You can get them from Figure 6: The frog stages were cut from the PNG file and assembled as separate layers in GIMP Figure 7: The layers were moved linearly The final GIFs cannot be displayed in print, as they are animated. This made the animation appear like an endless stream of frogs. Then, midway in the layer stack, I introduced another frog. This time, I spread them out linearly so that it appeared like the frog was moving across the screen. I also created another GIF animation with the same layers.
In the Save/Export dialogue box, I set the global frame disposal to ‘Replace’ and the global frame interval to 100 milliseconds. Hence, I downscaled the XCF image (without saving the file) and exported that to GIF format.
The PNG image I exported from Inkscape was a huge one. To test the animation, I used the Filters – Animation – Playback menu option. I saved the image to GIMP’s native file format (. This would create the illusion of the video camera following the moving frog. I added a vertical visual guide and aligned the frog’s eye to it in each layer. I then opened this PNG file in GIMP, cut the various stages of the jumping frog and placed them each in a separate layer. However, its position and orientation to the legs was changed.Īfter all the stages were completed, I exported the Inkscape drawing to a PNG file. The body of the frog (i.e., excluding the legs) was in a sub-group, which remained as a whole in all the stages and was not modified. In each stage, I made changes to the frog’s legs, using the ‘ Node’ tool. This made it easier to duplicate the frog (Ctrl+D) and create different stages of the frog’s movements. In Inkscape, I selected all the shapes of the frog and made them part of a group (by selecting ‘Object – Group’ from the menu). The various stages in the creation of the frog in Inkscape are displayed in Figure 4. The cartoon was created in Inkscape and assembled as a GIF in GIMP. Figure 3: The ‘File – Save As’ or export dialogue box (for GIF files) in the GIMP Figure 4: The frog cartoon was created in Inkscape Figure 5: Several stages of the jumping frog were created in Inkscape and exported to PNGįor this article, I decided to create an animated cartoon of a jumping frog. GIF format, GIMP will show a dialogue box in which you can specify the settings for the layers en masse or globally. It is not necessary to specify these suffixes manually. Putting it all together, if you want a layer named “Frame 3” to totally replace the previous frame and be displayed for half a second, you will have to name the layer “ Frame 3 (replace) (500ms)”. For example, to display a layer for a second, you need suffix the layer name with “( 1000ms)”. The frame duration is specified in microseconds. The second option allows you to make cumulative changes over several frames and restrict background content to just one of the previous frames. The second suffix option “( combine)” ensures that the current frame is merely pasted over the previous frame.
The first suffix option “( replace)” totally clears the previous frame before displaying the current frame. In GIMP, frame disposal is specified by suffixing the layer name with “( replace)” or “( combine)”. Frame duration specifies exactly how long a frame needs to be displayed.
GIMP GIF OVER IMAGE HOW TO
Figure 1: The Tabs panel showing various layers of an image Figure 2: Frame duration and disposal are suffixed to the layer’s nameįrame disposal tells the GIF-rendering application (usually an image viewer or a Web browser) how to display a new frame over the previous one. Instead, you need to pay more attention to certain extra information that is suffixed to the layers’ names, i.e., frame disposal and frame duration. However, when creating an animated GIF file, you do not have to worry about the names for the layers. GIMP automatically generates a unique name for each layer but the graphics artist usually renames them in a more meaningful way. If you observe carefully, you will find that each layer has been given a different name. Several layers are placed one over another to form the final image, as shown in Figure 1. So, what is a layer? Graphics artists prefer to place various components of an image separately in what is known as a layer. If you plan on creating GIF animations with GIMP, you need to create several image layers. In terms of GIMP, each image frame in a GIF file is a layer. An animated GIF file is a collection of image frames that are displayed for a specific time period, one after another, to create the illusion of a video.
0 kommentar(er)
