Turbot on Fire - MinnowBoard-org/website GitHub Wiki

The happy path

The Turbot on Fire gif was created using ImageMagick's convert feature that combines images, and understands how to overlay an animated GIF onto background static images. As well as a bewildering array of other combinatorial magic.

convert Turbot_QC_Loaded_Tall.jpg null: \( fire.gif -coalesce \) -gravity north -layers Composite -layers Optimize Turbot_on_Fire_tall.gif

I know - a command line interface!? I am sure there are plenty of point and click GIF editors that can achieve this as well, but I strive to stick to open-source and unencumbered tools.

The source image: Turbot QC Loaded The fire GIF: Animated Fire

And the result: Turbot on Fire!

The excruciating details.

The default install of ImageMagick on my Ubuntu 17.10 didn't function as far as I could ascertain. So I followed this tutorial to install from source. I did have to execute most of the commands with 'sudo' which may not be required if I bothered to set up my account permissions correctly. But I was on a mission, so I 'sudo'd my way through the insufficient permission fails.

Then the imagemagick.org website gave me the clues I needed to construct the command to create the combined image - and I am glad there were those guides, as this suite of tools is supremely flexible and navigating the myriad options and settings without these pointers would be daunting.