Wilber Bebop

So how did I create this one? Well, let's explore. The base is the template, which contains Wilber, "the gimp" logo, and the "2.2" I needed. These were split off and re-arranged. The top was also removed from the base, as well as a ton of other elements that would be extrenious.

Then, we start building the underlining base.

The starfield is based off of Tigert's tutorial, with some tweaking for 2.2:

1. Fill an RGB or Greyscale image with black.
2. Filter>>Noisify, or Scatter RGB in 2.2. 0.20 on all the colors will do, but deselect independence -- we don't want colored stars, and we can do better blueshifting. Also, if you see an Alpha slider, then you need to flatten the image before you take this step.
3. Layers>>Color>>Levels. Put the white point at 127 and grey point at .25. This give us a fairly good starfield to work off of.
4. Copy into the image's background.

The starship is created using the Path tool, but with a special trick.

1. Create a new layer, and drag a guide to the exact middle of the image. (Hopefully the image width is an even number)
2. Select the path tool, and select the center of the image, among the guide. Pop another point to the left or right of the whole image itself, and edit that curve so it look like a windshield. Then pop two more points outside the edges, keeping the side along the guide straight (like it's snapped against it).
3. Make the path a selection, and fill it with a medium off-red.
4. Reduce the layer's transparency to 66.7, and name this layer "Shield".
5. Deslect the selection. Switch to "Move" mode and drag the whole path down about an eighth of the image in height.
6. Make a new level, and switch back to "Design" mode on the pen tool. Flatten out that curved path a bit, make the path a selection, and fill.
7. Repeat #5 again, and switch to a "near black". A 10% value will do it.
8. Make the path a selection, and fill it with that near black.
9. Merge the two layers together, and then duplicate the result.
10. Flip the top most layer, and merge it back down.

Now, the heads-up display is a screen capture of various Gimp dialog boxes, which I curved with the "Curve Bend" tool, and then strung out a bit with the Perspective tool.

The flare behind Wilber's head is your stock pattern GFlare.

Original xcf.

about the tutorial

This image was part of the 10th Anniversary of the first release of GIMP.

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