Animated GIFs are simple animations that you’ll see on many web pages and, while they are much less sophisticated than Flash animations, they are very simple to produce by anyone with a basic understanding of GIMP.

How to Make an Animated GIF in GIMP

The following steps show a simple web banner sized animation using a couple of basic graphics, some text, and a logo.

Conclusion

The steps shown here will give you the basic tools to produce your own simple animations, using different graphics and document sizes. While the end result is quite basic in terms of animation, it is a very easy process that anyone with a basic knowledge of GIMP can achieve. For your animation, you can select a preset size or set custom dimensions depending on how you will be using your final animation. For this tutorial, animation will consist of seven frames and each frame will be represented by an individual layer, meaning that the final GIMP file will have seven layers, including the background. However, a change to the name of the layer in the Layers palette is needed. Right-click on the Background layer in the palette and select Edit Layer Attributes. Each of the footprint layers need a white background so that only one frame is ever visible – currently, each one has a transparent background. We can do this by creating a new layer immediately below a footprint layer, filling the new layer with white and then right-clicking on the footprint layer and clicking Merge Down.