Welcome back to HiMAP everyone! Though this is technically the fourth lesson, it can be completed before completing the previous lessons. I do recommend, however, that you at least glance through previous lessons before starting lesson 5 next time. This blog will always be available, so feel free to reference past lessons.
Anyway...GIMP!
The program that we will initially be using to create small animation projects is called GIMP. This acronym stands for "GNU Image Manipulation Program". As you can see, even that explanation of the acronym has an acronym. Actually, when an acronym is a word you cannot pronounce (GNU, PBS, BBC, etc.), we call these 'initialisms', NOT acronyms. The initialism GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix".
That's right. The definition of the initialism is the initialism itself. This sort of play on language is called a 'recursive acronym', or a 'recursive initialism' in this case. When you spend years creating a program as complex as GIMP, you are allowed to have a strange sense of humor.
In any case, the GNU Project's main aim is to develop "a sufficient body of free software [...] to get along without any software that is not free." What this means is that the GIMP you will be using is NOT the trial version. It is NOT a reduced version. The GIMP you will be using is the full product, brought to you free of charge thanks to the Open Source movement.
Now that you are armed with this bit of history, we can move on to the actual program.
GIMP makes creating simple GIF animations very, very simple. If you are able to create GIF animations (silent animations that are usually only a few seconds long and looped), then higher quality animations become much more manageable.
This is a small animated GIF I made in GIMP in about ten minutes from start to finish. It's simple, and somewhat crude, but it gets the job done and it helps to illustrate the basics of animation: frames. (Also, yes, I like Harry Potter, so expect to see it crop up in examples from time to time!)
But before you can begin using GIMP to create even the most bare-bones of animations...it stands to reason that you should probably learn how the program is set up!
When you first open up GIMP, you should see a screen that looks something like the image below. Clicking on the images will enlarge them.
- GNU Image Manipulation Program: This area will remain relatively in the background once you actually start creating images. You can think of it as the newspaper that house painters set up.
- Toolbox: This box is pretty self explanatory. If you have ever experimented with MS Paint, you should be familiar with quite a lot of the tools. But, GIMP Is much more advanced than MS Paint. We will be examining these advanced tools later.
- Layers: This is one main advantage that GIMP has over MS Paint. What layers allow you to do is break up an image. For instance, you draw the outline of a head on layer 0. Then, on layer 1, you draw the face. On layer 2 you draw the hair. On layer 3 you draw a cap. If later on you decide you would rather have a bow on layer 3 instead of the cap, erasing the cap will have NO EFFECT on the other layers.
Once you have opened up the program, you are going to want to open up a new document.
Once you have clicked OK, your window should look like this:
As you can see, once you have a file open, a lot more options become available to you in the layer window. Below, I will show you the steps I took to create a small drawing. I will not show you every single tool in action. Instead, I will show you what tools I used to get what result. I want you all to experiment with the tools yourself!
- First thing I decided to do was draw some line art. For this picture I decided to draw Sgt. Frog, one of my favorite cartoon characters.
- As you can see, I added an extra layer. To create an extra layer, you click on the small icon in the bottom corner of the layer window. A dialog box will open up. In this dialog window, I changed the name to 'line art' and clicked OK.
- Then, it was just a matter of painting with the paint brush tool and erasing with the eraser. In the picture, it is obvious that I used multiple sized brushes. You can change the size and shape of your brush in the Brush section of the Toolbox.
Coloring is a very similar process.
- First you create a second layer and call it colors (or whatever you want to call it). Make sure that the color layer is UNDER the 'line art' layer, or else your colors will go over your line art, which you may or may not want.
- In addition to the normal paint and eraser functions, I used the color changer box to pick multiple colors. Unlike in MS Paint that only offers limited ability to select custom colors, GIMP offers multiple sliders to help you fine tune the color you want to pick!
- For this particular picture, I didn't just want normal coloring. To give the illusion of light, I had to make sure that the yellow of the UFO's beam looked like it was glowing.
- To do this, I created a new layer, moving it between the color and line art layers.
- Then, I colored the beam. For this particular tractor beam, I chose yellow.
- Then, in the layer window, making sure the layer of my beam was selected, I adjusted the opacity. 'Opacity' refers to "the degree to which light is NOT allowed to travel through" something. That means the higher the opacity, the more opaque an object, and the less transparent that object is.
- Another advantage GIMP has over MS Paint is the ability to transform objects. Transform, as the name implies, means to change the shape or dimensions of an object.
- For the last step of this picture I drew a tree and put it on a layer.
- I then highlighted the tree with the select tool.
- I copy and pasted a second tree and move it to the other side of the screen.
- Using the transform tools I have high lighted, I made a pretty fat pine tree into a much skinnier one.
- Then, I copied this new skinny tree and moved it to the middle of the image.
And this is the result of a few minutes of playing around on GIMP! Much nicer than MS Paint, I think!
Keep in mind that this was just a very simple image to get you started on using GIMP. Just how powerful of a program is GIMP? Well, here are two artworks from other artists who use GIMP.
You can find these and many more examples of GIMP artwork HERE.
Now that you've been introduced to some of the tools that this program has to offer, go on and experiment! If you find yourself hitting road blocks with no idea of how to fix your problem, try to break your problem into smaller parts. Think about what you DO know how to do and see if you can use a combination of tricks to achieve the result you want. Learning how to turn a problem you DON'T know how to solve into a problem you DO know how to solve is a skill that will get you far in life.
If, however, you have given the problem your best effort but still have no idea what to do, raise your hand and I will come by as soon as I can.
Good luck!
** All images are copyright their respective owners and are used here for educational purposes only.
