I encountered this interesting web comic* which appears to be produced using just a combination of PNGs and a some Javascript. The approach is rather interesting and I would be keen to learn how to do something similar in GIMP (the Hobo Lobo strip is made in Photoshop CS3).


* Warning: the comic contains some inappropriate language; nothing that really assails the senses, just the occasional curse word.

Wow; surprizingly fast loading too. Only glimpsed (did not read; lol). Still wonder why MNG (or aPNG for that matter) was really never adopted by the browser decision makers (other then Firefox of course w.r.t. aPNG). Still cool that javascript can be used to do animations like this using plain PNG files though.

just looked at this fellows About page and I love what he says:

Opera can also play animated pngs, btw

and I agree......this should be the standard

Very cool.

Looks pretty amazing!

That is a real cool way to show animation though.

That was pretty interesting! I would love to do something like that!

I've seen that effect before seems like on a documentary about something.

Hey gents, thanks for the kind words. Noticed this thread in my googalerts, wanted to answer your questions.

First, a clarification: the only real animation is the crystal ball (and it is just an animated gif). All other things are either jpegs (where no transparency is needed) or plain pings otherwise (they're 32-bit pings that have been processed into 8-bit pings with palleted alpha).

On the art side of things, in Photoshop, I have created a master document with smart objects for each level of the parallax—and then sliced up the smart objects on the inside to be able to export assets as smaller image files. One document per page of the comic. I don't know if/how Gimp handles slices and smart objects, but that is basically it. Essentially, any program that can export transparent things such as gifs or pings can be used to export assets for this kind of comic. I am just most comfortable with Photoshop and my method makes it relatively easy to keep track of how things will look while I am working, before anything has been exported and plugged into the website.

Some of this jargon may differ for Gimp so I am not sure about what these things are called, if they exist or whether they work the same.

Hahahaha, I like this guy!

http://www.zazzle.com/friends_dont_let_friends_use_internet_explorer_tshirt-235250956290256769
I want one!

That really was a neat effect applied to that comic strip. Would be interesting to try to mimic that animation effect using Gimp and/or GAP.

That is a cool effect.

From what I can tell, the website uses a technique similar to the JQuery plug-in: Parallax. You basically create your images and the plug-in allows you to scroll them on separate planes, at different speeds, giving you a nice depth effect.

JQuery plug-in: Parallax - Allows animation of simple parallax animations by animating the background-position of <div> elements.

Usage:

This site looks like a good resource with some basic demos of the technique: jonraash.com.

Here's another: jParallax.

Cool header using jParallax on this page.

The Hobo Lobo website calls this script: parallaxer.js, which looks to contain lots of code to get the left<-->right scrolling synced and smoothed up just right.

It shouldn't be too difficult to build a webpage template where you could just drop in image frames for a scrolling comic strip.

This is an excellent example of programming and graphics design coming together to create dynamic art.

GIMP can do slice for mapping areas to URL links (only done this once for a web linked image a long time ago). To intermingle different graphics in mapped areas I'm not so sure. Still that is a cool idea to reduce bandwidth (only have selective areas animate keeping other image parts intact that is). Cool info.

AFAIK, Slice is only available for Linux/Python. I've used it many times to chop up images.

Don't know if it would install in Windows if Python is installed.

If it will help the Windows users, I am prepared to rain dance. My rain dance gear is at arm's length and now has some new tools and instruments for accuracy performance testing. Anything to help an artist out. Besides this type of art is far more captivating than those normal block cells.

I agree i would much rather look at a animation such as this one.
This is more like real art you know?