Animation in GIMP!, ~Begginers to advanced~

[x...H.I.M...X]

Hey Jen

This tut is amazing
Going to try out how to make an animation
Thanks
Dal

edited:

Okay here is my try...


Okay its all jumpy And I tried to edit how I placed the layers but it didn't let me see the layers i clicked on and stayed on the last added layer

Oh I did not do this :

to fade in and out it's the same as before but instead of duplicating the Image layers you use the next frame and duplicate the plain layers and change their Opacity...if you duplicate the image layer instead of moving on to a seperate image "Frame" then your animation may get Jumpy...or stutter

Do I really need to do this to stop making it jumpy even though I didn't do this in the first place And it still came out jumpy but I think the main problem is they way I have placed the layers...so I just need help on how to go back to my layers and edit them

And I also did another of Brandon Lee



But it's still too fast its set at 10 ml as well ... and yet again I didn't do the fade in and out

Need help Sai please


Thanks
Dal

[Saiyuki]

Right...Firstly...you have done a great job Dal...granted they;re not perfect butfor a first try they're pretty close

Right...to be able to line the layers up better so they don't move around like they seem to be in the tut animation (Ziyi Dancing)
basically either don't move them in the first place
IE: open as layer scale...then open the next one as layer and scale to the same dimension but don't moe any of them

If you have to move the layers (EG ...the action is all to one side of the frame and you want it in the center) scale your first frame and position it where you think it looks best then open as layr the next frame....go into the "Layers box"

(2.4... "Dialogues"..."Layers"....
...2.6.... "Windows"..."Dockable dialogs"..."Layers")

and change the "Opacity" of the layer on top....that way you should be able to kind of see the layer below so that you can line it up as best you can

BTW I noticed your pretty border there is absolutly perfect ...it doesn't look like you missed a single frame and they line up just right too, so well done

I think your brandon Lee animtion is really quite good too ...the frames are well lined up, but I think this has the same problem as the Dean one that ilaria posted...I think the main reason it runs so fast is becaue there just aren't enough frames per second...you need lots of frames/images for it to run smoothly...

unfortuantly for some reason it won't let me save it to my comp so I can see if re-aranging it would help ..it keeps coming up as a .bmp...which is wrong as it's a .gif I can see that ....bloody computer

anyway for now...
This animation is a 54 frame job...



yet it runs for just 6 seconds...so it's about 8.5/9 frames per second, you need lots and lots of images to string together...too many gaps that are more than a few frames long them it goes all jumpy or just way too fast...

this one is a massive 85 layers...and still only runs for about 10 seconds...



It is really tricky and really annoying/time consuming...but once you get the amount of frames per second you need the resuts are totally worth it

I'll try and do an example of what I mean later...as I said it takes a while to get the caps
...but I'll show you the differene between taking every frame...every other frame, every third frame and every fourth frame..you wouldn't think it's be alot but when it all comes together the results from getting the right FPS can make the difference

BTW I most often take every third frame for a Real time look
...but to do a slo-mo you'll need to use every other or every single frame

I'll be back ASAP to show you the differences

...for doing a vid style animation getting the right caps is usually the hardest part

[x...H.I.M...X]

Ahh Jeebees ... I didn't save the images and then open them as layer scale I'll try that and see if it works

Aww Your making me go all ..y Thank you Jen

I'll be back later

Edited: Jen *squeals*

I've done it





*Goes off to make more animations*

Thank you Sai Your the best!

Dal

[Saiyuki]

Perfect Dal!!!

Welldone

I will have the Frames example up here later..I haven't had time on th comp over the last couple of days

Thanks for being patient

[x...H.I.M...X]

awwessssh thats okay dokey

Take your time!

Thankies

[Saiyuki]

*Facepalm*...man I suck....totally forgot to post these

My speed examples

every single frame...very slow



every other frame...slow but better...



Every third frame...just about right wouldn't you say?



when you get to about every fourth or fith frame it just moves too quickly and stutters
...I hope these examples help you guys out more...

with a vid animation you really need as many frames as you can get
...if you don't have enough frames it just won't work too well
...that's the part, as i said before, that takes all the time...getting the caps in the first place

[Supernatural_luver]

hey Sai!
this tut is brilliant and Im so glad you made it for everyone! I was wondering how to do this...
so I have slowly been working through your tut for a while now and Im at the text part and Iv hit a roadbump
anyway here is what I have (its not too clean and a bit slow and such but here it is)

now I tried to do the fade away but its not working...
i did all the layer how you wanted me to and such...
heres a picture of my dialogue...


^that is the whole part I had to do two pictures I hope that makes sense

anyway I don't know if that would be any help to you or not
tried merging a few layer together
before it like got lighter in one frame at the end but it seemed like that was because I duplicated the layer.... you know how an image gets lighter when you duplicate it?
i dont know what I did to make it go fuzzy at the end...

anyway id love the help!
thanks so much! I hope a made at least a little sense!

[Saiyuki]

ahh..I think I know what it is..

You see a .gif image can't undertand a faded image...which is why you have to merge it down to a solid layer...so by adding transparent layers with the lettering "Smile" on them you're just adding more of the word and it won't fade because it can still see the one's below the top layer (because of the transparency)

What you'll need to do is duplicate the layer with the plain Sam image (EG: Base layer) and move it to the top of the pile (Drag it in your layers box if you want)

duplicate it a few more times then duplicate your layer with the full "Smiley" text on it a few times...and place one in-between each of the layers with the sam image and then change the opacity of the text layers and merge them down

so in your dialogs box it should be something like...
---------------
Sam ...(Top layer)
Sam
Smiley @ 10% opacity...then merge down
Sam
Smiley @ 30% opacity...then merge down
Sam
Smiley @ 70% opacity...then merge down
Sam
Smiley
Smile
Smil
Smi
Sm
S
Sam...(Bottom/Base/Background layer)
--------------------

...that make sense?

it should them look roughly like this...



I also duplicated the lettering layers (so there are 2 layers of "S", two of "Sm", two of "Smi" etc...) to slow it down a bit

I saved it at 50ms too

I hope that helps you out

[Supernatural_luver]

ahh thank you so much! you are the best!
I'll try it again when i have more time...
but thanky thanky thanky!!!

[Saiyuki]

You're welcome
I just hope it helps

Let me know if it's still not happening, we may have to try somthing else

[Supernatural_luver]

okay I will let you know!

[rawr_dinosaur]

THANK YOU. SO FREAKING MUCH.

I've been trying to figure out how to do text on a .gif for-freaking-ever. -tackles- Thank you, thank you, thank you!

=D



(Not exactly perfect but at least I know more of what I'm doing now!)