image with white - ghost image is covered with the white. You now have a white image the same size as the ghost_000001.xcf file.



Filters > Render > Clouds > Fog. Name the layer Fog, change the color to black (000000), set Turbulence at 3.5, leave Opacity at 100, then OK.

Filters > Map > Make Seamless. Duplicate the layer. Delete the white layer.

Image > Canvas Size. Break the chain link next to the sizing windows, make x = twice the width of your image and press <Enter>, then click Resize.

Click the Alignment tool, click the image and click |-> (align right). The fog now covers the image. Merge the two layers and save your image as fog in the GAP folder you made. You now have a fog.xcf file.

I like to click the down arrow at the bottom of the image window and select a lower zoom (25%) for this image. Then press Ctrl + E and move the smaller image up out of the way of the other xcf file.

This is the finished fog.xcf image. I put a white background in so the fog is visible and zoomed down to 50% to save space. Do not add a white background to yours. It's for illustrative uses in here only.



Now you're ready to GAP. It's best if you have only the two files open in GIMP.

In the ghost_000001.xcf image, Video > Duplicate frames. Make 10 frames. This will be a relatively small animation. See the frames duplication image below and use those settings. OK



Video > Move Path. The Move Path dialog is a large screen and I am not going to duplicate it in here. Just do the steps in order that I give them and you should be OK.

<LATE EDIT> Figured out how to make a thumbnail in PhotoBucket. Here is the Move Path dialog marked where you need to make changes, plus two text notes.

1. Near the bottom left, check Instant Apply.
   
2. At the top - Source Image/Layer: That should be your fog.xcf image.
   
3. Stepmode: None
   
4. Mode: Overlay
   
5. Current Point: Look at the width of your ghost_000001.xcf file. Mine is 283. For x, I made it -283, a negative number. Yours will be whatever your file width is with a minus sign.
   
6. Edit Controlpoints: Click Add Point and change x to 0 (zero). That moves the animation from left to right.
   
7. One more setting. About 3/4 of the way down and slightly left of center find Clip to Frame and check it.
   
8. Click AnimPreview See the image below for the settings.

I selected 10 for the frame rate because the default one is very rapid. A setting somewhere between 9 and 12 is fine. It doesn't have to be exact. Click OK then wait a bit while some processing goes on.

A playback window and an image window will appear. Click play in the playback window to see what the animation will look like. If it kind of pauses in its rounds that's because you have two duplicate frames and one of those will be deleted when you process the final image.

If all looks well, close the playback window and the image that appeared with it. Don't save that image. Be sure you don't close ghost_000001.xcf.

Now you are ready to click the OK button in the Move Paths dialog. It will take a little time to process. When it's finished it will be time to make your animation.

Video > Frames to Image. Use the default settings and click OK. More image processing.

Delete the top frame in Layers (frame_0000011 if you duplicated 10 frames).

Hold down the Shift key and click the eye next to a layer. You may need to click more than once. All the eyes need be open so that all of the layers are visible.

Here is where you use saulgoode's awesome Settings script. This is such a time saver.

Filters > Animation > Settings. These are the settings I used for my ghost.
120
Dropdown arrow: Replace.



Filters > Animation > Playback. You can see your new animation in action.

If you want to change the speed, you can do it while Playback is still running. Just bring up Settings again and change the speed.

Close the Playback dialog and save as an animated gif file.

Close the ghost_00001.xcf file and the fog.xcf file. Once you are sure your animation is OK, you can delete the 11 files and the fog file.

That's a pretty neat effect there, thanks for the tut.

Thanks Pixelated! You're welcome.

I was hoping some would try the tut and post some results. I'd love to see someone else's ideas.

Also, post if there are any glitches that don't work.

Sweet tut bro, thanks for sharing ^_^

Here is an example of starting in GAP with x set to zero, then Add Point and x set to the negative value of the width of the _000001.xcf file to move the fog from right to left.



The font I used: Helloween 2 font.

So far I've only installed GAP. Really need to start learning it. This effect looks great.

Thank you jolie.

Here's a very good place to start to learn about GAP. There are other GAP tutorials too.
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/gap-beginner-tutorial-set-t9266.html

Here's my first result:

Very nice, Silvertayl. I like the green.

Thank you

I used 15 frames and slowed the rate down to 150

It looks like you might have increased the neon effect too. It gives it a more mysterious and foggy effect.

I like!

I don't have GAP. But I managed to kind of mimic your effect.



Edit: Um, may give some people seizures. I should prob. slow down the frames... oh well.

Hey, that's great! Perhaps you could share your method for those that don't want to do the GAP part.

Good job, captainwalrus! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks

I pentooled a ghost, and did the glow thing. Then I merged all the layers together. Duplicate the layer twice, then hide the upper 2 layers. New layer above the first ghost layer. I did filters-render-clouds-plasma. Desaturated the plasma layer, set the layer mode to grain extract I believe, and merged it with the first layer. To that with the other layers, except with different seeds for the plasma. When you're finished plasma-ing and merging, there should be three layers. Optimized for GIF (filters-animation-optimize for GIF) and changed the speeds around a little bit.

I can explain in more detail if needed.

Cool! Thanks again.

Thank you

(note below signature)

I love it

I love it

Oops double post. Sorry about that

Here's another version:

i dont get the fog effect... pls help... im noob

Wow! Very nice, Silvertayl!

Need more info from you sahara. Where are you falling down with the fog effect?

i dont have fog effect in filters>render>clouds... need to make..
then i follow Plasma snake tut, but idk what to do after... im so noob

I think you need to learn some basic information about GIMP before taking on a tutorial that assumes you have basic skills in GIMP.

Check out the starting tutorial for new users.

http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/beginning-with-gimp-starting-tutorial-for-new-users-t34772.html

I don't have fog in the filters-renders menu. I used filters-render-clouds-difference clouds and played around with the settings until I was happy. Here are my results: