This is an example image of animating brushes. I used the Sparks brush that comes packaged with GIMP.



Lesson #1

Open a new image, make it 600 x 600 pixels, fill the background layer with white. That will give you a lot of room to work. You may want to practice with smaller ones later.

Make a new transparent layer and name it Layer#1. Get in the habit of naming new layers by adding #1 to the name. No spaces between the name and the #1. When you duplicate it, it will automatically make it #2

Near the top of the Layers dialog there are 4 little tabs. Hover your mouse over each tab to see what each one is.

Stack of white papers = Layers
Stack of red, green, blue rectangles = Channels - color RGB
Line-like things = Paths
Yellow arrow = Undo history

First, add the Brushes tab to the Layers dialog. If you don't want to leave it there, after the lesson you can remove it.

Below the stack of white papers (Layers tab) is the word, Layers; move your mouse to the right of the word Layers and slide directly to the tiny arrow on the right. Hovering your mouse over the arrow, you'll see the words, "Configure this tab."

Click that tab and click Add tab. Go down to Brushes and click. Now you have brushes up in those tabs. Whatever the last brush was you selected will show there or the default black circle.

Click the Brushes tab. You can see the brushes. You can widen the palette and see more or move the slider up and down. I have my Brushes, Gradients, Patterns and Fonts there. They are so much easier to see there. If you ever want to take one of those tabs out, click on the tab of the one you want out and click the little arrow and select, Detach tab. It will show up as a separate dialog and you can click the X in the corner to get rid of it from your screen.

Click the Brushes tab if it isn't already open. Look closely at the brushes. Some have little red triangles by their plus signs. If you click one of those with the mouse and hold the mouse button down, it will show the brush in action. Down at the bottom of the Brushes tab is the refresh button. If you add a brush while GIMP is open, click that and the Brush will appear in the dialog.

Click the Layers tab (white stack of papers).

You should have two layers: Background and Layer#1. Click Layer#1 to be sure it is selected.

Now you're going to make a path.

Press the B button. That selects the Paths tool over in the main Toolbox.

Starting at the left of the image, make a zigzagged path by clicking from point to point across the image. You will see purple circles and a purple line.

Click the Paths tab. You will see your zigzagged line in the little white preview window there. Note: I checked in v2.6.2 and there is no black path in the little preview window. It shows in v2.4x.

To get rid of those purple dots and lines, press the B key again. Click the eye next to the white preview window and you can see your path in the Image window. You won't need to see it all the time; I just wanted you to see that you can view the path in the Image window. Click the eye again and it's gone.

Now, stroke the path with a brush. Click the Brushes tab and select a brush, preferably animated but any brush will do for now.

Click the Paths tab again. Down at the bottom just to the left of the Trash can on the far right is the Paint along the path button. Hover your mouse over it to make sure you have the right one and click it.

In that dialog, tick Stroke with a paint tool and use the Paint brush which is the default brush. Click Stroke. Now you can see the brush following the zigzaggy path you made.

You may need to make the brush smaller, jitter it some, space it more.

In the Toolbox click the Paintbrush tool button. Down below the tool buttons you can see some options.

Scale changes the size.

I can't tell you what setting to use because I don't know which brush you are using. You'll have to scale it until you come up with a pleasing size.

Apply jitter makes it bounce around a bit instead of strictly following the path.

Jitter: The amount of jitter depends upon the brush you are using. Go ahead and make the jitter 3 for now.

Use color from gradient: You can tick that one, choose a gradient and your brush will take on the colors of the gradient.

Back over in the Layers dialog, click the brushes tab and look at the bottom.The spacing is down there. To make the brushes farther apart, move the slider to the right. Almost all of the brushes that I make are spaced 100. I space somewhere between 100 and 200 ... usually in the 160's. Just slide it over and then see what happens.

Go back to the Paths tab. Press delete and you have a blank image window again.

Click the Paint along the path button again and see what comes out. If you want to change anything, press the Delete key and go back and work with the settings. As you can see, it's not an exact science. Practice so that it becomes easy for you.

Time for a break. There is a lot to digest but nothing very difficult. It involves a lot of clicking.

This tutorial will have more lessons about animating the brushes. In the meantime practice, practice, practice. You'll probably get ideas and make some nice images just using this much.

Lesson 2

Start with a new transparent image 600 x 300 pixels. If your name is longer than six letters, make the image 700 x 300 pixels.

I will give the settings I used if you want to follow along using the same size and color. The font, fill pattern, and sparks brush I used come prepackaged with GIMP.

For the Text tool:
Color: 000069
Font: Sans Bold Italic
Size: 125

With the Text tool type your name. If it is longer than six letters you will need to start with a larger width image. Or if you prefer, type a different word or name.

Use the Move tool to center the text. It doesn't have to be exactly centered.

Right-click the Layer that has your name and select Edit Layer Attributes. Click in the Layer name slot so the text is no longer highlighted and add #1 to the end of the layer name. Click OK.

Right-click the layer again and select Layer to Image Size.

Again, right-click the text layer and select Alpha to Selection. Your letters will be surrounded by "marching ants."

In the Image window menu, click Select > Shrink > 2 pixels.

Click the Bucket Fill Tool in the Toolbox. In the toolbox dialog for the Bucket tool, tick Pattern. Highlight the pattern name (Pine) and start typing Electric Blue. Before you finish typing it will show in a list. Click the name of the pattern to select it. In the dialog below the pattern choice, be sure to tick, Fill whole selection. Click the selected area in your text and it will fill with the pattern.

Do not deselect the text. You will maintain the selection until you are finished.

In the Layers tab, click the Duplicate the layer button at the bottom until you have six layers of text. You can use fewer layers but five or 6 layers give the best action and look good. You can have more than that, too, but use six layers this time and you can experiment later.

Select text layer #6 if it isn't already selected, and click the Create a new layer button. Name the new layer, sparks#1. This layer is used to experiment until you get your brush adjusted to your preferences and then deleted. Make sure that layer is selected.

Click the Paths tab. At the bottom click the Selection to path button. It is a red-orange circle with path lines above and below it. When you click it, a new red-orange square appears. That is the Path to selection button. If you lose your selection, you can click that button and restore the selection.

Click the Paintbrush tool in the Toolbox. In the Brush slot, highlight the existing text and start typing Sparks. The sparks brush will appear in the list. Select it.
These are the settings I used in the Brushes dialog:
Scale: 0.50
Apply jitter: 2.0

Over in the Layers dialog, click the Brushes tab. At the bottom make the spacing 25.0

Now you are ready to try the brush. Click the Paths tab, click the Paint along the path button, then tick Stroke with a paint tool and use the default Paintbrush in that dialog. You will see the sparks in the image window. When you experiment to find the settings you want, if you don't like what you see, press the Delete key, change your settings and repeat the above procedure.

Now that you have seen that your settings are right, click the layers tab make sure the sparks#1 layer is selected and click the Trashcan at the bottom to delete the layer.

Click the Background layer, delete it. Click the bottom text layer #1, then hold down the Shift key and click the eye next to it. Only one layer is visible now.

Click the Paths tab, click Stroke with a paint tool and you will see sparks on your first layer. At this point, if you don't like what you see, press Ctrl + Z (Undo) and it will undo the brush and you can re-stroke with the paint tool.

Click the Layers tab, click layer #2, click the eye next to it so that it shows.

Return to the Paths tab and Stroke with a paint tool. Return to the layers and click layer #3, click the eye and back to the Paths tab. Continue to do that until you have finished the six layers. Now you can deselect. Ctrl + Shift + A or Select > None.

Now you are ready to play the animation. In the image window select Filters > Animation > Playback. Click the Play button and you can see your animated text in action. Close Playback by clicking the X in the upper right corner.

You are finished. In the image window, Image > Autocrop image will remove the extra canvas around your picture.

Make your background color the color you will be showing your image against, select the bottom layer of your image, in the image window Layer > Transparency > Semi-flatten. Select layer #2 and press Ctrl + V (repeats semi-flatten). Do this with each layer. You are ready to save your image.

File > Save as > myimagename.gif. Browse to the folder you want to save it in. Click Save. Save as Animation, default speed is 100 which mine is. If you want it a bit slower, choose up to 130ms - much slower than that makes it look sluggish. Disposal: click the down arrow and choose Replace.

wow is there a video for things?

the effect is really nice..very nice.. love it!

Very nice tutorial O!
Thanks for sharing it.

Another old tutorial (Nov 08) resurrected. I see I can update it a bit. Thanks everyone.



Miguel, I don't make videos.