Mentor request for gif redraw

[icosahedron]

This is a trial after using the eraser on the gif frames to clean up the bits that shouldn't be there:

Edit: And finally it looks right. (to my non-artistic eye)

What do you think? Job done, or more work needed?

[Redrobes]

I think that looks good.

[icosahedron]

Ok guys, I'm happy with it anyhow.
A few weeks ago I couldn't have attempted anything like this. Just being here on CG has given me the inspiration and confidence to try out things like this, and with your help I've got there.
Thanks again for the advice.

[RobA]

Ok guys, I'm happy with it anyhow.
A few weeks ago I couldn't have attempted anything like this. Just being here on CG has given me the inspiration and confidence to try out things like this, and with your help I've got there.
Thanks again for the advice.

See - Gimp didn't turn out to be so bad... IIR you were fairly resistant in the beginning...

-Rob A>

[icosahedron]

Yeah, Gimp's ok.

Some complex software is capable of doing all sorts of complex stuff, but you need to learn complex instructions even to make it do simple stuff.

Other software is capable of doing complex stuff with complex instructions but can also do simple stuff with only a slight knowledge.

Gimp seems largely to fall into the latter category, though there are still some things I'd rather use MSPaint for - simply because Paint does the same thing with even less complex commands.

For example, I created the smiley and flag outlines in Greenfish Icon Editor, because drawing circles and lines is so ridiculously over-complex in Gimp. It's much quicker and easier to create in GIE and import the png into Gimp for animation and conversion to gif. Paint won't handle transparency, so that would have meant another step.

My initial resistance to Gimp was down to rumours of its complexity.
Maybe the initial slopes are shallow and the big learning curve is yet to be discovered...?

[Midgardsormr]

Rather than "complex," I'd say "deep." There's an awful lot that Gimp is capable of, and to become a virtuoso with a program like that takes a lot of time and effort. However, to do the sorts of things you're starting out with, you don't need to know most of that. If you're content with taking things slowly, the learning curve doesn't necessarily have to be steep.

But when you decide you want to move on and learn a bit more about it, the rest of that functionality will be waiting for you. How fast or slow you learn it is totally up to you.

[icosahedron]

Yeah, I'm comfortable learning a bit at a time, fitting it around other commitments. I'm reasonably happy with both Gimp and Inkscape in that respect. My gripe is with software where you have to learn everything to do anything.

Just going back to the flags again...

I've done another, and I'm still finding a consistent problem with the final gif apparently showing multiple layers simultaneously. I can now clean it up by using the eraser on each frame, but it's a PITA and I'm not sure why I need to. I can't figure why it's not replacing each frame with the next as I instructed it to do in the gif conversion sequence (as RobA suggested). (or rather, it is replacing them, but each frame seems to retain a remnant of underlying frames). Any ideas? Is there something else I'm missing?

My best guess is that when I do the distort on the duplicated layer, it's overlaying the distort on top of the duplicate background instead of replacing the background flag with the distorted one, but if that's it, I can't figure why.

[Redrobes]

Personally I think your best off getting all the frames out as individual images and then modifying them there and putting them all back together as the animation at the end. The collating frames bit of software should then do all the work for you to get the right frame to frame transition effect right.

Just to say that if you had "frame1.png", "frame2.png", "frame3.png" etc then in image magick it would be "convert frame*.png anim.gif" and it ought to do it all for you. Theres a few more optional params you can add to juice it up some more but you don't strictly need them.

[RobA]

I know you are having fun with this, but (for what it is worth) there is an animated flag script available for Gimp:

http://www.td-e.com/soft/fluttering-flag.php

And the result:



adding in the smiley on each layer should be the easy part now..

-Rob A>

[icosahedron]

Doh! Now he tells me.

No seriously, as you say, the flag is just an incidental topic, it's the animation techniques that are interesting me at present, and I'll never cope with scripting, so going that route, although it provides a neat finished product, won't teach me anything.

Nice effect though, I'll remember that if I need a bigger, better flag sometime. My little thing with its botched burn might be ok for a 40x40 icon, but it would look pretty awful on a bigger image.

Cheers.