Creating Simple Animated GIF Images Using The Gimp

Yesterday I was hanging out with my downstairs neighbor when we got to talking about the movie Tropic Thunder, and of course the conversation turned to Tom Cruise's awesome dance at the end of the movie. You know the dance, where his character, Les Grossman, busts a move or two to some Ludacris.

I decided I had to rip that dance seen so I could make an animated GIF of it. On Windows, I usually use Beneton Movie Gif, but I had to do it using my Bauer-Puntu laptop. What program will make animated GIF images on Linux? The Gimp of course! Actually, The Gimp can do it in Windows too, but that is neither here nor there...

Anyway, creating animated GIFs in The Gimp is pretty easy, just do the following:

1. Get the images you want to animate in a single folder for easy importing.
2. Open The Gimp
3. Click File > Open As Layers then browse to the folder where your images are located.
4. Select the first picture, then press CNTRL+A to select them all, then click OK.
5. The pictures will all open as layers.
6. Click Filters > Animation > Optimize for GIF to save space
   
7. Now click File > Save As and save it as a gif, then export it as animation.
   
8. You will be prompted to set the timing at this point, select whatever you think is appropriate
9. BAM! You are done!

NOTE: If you want a different timing for a particular frame, you will need to change Miliseconds number in the layer name to whatever number you want. For example, if you you will have to change your layer from "File_Name.jpg (100ms)" to "File_Name.jpg (500ms)".

Here is my Tropic Thunder animated Gif:

(Best Viewed in Firefox)

I love me some animated GIFs! I want to see what you have created! Post me some links to your animated GIF work in the comments!

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