Let's Make Smilies!

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey; I wonder if I know anyone who would like one of those altered into a kitteh?

[Geo]

A tying on its phone

What?

typing.

Hope I didn't give rope fantasies.

[Valka]

Hey; I wonder if I know anyone who would like one of those altered into a kitteh?

I might be able to hazard a guess... 

[Buster's Uncle]

Could you guess what the kitteh looked like?

[Geo]

[Buster's Uncle]

A smilie starts with an idea.  I thought of something that would make a good example, and in GIMP, File>New>45x45>ok.  -That gave me, you guessed it, a 45x45 pixel block to work with - that's not a lot of pixels to work with to draw something that looks like something, but about as tall as you want to ever go, and only then for the occasional animation. 

Then Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel.  Then [Ctrl]a>Delete. -Which yields a transparent background to draw on, something you always want for any smilie that isn't still and square.  Then I fiddled around until I'd drawn the following innocent example: 



-Teddy bears are easy to draw.

Then I realized it needed to show up against white backgrounds so I outlined the white with gray - then fiddled around with how dark



And after a certain amount of tweaking, Image>Mode>Indexed (to only 3 colors -which will help keep the file size small, something to always strive for) and saved the result as a .gif:



Coming Soon:  a simple animation of the black and white teddy bear...

[Buster's Uncle]

To demonstrate the simplest of two-frame .gif animations, I took the still black-and-white teddy bear, an absolutely innocent example that I posted before, and commenced to make a second layer.



That's a simple right-click on the thumbnail in the Layers box>Duplicate Layer, resulting in



The idea was to make Teddy wave, so I redrew the arm a little:



and also made the changes you can see in the Layers text to the right od the frame icon.  300ms is slightly under a third of a second, and (replace) does the obvious.  (If Teddy was still, but blinking, I'd use combine, and erase most of the redundant pixels for the frame.  I'll be back shortly with a demonstration.)

[Buster's Uncle]

To make Teddy blink, I reloaded the basic model, duplicated the layer, selected the dupe and blacked out the eyes.



Then I made the base layer visible so I could see where the eyes had been, but left the dupe layer selected, while I used the select tool to make the smallest box that included them



and cropped the layer down to just that



I decided a double blink would look better, so I duped the cropped layer twice



and put the eyes back in the middle copy



Here's what it looked like without the background, comprising most of the black-and-white teddy bear, showing



and with



-Note the timing for each layer, and the use of (combine).  This makes for a small file, as 43x45 animated .gifs go.


And here's blinking Teddy. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey; I wonder if I know anyone who would like one of those altered into a kitteh?

I might be able to hazard a guess... 

Could you guess what the kitteh looked like?

This means to describe the color and markings of preferred kitteh.  Keep in mind that I can't do anything very subtle with so few pixels, and the forepaws ought to really be a different color than the hips, if I'm to do the dancing one.

-Even better: I'd love to talk you through how to do it yourself...

[Valka]

One of my cats is basic black, with gold eyes. She wears a pink collar. She does have a few white hairs, but not enough that would show up for a project like this.

My other cat is tortoiseshell, which means she's every color a cat can be, and one color shades very subtly into another while still making the distinctive tortoiseshell pattern.

I did have some tuxedo cats a long time ago - two who were black and white, and one who was medium grey and white (he had the classic white paws, chest, and chin, while the rest of him was a beautifully soft medium grey color.

My first cat was Siamese, with the classic markings (rounder face because she had not-Siamese in her genetic background, plus she was female).

I've heard of GIMP, but every time I tried to figure it out, it went right over my head.

[Buster's Uncle]

If you'd like to try, I'm an accomplished teacher of this kind of thing.  I know GIMP is an aircraft control panel, but I was able to teach myself and I've definitely taught others...  When my mom has computer problems, and this goes all the way back to her first VCR, she'd really rather I just took care of it, but I've always done her the (much more time-consuming in the short run) favor of empowering her to fix for herself.

A smilie aficionado like you would love being able to create/alter/fix in GIMP...


Otherwise, I guess you should show me a picture of the kitteh of your choice.

[Buster's Uncle]

If a black silhouette will do, here.

[Valka]

It's cute, but the paws on the hips are a little creepy (they make the cat suddenly look half as big in that area.

[Valka]

If you're willing to put up with what will undoubtedly be really novice questions, I'll give it a try.

These are my cats, Chloe and Maddy.

[Geo]

If a black silhouette will do, here.

Even if a little creepy: 

How difficult would it be to let the ears wiggle as well?