Gimp Tutorial - Blog Posts

can you show us how you make gifs ? gimp is confusing ahh

Sure! ill try to make it as simple and quick as possible

I’ll explain how I do the blinking since it’s what i do most, 

this is just how I do it, there are many other ways but i found this to be the best for me :)

so to achieve this blinking touka…. (ignoring the red ghoul eye)

We are gonna first need to draw the “base” image on whatever program you prefer (photoshop, Krita,SAI.. doesn’t matter) , mine are always the subject with the eyes open. Also, try to not have TOO much detail, I usually don’t spend much time on the hair, but rather focus on the skin and features.

Now that we have that exported as a .PNG file, we are going to create the movement of the blinking, i usually do four frames consisting of the eyes open, slightly closed,¾ closed and closed (i just draw over my base drawing and save as i go). you should end up with four drawings with everything except the eyes being the same! >>

Now let us jump to GIMP,open up your base image, then “file>open as layer” for all the other frames, you should have something like this on the layers tab to the left of the screen. 

Now to achieve a natural blink, simply right click layer “3/4 closed” and copy it then paste it on top of “eyes closed” repeat that to the remaining layers, I hope this picture makes it much clearer >>

Ok, now go to filters>animation>playback, this will show you a demo of how your animation loops (this is where to do changes to your drawing if you don’t like how the eyes blink)

you should now get a nice blink! like this>

following this concept, you can copy and paste more “base drawing” layers to get a longer pause between blinks, or add two blinks close together then one blink after a few second pause (pretty common and gives a natural effect)

keep using the playback button to check on how your image blinks until you’re satisfied with the number of blinks and how long the pauses are.

alright, now that you have your desired blinking animation, do you just save? nope! for your drawing to load faster on tumblr you need to get your drawing to the smallest possible file size.

to do that you need to go “to filters>animation>optimize (for gif)”, this great tool cuts your file size from 2 MB to 90 KB!! (with compromising a little bit of quality)

after optimizing GIMP will open a new window with the now smaller file sized drawing, simply save that by going to “file>export as..>”  and save your file as a .GIF file, a new window will pop up and it should look like this>>

click on the “as animation” button and the “loop forever” button, THESE ARE IMPORTANT. now just click export and you are done!!

of course this is just the very simple basics of how I use GIMP to get blinking effect, If you want another tutorial on glowing effects or changing colours please let me know! I hope this was helpful :)