Some time ago, Mahvin asked me about doing something like this. At the time I was not able to do it, but today I took some time and completed it. It is done entirely in Gimp and GAP. It took about six hours to do, once I sat down and planned it out:
Dedicated to Mahvin for suggesting this to me.
While it plays as one smooth animation, like most complex animations, it is easier to divide them into separate simple animations and then combine those into the final result. The separate animations combined to make this into one are:
- Intro (You've got mail part) (10 frames with a pause at frame 5)
- Envelope slides in (10 frames with a pause at last frame)
- Envelope flips over (10 frames)
- Envelope flap opens (5 frames)
- Invitation slides out (10 frames with pause at last frame)
- Invitation slides in (which is invitation slides out played in reverse) (10 frames)
- Envelope flap closes (envelope flap opens played in reverse) (5 frames)
- Envelope slides out (10 frames with pause at last frame)
Thank you for checking this out. I hope to be able to provide a guide on how it was done for those interested in attempting it. I emphasize the word guide, because a tutorial would be very long. Depends on my time availability. Thank you.
Edit: I almost forgot to also mention that I used
fencepost's stamp tutorial as the basis for making my stamp on the envelope. I like to give credit where it's due in my work.