[ccbarr]

Open a new window 200x100 in gimp: (File|New from the main gimp window)

Side Note: If you select:

Dialog|Palettes.

This opens the palettes editor. Choose the one named Web. This will help you to select colors that will look good for animated gif files and for web presentation.

Or you may visit visibone and grab their web safe palettes for gimp.

Fill the window with color 003300



Create a new transparent layer in the layers window and name it Frame

With the Frame layer selected do:

Select|All

Select|Shrink and choose a value of 20 pixels then click OK.

Then Select|Invert

Fill selection with color 330000



Select|None

Save file as background_000001.xcf into some work folder/directory.

In order to have smooth scrolling text, you need a higher framerate. We will use 60 fps, but you might even try playing with 90 fps or higher. Although higher framerates mean larger final file sizes.

The text will scroll for 15 seconds, so 60 fps X 15 sec = 900 frames. As a note, I arrived at 15 seconds by trial and error. Different amounts of text will need different scroll times. So this is not a set rule, just a guideline. Also don't let the large amount of frames worry you since GAP does all the work. :-)

Video|Duplicate Frames



Leave From Frame and To Frame set at 1
N times set to 899 ( our background is frame one, we need 899 more to make 900)
Click OK

Set the foreground color to black

Open a new window 640x100

Double-click the text tool and use font Arial Black and make font size 48.0, then close the text window.

Click inside the new 640x100 image and type all on one line the following text:

This is a really long line of scrolling text. It just keeps on scrolling and scrolling and scrolling...

Close the text window

Go back to the background window and select:

Video|Move Path



(A) Check Instant Apply
(B) Set Source Image/Layer to the text layer created earlier.
© Step Mode None
(D) Layerstack set to 1. (The topmost layer from GAP viewpoint is zero, next layer
below that is one, below that is two, etc. The background image top layer is the
frame layer, so GAP would see that as frame zero. We want the text to be
between the frame and the green background. So we will make the text
layerstack 1, which forces the background to become layerstack 2 for the time
being.)
(E) Use the X and Y arrow keys that are highlighted to first center the text against the
background and then to move the text beyond the right-hand border of the
frame so that is is out of view for the start of the animation. See above for my
settings.
(F) Click the Add Point button (this tells GAP we will be making some change to the
text layer, so it saves the initial values we have entered and waits for the new
values.



(G) Now click and hold down the down arrow on the X value and move the text all
the way across the screen until it is hidden by the left end of the frame. I
usually move it an extra 10 or 20 frames beyond the point where it is out of the
picture for safety sake. So if the end is at -2200 I would move it to -2220 for
instance.

Click Anim Preview. Select Exact Object On Frames. Set Framerate to 60.00
Click OK. After previewing the animation, close out the preview and the
small image created and Don't Save.

Back to the Move Path window. If satisfied with the preview, click OK.
Let GAP process the frames.

Video|VCR Navigator

Set Framerate to 60.0000
Hold down Shift and click the little upward facing arrow key towards the
bottom of the window so it can update the thumbnail images. Then click Close.

Video|Frames To Image
Accept the default settings and click OK. GAP will process and a new image
window will open. In that new image do:

Filters|Animation|Optimize (for GIF) - and a new image will be created that is GIF optimized.

From that new image, do:

File|Save As and save as scroll_text.gif.
Select where you want to save the file.
Make sure you select Save As Animation in the window that pops up. Click OK.
Then accept the defaults in any other windows opening and click OK.



This is a rather large sized file, but to have smooth scrolling text it is necessary. If you do not mind somewhat jittery text, you can use lower framerates, say 30 fps or even try 15 fps. Also you can try a tradeoff by making the text move faster at these lower frame rates by creating less total frames. This can make it harder to read , so it depends on how much text you are scrolling and what effect you wish to achieve amongst other things.


Finally let me give a reference to Sean-Michaels GAP tutorial. That helped me a lot in figuring out how to do this scrolling text with GAP.

[MJF]

Hey! Thanks for taking the time to make a GAP tutorial! The tutorial looks easy to read and has good pictures.

[Wolf]

WOW, your awesome, youve posted a few tuts now, all that i am gonna use ATON, thank you so much

[swmiller6]

one little suggestion....... you may want to cut down the number of frames to something like 10 or 20 frames, this will make your file size much smaller then the nearly 1mb size file you have now..

swmiller6

[Ece Zdawg671]

There is also a simple way to make the text go faster, if you simply go to imageauthor.com it has a certain tool (foget which one =/) where you can make the frames go faster. Hope that helped a bit more. ;)

[Zaos]

Very Nice and easy to follow! Here is what I got.



Its a bit slow, I tihnk I made a Mistake somewhere, wbut after about 7 seconds it starts up ;)

[saulgoode]

Zaos, I think you may have selected the "Merge visible layers" option when you saved your GIF file (instead of opting for "Save as animation"). The image you posted only has a single layer.

[Zaos]

You need to click on it to get the actual one, It is the first itme i used theb uploader, I guess I picked the wrong selection XD


The above is the real one (Hopefully)

The below is the one i used in the last post.

[ccbarr]

Wow, I need to redo this tutorial. I had an old monitor when I made this and the animated gif colors looked fine to me at the time. They seem so dark now in my new monitor, so I'll have to work on upgrading this so it is a bit easier on the eyes. My apologies.

Zaos , thanks for trying out the tutorial. :h:

The goal of the tutorial is to make the words go by slowly yet smoothly. This is not easily accomplished by reducing the number of frames. If you reduce the number of frames, you must speed up the text to attempt to keep a semblance of smoothness to the animation. This sort of animation is better suited to video than a gif animation more likely.