Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on July 14, 2005 02:25 PM
While I agree with pretty much everything else in your comment, I´d argue about GIMP being difficult to use to do some small animations.
Actually, it is much easier/intuitive to understand animations as a stack of layers in GIMP. Since one frame tends to be slightly different than the one above it, you can just duplicate a layer on the stack and then performs the changes that you need.
For example, let´s say that you have a butterfly that must change its wing colors in the course of its flight. In GIMP, you just need to start a new canvas, setup a background layer, draw/import/whatever a butterfly in a invisible layer (alpha channel for those that might have a pet peeve with this description...<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-)) at any point of the canvas and then duplicate this layer several times, changing the butterfly aspect (for a more believable flight), colors and position. The possibilities are endless since one can use all the filters and effects available to GIMP, like motion blur for starters.
When you´re happy with the results, all you have to do is save the result as a GIF file. GIMP´ll ask you if the layers should be treated as different frames of an animation and even gives a little bit of control about the animation, like loops, duration of frames, etc.
Artists like jimmac and Garrett LeSarge (both of GNOME fame) have been using this technique to create some amazing animated gifs for banners and such for quite sometime. Their websites are "must-see" for anyone interested in using GIMP.
The GIMP website - <a href="http://www.gimp.org/" title="gimp.org">http://www.gimp.org/</a gimp.org> - has several tutorials with a easy language targeted to beginners and advanced users alike and there you´ll be able to spot a handful of them for animation.
Script Fu is another story. But even Script Fu can be leveraged after some practice (which admittedly I lack...<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-))
Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux help
Re:Gimp + IM = powerful
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 14, 2005 02:25 PMActually, it is much easier/intuitive to understand animations as a stack of layers in GIMP. Since one frame tends to be slightly different than the one above it, you can just duplicate a layer on the stack and then performs the changes that you need.
For example, let´s say that you have a butterfly that must change its wing colors in the course of its flight. In GIMP, you just need to start a new canvas, setup a background layer, draw/import/whatever a butterfly in a invisible layer (alpha channel for those that might have a pet peeve with this description...<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-)) at any point of the canvas and then duplicate this layer several times, changing the butterfly aspect (for a more believable flight), colors and position. The possibilities are endless since one can use all the filters and effects available to GIMP, like motion blur for starters.
When you´re happy with the results, all you have to do is save the result as a GIF file. GIMP´ll ask you if the layers should be treated as different frames of an animation and even gives a little bit of control about the animation, like loops, duration of frames, etc.
Artists like jimmac and Garrett LeSarge (both of GNOME fame) have been using this technique to create some amazing animated gifs for banners and such for quite sometime. Their websites are "must-see" for anyone interested in using GIMP.
The GIMP website - <a href="http://www.gimp.org/" title="gimp.org">http://www.gimp.org/</a gimp.org> - has several tutorials with a easy language targeted to beginners and advanced users alike and there you´ll be able to spot a handful of them for animation.
Script Fu is another story. But even Script Fu can be leveraged after some practice (which admittedly I lack...<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-))
#