How to make shiny letters with the GIMP

I made shiny letters using the GIMP for my fishnet games website. I saw a tutorial on Youtube. But it didn't have any audio (or it was in German).

Here is how I ended up doing it:
1. Create a new image and put some text with the font you like:

2. Turn the text into a selection. Right click on the text layer, scroll down, click alpha to selection, then delete the text layer itself. Select the Text layer, click on the little garbage can.


3. Select the 'blend tool', and select the color gradient you want to use. Choose your colors. I'm doing red to white. Using the blend tool, draw the line across the selection:
This produces a good start.

4. Produce the outline.
To produce the outline, expand the selection by a few pixels using the 'selection grow' tool. Find it under the menu Select/grow.

I'm using 2 pixels for this example. Create a new layer to color in the outline. Fill in the selection with your desired color using the 'bucket fill tool'. Rearrange the layers so that the fill layer is on the bottom of the text.


It should now look like this:



5. Make the Candy gloss. I think the gloss is produced by kind of simulating a reflection of an irridescent ambient object, like a lamp shade or something, on the text. To do this, select the layer of text that is on the top, then select 'alpha to selection', as we did before.
Now select the elliptical selection tool, and choose the 'subtract from current selection' option.

Make a selection that spreads across the letters like the sunrise:

Now, we are just going to draw another gradient into this selection. Create a new layer for this to occur in, select the gradient tool, go from white to somewhat pink, and try a few gradients until it looks right.Play with the layer opacity a little bit to get just the look you want.


6. A reflection

I added a reflection using the reflection script from here:

http://code.google.com/p/gimp-reflection/

Now I de-select everything, auto-crop the image, and selected Filters/decor/reflection, and choose the parameters you like:


Now you can put that on your webpage, and it looks beautiful.

Cool new landing page made from The GIMP

Although, I haven't used the GIMP very much, I downloaded the Reflection Script, added perspective to some screenshots, watched a you tube tutorial on making words shiny, and walla. A much cooler website!

If you have a minute, why don't you go to www.fishnetgames.net and play a couple of games!

I spy (christmas letter)

I was thinking how fun it would be to have a christmas letter that has an I spy game built in. You have tons of pictures, representing something from the year for people in the family. Folks click on those items to read about that part of the year. I think it would be cool!

Snowball Fight!

Battle against a gingerbread man and Santa! Throw snowballs at them, and they throw them at you. Hide behind your snow barrier, and dodge their snowballs.

Aim with a christmas wreath!

Try it out at : http://www.fishnetgames.net

Ball Pit

Just now though, I had an idea for a casual game today. Refer to the image.

I was thinking that it might be a fun game to have these balls in a basket. The balls have different receptors on them. You have to match up the receptors to get a match.

Kind of basic still, obviously...

you match up the dots by rotating the ball, but when you 'rotate' a ball, other balls around it rotate as well.

Maybe there is a little tube that feeds this.

Maybe this is the liver and it is trying to get rid of contaminants. Hard to tell exactly. You've got to get rid of the contaminants before the liver fills up. As the levels progress, it gets more contaminants, and so matches are more difficult to come by.
Maybe you have to match up more than 1-to-1, maybe you have to make a string of three or more.

Maybe you have to make DNA strands to ward off cancer. It's just a thought for right now.

Any thoughts?

Maybe the balls are sticky... so that when you rotate a ball, the stuff around it rotates as well, so that you have to calculate how to rotate the balls. Maybe only the balls that directly touch your ball are sticky.

maybe these are gears to a machine, and you have to wrap a band around them. The band is sticky to the balls and rotates the balls as its is pulled through the bowl of balls.

Maybe the band gets shorter, or longer with the different levels.