Skin of Stars

Found a page with some neat GIMP tricks for photo manipulation.

Linux Focus, GIMP Manipulation.

Don’t be worried by the Linux Focus part, it’s just where the article was written and is just as relevant for Windows versions.

I’m in the process of building an arty website for one of my modules. Truth be told, almost every other one of my modules includes building a website but this one is quite nice as I get to have some fun with it… infact the website ones are always more fun, certainly more fun than computer networks or social research theory. Anyway, I digress, the point here is the arty bits.

Now, I’m not so great at art, the best I can draw is a stick man and certainly not like Lowry did! I’m not even that fantastic at using art packages (my preference being the GIMP). Still, with design you always need to use a graphics package so I do my best to wing it. Luckily I have assistance in the form of resources from deviantArt, so I thought I’d share this little trick.

I always go for the GIMP brushes, but there are brushes for other package, like PhotoShop. Firstly you need to find them. You go to deviantArt.com, then click categories in the top left-ish, then pick resources from the droplist, then application resources then, in my case, GIMP brushes. You can then just browse through them finding ones you like and downloading them.

To add them to GIMP go to the GIMP’s programs folder (its a hidden folder in your home/user for linux so press ctrl+h to see it, you windows boys will have to look for yourself but I presume it’s in Program Files) open it, then open brushes, then just paste them in from the zips.

Hey presto, you’re an instant artist!

Hmm, wonder if you can use the word gif as an adjective… Anyway, I spent a bit of time today making a simple animation inspired by such things as Noah’s photo everyday for 6 years. Thought it would be nice to do a really simple version with photos I’ve taken of myself over the past 3 years. You can see the result in my avatar, but I’ll reproduce it here in case I change it:

It’s not great but it is pretty easy to do. First things first is to get some appropriate software to put this together. In my case I decided to use the GIMP with the GAP extension (erm, I’m just gonna let you find that). I’m sure there are far more specifically tailored programs but I know how to use the GIMP so it saved me spending time having to get familiar with a new UI.

Step two would be to get a tutorial, which luckily for me I have already read and used before on other projects but will be useful for any of you out there who are thinking a little bit of animation might also be a little bit of fun.

Obviously my attempt at animation isn’t exactly going to get me a job with Disney just yet but it is an interesting little experiment. I’ll also say that I had far better luck when I tried the same thing thing with some photos of my sister. Whereas I have a tendency to only take the odd photo of myself for avatars and the like and make do with the first one or two, my sister is more compelled to take many and then decide which one to use after. So lets string them together and see what we get:

Looks pretty neat eh? Though it may be worth pointing out that she’ll probably kill me for posting this.