How to morph animals using GIMP (free software)

I will teach you how to morph 2 animals during this instructable. You can use this method of morphing for any animals, or any creation you can come up with.

Show me your creations, using this easy to follow guide!

Things needed: computer, creative mind, and patients!....oh and GIMP of course, download that here: http://www.gimp.org/ (version 2.6)

be sure to download the picture of this girrafe, and turtle if you want to try this creation out step by step.

Feel free to ask for help in the comments!

Note: Make sure to look at all of the pictures, and read everything i included in them, via the image notes.

AND dont forget in GIMP, edit: undo (ctrl+z) is your best friend!

Step 1 Opening GIMP, and cuting out the head.

First open Gimp, and click open, and find the picture of the turtle, and open that. Then click open again, and open the picture of the girraffe on top. Procceed by cutting the girraffe head, look at pictures below on how to. You can either use the smart scissors, or free select (see pictures)...just keep clicking along the girrafes head, getting the whole head cut out.

Once the Giraffe head has been cut out, then click inside of it, and right-click, and then copy. Go back to you picture of the turtle now, and right click it and go down to the options where it says "dockable tabs" highlight that, and open the layers and channels one.

Then click the Button on the layers you just opened that looks like a New pages icon, (it is a new layer icon). Now make sure you make the new layer transparent, (it will be one of your choices to select.). Now with your new layer opened, paste that girrafe head you cut out onto the turtle (it will still be seperate from the turtle, but you will see it on top.

(your giraffe head may be bigger that it shows in the picture below, dont worry, i will cover that in the next step.

Comments

[tomeres]

Tnx man you helped alot

[Udit Mathur]

peadog

[mmhiggins]

Awesome! I was able to do this on photoshop,and made three photos. (the last one blended SO well The wolf head looks like it is on its original body[which it isn't], so I added the horns) =)

[mayday295]

Nice, one other thing you might try to up the realism is to adjust the colors slightly so the colors on the whole page are in par with each other. As well as the sharpness/blurriness on each to match the whole. You can accomplish this by playing with the color balance, saturation, hue etc. Also you can add a photo filter to the whole picture for a more even toned effect afterwards.

[chihonky]

I don't know what I am doing wrong but it could not down load the pictures. I tried to download them and they saved as gif files when I tried to open them on gimp I got no picture. I converted the files to jpeg and tried again and agian I got no picture.

[adrianh1984]

Right click outside of the yellow box to save, otherwise it will save the yellow box.

[mayday295]

 hm thats weird try again by clicking on the little thumbnail of the picture so that the bigger picture comes up. Then right-click and save as... (it should say jpg now). Tell me if that works.

[NicOmbra]

If only we really could morph animals...

[noingwhat]

OMG!! Awesome Gurrtle!!

[aspir8or]

Nice little instructable, but I don't think you can call it morphing. Morphing is the blending from one item to another (say a turtle head to a giraffe head) slowly with animation. I don't think the Gimp is capable of proper morphing in it's current version, but if any Gimp guru out there thinks they can write a script to accomplish it, I and many others would thank him/her profusely. Keep it up though. This has been helpful to me and others. Look forward to seeing more Gimp instructables from you. :-)

[bounty1012]

Lol A turtle with a girrafe head

[firemanfu]

One I did today, thanks for the guide

[egriff]

about 4 or 5 years ago I made an owlbear from DnD, it was rather good, but it somehow got lost. since I don't have Paintshop Pro anymore, maybe I'll try it with Gimp.

[alaskanbychoice]

Great instructable and I think you did a very good job on the morphing.

[mayday295]

Thanks, i made a couple more animals, that you can do using the same basic instructions here, i just thought the giratortuse would make the best instructable.(i will post there pictures in a few)

[atombomb1945]

It's Shopped. The Light is all wrong.

[mayday295]

What do you mean it;s shopped the light is all wrong? and yes it was "gimped" lol.

[Armbie]

Should that be "It's gimped"? ;-)

[atombomb1945]

Perhaps, but that sounds like something out of Pulp Fiction then.