Computersight -

I am going to show you how to make a winking smiley. It is VERY easy to adapt this to just about anything if you use your imagination, this is just introducing you to how you make an animation.

The smiley we’re going to make is going to be 15×15 Pixels big, which is about standard size for most emoticons.

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Zoom in to about 800-1600% THis way you will be able see what you’re doing.

Click on the elipse select tool, and make the selction fit perfectly inside the square. Then use the pencil to outline the inside of the circle. (Make sure you set the scale to as low as it will go, with the smallest brush)

Now use the elipse tool to select the INSIDE of the circle. (its alright if you have the border in the selection. Just erase anything inside the new selection)

Now select the Blend Tool. Make the foreground color (The one on top) the color you want your smiley to be, and leave the background color white. I’m making my smiley yellow.
Click on the top left corner, and drag to the bottom right of inside your selection.

Now that your backround is done, lets get to the fun part! This emoticon

Add a new layer, make it transparent.

For every action that the smiley will do, you will need a new layer. This smiley is quite simple and only has a few layers.

Select the pencil, and make sure the foreground color is set to black. Now draw on the face. Just 2 lines for the eyes, and a dot..then a pixel to the bottom right, draw a line, then another dot a pixel to the top right of that. (see picture below)

Simple as that.

Right click on the backround layer, and click “Duplicate Layer”. Drag this to the top. Right click on it again, and select “Add Layer Mask”.  Draw EVERYTHING black. (This will make everything transparent) Now use white and draw over the right eye. (A layer mask works by erasing anything you draw with black, and makes anything you draw with white re-appear. The reason for using a layer mask in this situation is to keep the color gradient. If you want you smiley one solid color, just draw over the eye with that color) Right click on the layer and “Apply Layer Mask”

Now draw a line where the right eye was.

Thats it for the drawing.

Click on Filters>>Animation>>Optimize (for GIF)

The window that pops up is now all you need. You can close the other window, or save it as aan .XCF just in case you mess things up, you can go back to that. (For things that are as easy as this, I dont do save it. But for things that take a long time and a lot of work, I prefer to save it every now and then.)

If you click on >Playback then you can see the effects. Obviously right now its playing WAAAYY to fast. We need to adjust the timing.

Right click on the middle layer, and click “Merge Down”. (I forgot to mention this earlier. This is so GIMP doesnt use the backround as a scene in the animation.)

Rename the top Layer to “Background copy(500ms)(combine): and the background layer to “Background(700ms)(combine)”

Check your results. (Filters>>Animation>>Playback)

It looks pretty darn good now.

To save it, click on File>>Save As. Save it as Wink.Gif
When you save it, a new window will pop up. Select “Save as Animation” for the top part, and for the bottom part select “Covert to Indexed Using Default Settings. (So it manually to Tune Result)” Finaly, clicko n export at the bottom.

ANOTHER window will pop up. For this one, make sure you have the “Loop Forever” box checked. All the other settings are optional.

And here is what you should get:   Or something similar! 

Thats all there is to it!