Animating a stickman
Results

Download and install this mattbat font below, extract the zip file and place font in your Windows Font folder. C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
Either refresh your fonts in Gimp (filters > script-Fu > Refresh scripts) OR reboot Gimp.

link: Mattbat Font

The stickmen are numbered from 1 - 0 as seen in image below

(Each number corresponds with the image above) #1 is the starting of your animation.

- open new layer > fill with white, (default will do). (You can delete it later.)

I will use size 70 font for this tutorial. (You can use whatever size you like)
Using the Mattbats Font,
Click first stickman which will be #1. This will open a new layer
You will now have your first layer for your animation.

Click background for new layer
click second stickman which will be #2


After you add your #2 layer, use your move tool to line up with your #1. (The best way I found is to line up the heads (circles). Don't worry about the bodies. They will be all different.

Carry on with this procedure until you get all 10 layers.
This is what the 10 layers look like.

After you have all the layers, use the new script written by FencePost This will be found at bottom under attachments.
This will layer to image all layers at the same time
Place your new script into your Gimp scripts folder, Go to filters > Script-Fu > Refresh scripts OR reboot your Gimp.
To find this script in Gimp > layer > All Layers to image size

DELETE WHITE BACKGROUND LAYER

When you are finished all 10 layers. go to filters > animation > settings > change the default from 100 to 130 and change keep to replace > ok.
Finished layers after you change the animation settings

Then go > Filters > animation > Playback. if all looks good go to save as stickmen.png
if you have the apng plug-ins installed. save as animation.

If you do not have the apng. save as stickmen.gif > save as animation.....

Good luck and hope you enjoy my tutorial. If you have any problems, please post.....

sidenote:
Thanx for the great script Fencepost. Saves a lot of time.......

That's cute, Molly.

That is very nice "O". love the font, love what you did to Wilber and you even put the dancer in, not only once, but twice. woo hoo...

Thank you for trying my tute....

its windy over here =P

That's fun, Rob.

Hey Rod, that is really great. Yes I would say it is windy. The choices are endless on Gimp......

thanks for doing my tutorial......

Well, I have no apng, so did a gif...but of course that means I needed to put the background on each layer or all you could see was a bunch of black lines moving all over each other. Or am I missing something?

That is very cute, 2-ton. Nice!

Yes that is very cute 2-ton.

I don't know what you mean when you said you had to put the background on each layer. Did you combine background then delete the white background layer?
Did you go to animation > settings and change to replace? That worked for me. What about the "all layers to image size"?
That is all I can think of.
Maybe someone else will be able to think of something else.....

I did do combine background and delete base layer, and I did do all layers to image size. But the screen shot on your tut does not have the layers combined with any background, so I assumed that I did something wrong. also, everyone else's animation look like they have a transparent background.

Your animation is very good, 2-ton. Whatever you did was perfect. You don't have to have a transparent background just because others do.

It's good. Don't knock it!

lol, but I WANT to know how to have an animation with a transparent background. but wait, if a background is transparent, how can you not see all the layers of the animated stuff all at the same time?

OK. I downloaded your image. It is not transparent. The background is solid white.

I changed it to RGB mode, put each layer through Color to Alpha to get rid of the white. Had transparent bgs on all layers.

Ran it through Filters > Animation > Settings with semi-flatten (white) and all of the layers became solid white so I did undo.

Selected the transparent area with the color selector and pressed delete. Did that to all layers. Then did the Settings with semi-flatten again and had transparent areas in the background.

Here it is after I messed with it. You may want to download it and compare it to your image.

complicated! I still cannot figure out why you cannot see through the transparent part of background and see all the black lines from all the layers showing through.

Here are the layers of your animation. The white semi-flattening falls behind your stick figure so they are obscured in the layer stack. That's why you can't see the individual ones in the image - there is no transparency behind the stick figures.



Here is the layer stack in the image with full transparency (no semi-flattening) and you can see some of the stick figure showing through the semitransparent layers - a white bg was added so it would show better for this image.



But ... here is the animation without semi-flattening ... totally trashed because the gif format can not tolerate semi-transparent pixels.



Check out my tutorial about semi-transparency and semi-flattening here and perhaps you can get a better idea of what is happening with the transparency in your gif animation.

my animations/settings wasnt there =(
i had to use scriptfu/anisomething/ then optimize as GIF.
i did use a transparent bg, but had to change manualy all the (combines) to (replaces)
and the 100ms per frame to 130ms....my setup is goofy. =P

Rod do you have the two animation settings scripts and the combine background script?

anim-settings.scm
anim-settings-semiflatten.scm
combine-background.scm

I've attached a zip file with those three scripts in it.

They are all in Filters > Animation

Unzip the scripts and put them into your GIMP scripts folder.

Thought I would try another one. I wanted to make it colored but need help with that, unless I color one at a time through 42 frames

Thanks for the detailed information! I want to get that apng to start working. Or might I have to wait until I upgrade...I'm holding out for the 2.8 release next year.

I would get it now. If you put it in your 2.6 Gimp folder, you can backup all your scripts and plug-ins and put them in the new gimp. You might be waiting a long time for the new version...