Amy & Leah's Gimptastic Tuts: FTU Tut- Using animations in Gimp

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

FTU Tut- Using animations in Gimp

9:27 AM | Posted by Amy&Leah | Edit Post

We would really love to do some more animated tutorials, but to tell you the truth, it is a pain in the butt! Hopefully this tut will allow us to have more animated tuts on our blog.

I suggest heading over to Scrappy Bit Of Fun for your animations, because you are unable to use MNG files in gimp and she has both MNG and PSD files.

Supplies:

Gimp

Animation SimoneAni396-fairydust (we will be using the PSD file) from Scrappy Bit Of Fun

I am going to be using my tag Bubble Pop for this tutorial. You can find the tut for this tag HERE

Once you have finished your tag, you are ready for animation. DO NOT merge your layers together.

You need to decide which layer you want the animation to be under. I am going to place it just under the main tube layer. So, pick the layer your want to put your animation under. Now you need to merge that layer with all the layers above it. I have 3 layers above my main tube layer. So I will merge 4 layers together. Once I have merged these layers I like to rename the layer TOP so I don't get as confused.

Next, make the merged layer invisible (click on the eye next to it in the layer box). Make one of the visible layers active and right click that layer with your mouse. Choose Merge Visible Layers. Name this layer BOTTOM. You should have only 2 layers now, TOP & BOTTOM.

You can make the TOP layer visible now.

Make sure your BOTTOM layer is active and go to File> Open As Layers and open your animation. It should open up in between the TOP & BOTTOM layers.

You need to count how many frames the animation you have chose has. The one I am using has 16 frames. Now you need to duplicate your TOP layer 15 times so you have a total of 16. Repeat for the BOTTOM layer. Now I have 48 layers, but your number of layers will depend on the number of frames you have in the animation you picked.

Next you need to arrange the layers in groups of 3. It will go TOP, ANIMATION, BOTTOM. You need to do this with all the frames. Start with the 1st frame of the animation and move it under the first TOP layer. Move the first BOTTOM layer below these 2.

Do this with the rest of the layers. Make sure that you keep the animation frames in the right order.

Now we need to merge the groups of 3 together. Press on the TOP copy of the group and Layer>Merge Down 2 times. This will merge the TOP, ANIMATION & BOTTOM layer together. You need to do this with each group of three. Be careful not to merge ALL the layers together, just in groups of three.

With the animation I chose, I ended up with 16 frames (the amount of frame the original animation had).