This tutorial will show you how to make the cloudy foreboding moon object that was used in the
hovering owl animation.
Making The Moon and Clouds Layers
Open a New 400x400 image (File | New)
Save it into a working folder (maybe named foreboding moon) and name the image file parts.xcf
Drag horizontal guidelines down from the ruler bar at the top of the image window to positions 340, 200, and 60. If you look at the bottom of your image window frame, as you drag the guideline, you should see a continually updated Add Guide message telling you what position your guideline is at.
Drag vertical guidelines from the ruler bar on the left side of your image to positions 340, 200, and 60.
Alternatively, from your image window you can select (Image | Guides | New Guide) to set the various guidelines if you have a hard time setting them up using your mouse.
Your guides should be arranged as shown in the image below.
Add a New Layer to the image (Layer | New Layer) and name the layer Moon.
Select the Ellipse Select Tool.
In the Tool Options Dialog window for the Ellipse Select Tool, make sure that the following are checked (activated): Antialiasing, Feather edges (use a Radius value of 10.0), Expand From Center, Fixed Aspect Ratio and make sure the Aspect Ratio is 1:1.
Place your mouse cursor at the point where the two center guidelines intersect in the middle of the screen at x,y position 200,200. Hold down your left mouse button and drag the mouse cursor down and towards the left until the circular selection is touching all four outer guidelines as shown below:
Change the Foreground Color to a5a5a5 and the Background Color to e9e9e9
Select the Blend Tool. For the Tool Options for the Blend Tool, set Shape to Radial.
Place your mouse cursor at the point where the two center guidelines intersect at the middle of the image and hold down your left mouse button while dragging it to the right along the middle horizontal guideline until you reach the far right vertical guideline.
Then select
Select | None
The circular selection will now have a gradient fill as shown below:
That will be used as the moon object in the animation.
Add another New Layer to the image (Layer | New Layer) and name it Clouds.
Select the Rectangle Select Tool.
Beginning at the upper left corner where the left Vertical and top Horizontal guidelines intersect, drag a rectangular selection by dragging down to the middle horizontal guideline and right to the middle vertical guideline creating a small square selection:
Then select
Layer | Crop To Selection
Then
Select | None
Then select
Filters | Render | Clouds | Solid Noise
As shown above, set the X size and Y size each to 2.0.
Activate Tilable.
Click New Seed until you end up with a design you like.
Click OK.
Duplicate the Clouds Layer and using the Move Tool, move it down to the square below bound by the outer and center guidelines:
Place your mouse cursor inside the Layers Dialog window over the Clouds Copy Layer and right-click and from the menu that opens select Merge Down. You will then have a rectangular Clouds Layer as shown below:
Duplicate that Layer twice.
Using the Move Tool, move Clouds Copy#1 of the duplicated Layers over to the right to be bounded by the vertical center and outer guidelines and the two outer horizontal guidelines as shown below:
Move Cloud Copy, the other duplicated Layer so that it's left side is touching the outer Vertical guideline.
It will extend beyond the boundary of the image boundary as shown below:
In the Layers Dialog Window turn off the visibility (eyeball icons) of all Layers except for the three Cloud Layers:
In the Layers Dialog Window, right-click on one of the visible Cloud Layers and from the menu that opens select Merge Visible Layers.
In the Dialog Box that opens, accept the default of
Expand as necessary.
Then click on
Merge.
Your final Clouds Layer will now look like this in your image window:
In the above image, notice the yellow dotted outline showing the border of the Cloud Layer after the merge.
In the Layers Dialog Window, turn on the visibility of all Layers.
Setting Up The Animation
Open a new 400x400 image (File | New)
Bucket Fill the Background Layer with color Black.
Save the image into your working folder as background_000001.xcf
Select
Video | Duplicate Frames
In the Duplicate Frames Dialog window, set N times to a value of 29.
That will give us a total of 30 frames. The one we already have and the 29 copies that will be made.
Select Video | Move Path
In the Move Path Dialog window:
1.) Set the Source Image/Layer (A) to Moon
2.) Set Stepmode (B) to None
3.) Activate Instant Apply ( C )
4.) Click on Anim Preview (D)
5.) For the small window that opens, select Exact Object on Frames
6.) GAP will render the preview. You may watch the preview. You will see no animation since we are just placing the moon into the scene. However, animation or not, I still always use the Anim Preview button just to make sure the animation is playing as expected. With so many controls to use in Move Path, it can be easy to make a mistake. Easier to fix it from a preview than after adding it to the actual image.
7.) After viewing the preview, close out the preview and the small image file that GAP creates. Select Don't Save.
8.) If the preview went as expected, then you can Click OK (E)
Select Video | Move Path
This time we set up the clouds moving past the moon.
1.) Set Source Image/Layer (A) to Clouds
2.) Set Stepmode (B) to None
3.) Activate Instant Apply ( C ) It's always good to see the effect of changes real time.
4.) Set the Mode (D) to Multiply
5.) Set the Opacity (E) value to 60.0
6.) Click once on the Add Point Button (F)
7.) Double-click inside the X position (G) white text box and change the zero to -140 (minus 140). Then click either your TAB key or Enter key to set this value in memory.
8.) Click on the Anim Preview Button (H). In the small window that opens, select Exact Object On Frames. Change the Framerate to 10.0.
9.) When you watch the animation, you will see the clouds slowly moving across the moon. When you are finished watching the preview, close out the preview window and the little image file that GAP creates. Select Don't Save.
10.) If the preview looked OK, click OK (I) in the Move Path window.
Once GAP finishes rendering the scene select:
Video | Frames to Image
Leave all of the default settings in the Frames to Image Dialog Window, but change the timing in Layer Basename to 100ms as shown above. Then click OK.
A new 30 layered image is created. From that image's window, If you select
Filters | Animation | Playback
and watch the animation. You will see that it stops momentarily at each cycle of the animation.
This occurs because
the bottom and top layers are identical in that 30 layer image. In the Layers Dialog window,
select and delete the top layer. This will leave 29 layers remaining.
At this point, you can save this image as an animated GIF image. Since we are not working with a lot of colors and limited detail, I recommend following the next step of optimizing the image file to reduce it's final file size:
In the now 29 layer image window, select
Filters | Animation | Optimize (for GIF)
This creates another multi-layered image file. You can now close out the previously created 29 layer one and select Don't Save.
Save your optimized animated image file as clouds_over_moon.gif, or whatever name you want. Just make sure to use the .gif suffix at the end of the filename. Then click Save.
The Export Dialog window will open. Make sure that you set it to Save As Animation:
Click on the Export button.
Another Save window will open, just accept the default options and click Save.
Congratulations, you have just created a foreboding moon animation.
One could then add a foreground animation to the above scene. I made a hovering bat, but imagine having another silhouette object passing in front of the moon, maybe a witch on a broomstick or whatever you might imagine.
Finally, since the present builds on the past, I wish to give credit to fencepost. He originally created a snow animation scene where he used tiled layers to create a seamless snow animation scene. I adapted his concept for this particular animation. The use of tiled repetitive images has lots of uses in animation.
Thank you for checking out this tutorial.