Simple Gimp Animations - Orange Falling

This is the first gimp tutorial I’m posting on Gimptalk. Here, I’m going to do a demonstration of an orange falling from an orange tree. Hope this would be helpful to all gimp lovers.

I found this free stock image of an orange tree from http://www.123rf.com/photo_10928396_stylized-orange-tree.html.

The first step is to download the image from the link given here. Save the file in your computer.

Open Gimp. I’m using Gimp 2.8. Go to File menu, and ‘create a new image’ of size 1000 pixels in width and 800 pixels in height.

Go to ‘File’ and ‘open as layers’ the stock photo saved in your computer

Scale the image to canvas size by using the scale tool found in the tool box

To make the animation, I’m choosing the orange at the far left. Create the duplicate layer of the background. Erase the

orange selected for the animation using the brush tool. I’m using ‘paintbrush- 2. Hardness 050’of size 20.00

Keep the original background above the layer from which the orange is removed. From the tool box select the paths tool. Make a selection around the circumference of the orange by using the paths tool. From the ‘tool options’ of the path tool, choose ‘ selection from the path’

With having the selection made, right click and copy the selection. Right click again and paste the selection.

In the layers dialogue, you will find ‘floating selection (pasted layer)’. Right click it, and click on ‘to new layer’

Erase the unwanted parts by using the background eraser tool

Go to select and do ‘selection path’. Go to ‘select’ again and choose ‘grow’. Grow the selection by 5 pixels.

Go to ‘filters menu’ and do a Gaussian blur of 5px. This is to blur the region around the orange so that uneven edges around the circumference are removed.

Remove the white background.

Place the background with orange removed on top of the new background layer. Rename the two backgrounds as background and background F and rename the pasted layer as falling 1

In the layers dialogue, select the pasted layer and drag the orange downwards so that it is below the position where orange was before falling. Use move tool for this task.

Now create a duplicate layer of background F and rename this copy layer with background F2. Place this layer above ‘ falling 1’

Create a duplicate layer of ‘falling 1’ and rename it with falling 2. Place this layer above background F2

Use move tool to move orange downwards so that it is placed below the position in ‘falling 1’

Now, create another duplicate layer of background F and rename it as background F3. Place this layer above falling 2

The final layer is a duplicate of ‘falling 1’ again. Rename it with falling 3 and place it above background F3.

Make all the background F layers invisible by locking it (by making the eye invisible). Keep all the ‘falling layers’ visible and position the oranges in such a way that oranges don not overlap with each other. Use move tool for this task.

Make sure all the backgrounds layers are placed in order i.e. the original background with the orange as layer 1. The background with the orange removed is placed at position 2. The ‘falling 1’ layer is above ‘background F’. The ‘falling 2’ and ‘falling 3’ are placed above two background F’s copies respectively.

Go to file and export the document. Select the file type as gif. In the ‘export image as gif’, choose an appropriate delay time for frames. I’m choosing 400 seconds

U can use firefox to view the animation

This is the animation made by me. U can view the animation by visiting http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/9072/simpeanimations.gif