animating in gimp transparent background

The top portion of the book cover I'm generating features two separate images, a girl and a guy, brought together to give the illusion they're with each other in the same setting. My question: Is there a straightforward way to get a transparent background on a flattened image? Don’t forget that if the animation appears to jerk, or is moving too sharply, try adding a frame in between to smooth the movement.Hi, I've been making use of this forum the past few months as I learn GIMP, but this is my first time posting. Try changing the frame delays and find what suits you – and try the animation with different sized pixel art to see what effect it has. This helps to break the monotony of having the animation blink just once before repeating. It first blinks twice closely together (within 600ms), then stops for nearly a second and blinks again before stopping for a whole second. You can see the animation blinks three times before repeating. I’ve also added the time in milliseconds underneath to show how long the frame appears for. Ideally, I would usually have blinking done with two blinks close together and then another blink spaced further out unless I’m trying to keep the number of frames down. To change the rate between blinking and make it appear slightly more random, we can add more frames.

The animation you made and saved out in the previous steps should work and look fine, but the blinking happens just like clockwork. You can now go to the folder you saved it in and gaze in wonder as it moves before your very eyes! Ok, moving on… You won’t notice a difference without this option when blinking, but you will when you start moving arms / legs / hair / clothes, or making it float etc, so it’s good practice to change it now. The second option you need is the Frame Disposal – you must change this to “One frame per Layer (Replace)”. As it says, it will make the animation loop forever, so it’ll constantly cycle through the frames. The option “Looping Forever” should default be checked. It’s the last box, I swear << You can add a comment here if you want, but it’s not necessary. In most cases of pixel art, you won’t get to 256 colours in a single piece. The gif format can only use 256 different colours and if you have more than that, it will reduce the number until there are only 256. With the second options, the first one about Indexed colours should be chosen automatically.

Low and behold, another box! ^^ Make sure you change the first option to “ Save as Animation“. gif making it “ myanimation.gif“.Ĭhoose the folder you want to save your animation to as well and hit “Save”. Name your animation – mine is simply called myanimation and I have added the extension. To save the image, go to the File Menu -> Save As (Shift+Ctrl+S). Now you can add the remainder of your frames as new layers and make them transparent.

To select nothing again, go to the Select Menu -> None (Shift+Ctrl+A). Click on the green areas and hit “Delete”. I unticked the “Antialiasing” checkbox in the toolbox because we don’t want it.

To remove the green and make it transparent, use the Magic Wand tool. In GIMP, paste the frame in, by going to the Edit Menu, down to “Paste as” and across to “New Layer”. Now, select your first frame (in whatever program you’ve drawn it in) and “Copy” it (Ctrl+C / Edit->Copy). I have filled the parts I want transparent with green. To the right are my frames, ready to be pasted in separately. Hit ok and your document is ready to draw on / paste frames into! If you don’t, estimate and you can trim it down later. If you know the pixel size of your animation, add the width and height in. To do this, click on the File Menu and select “New”. Our step now is to create the document for the animation in the “Document” window.

Animating in gimp transparent background