GIMP Bible

Chapter 19. Using GIMP Animation Package

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Making animations from layers and layers from animations

• Using traditional animation methods in GIMP

• Automating in-betweens

GIMP can do animation. It's one of the things that many people don't realize about it. Even without any additional extensions, the official release of GIMP has been able to generate animated GIF files for years. But when you add on the tools and features provided by GIMP Animation Package (GIMP-GAP or GAP for short; it's a lot easier than saying the GNU's Not Unix Image Manipulation Program Animation Package), the animation possibilities with GIMP become even broader. This chapter covers the use of GIMP to create those simple animated GIFs as well the use of GAP for more advanced animation projects. The next chapter covers how you can use GAP's features to let you use GIMP's tools on videos and animations that have already been produced. That means to get the most use out of this part in the book, you need to make sure you have GAP installed on your computer. It doesn't ship with GIMP by default. If you don't already have it, flip ahead to Chapter 21 and read the section on installing GAP. Once you have it installed, come on back to this chapter and have some fun.

Be aware that this chapter covers topics and terminology specific to traditional hand-drawn animation.

Note

It's not the intent of this chapter to teach you the basic principles of animation. Volumes and volumes of books covering this topic have been ...