I was playing with the Gimp and its animation plugin last night, because I’ve been thinking about an Ubuntu commercial and wondered if it would take much time or effort to get something started.

Along the way I found a tutorial about making a seamless monochrome image into an illusion of flowing water (or something like it). It’s a very good tutorial and easy to follow, and it has some great effects.

I came up with this only about 10 minutes after opening the tutorial. I think I’ll give it a lame, schmoozy name like “Desert Flight,” which is kind of what it looks like. (Warning: ~4Mb)

I know it’s a bit weak, but I’m just getting started. I wanted to start with something NTSC-sized so I would have an idea of the detail and the resulting file … so it’s not exactly portable.

I should’ve put something sky-like in there (or maybe a field of stars and a moon), but I was just experimenting. If you’re already versed in this sort of stuff, by all means improve upon it. I’ve got no qualms about sharing.

Anyway, it gives me an vague idea what making a full 30-second animation would require.