Cutting Out Toons with GIMP

A simple-ish guide to cutting out toons using the GIMP art program.

Step One:
Get a decent, close-up screenshot of your toon! Make sure that the toon you're cutting out has a thought bubble over their head, to prevent the nametag from getting in the way. Since she ordered a cutout at such a great time, I will be basing this guide on the lovely Princess Candy Purplesprinkles. If you are a beginner at using GIMP, I would suggest getting the screenshot of your toon in the green area of your house, just to make things a lot easier, but it is your choice!

Step Two:
Open up GIMP and click New Image. The size I would recommend is around 600x600 pixels, but this purely depends on the size of toon you are cutting out. Make sure that your file is TRANSPARENT as you don't want a white background on your toon! To change this, click on Advanced Options and find Transparency in the "Fill with..." option like so:



Step Three:
Open your screenshot by clicking File and then Open - not "Open as Layers" so you can have the screenie on a separate file. Once it is open, zoom in on your toon by using either the magnifying glass on the tools screen or at the bottom of the screenshot window. Make sure that you can see the whole of your toon in this screen to make things easier!



Step Four:
In the toolbox, click on the lasso button which looks like this:



There are two ways of cutting out a toon at this stage. First off, holding the mouse button down and dragging at the same time will let you freely cut out the toon like so:



Too difficult isn't it? Doing this can cause multiple problems and may even end up with you having to start all over again. So the best way of cutting out a toon is by using the polygonal lasso tool. This is done by clicking around the outline of the toon and it really doesn't matter if you mess up, as you can always get rid of some of the lassoed sections.

So now you can start to cut out your toon! I usually start by going round the feet

As you click around the toon, you will see these circles for every section you have made. If you mess up, you can use the backspace key to get rid of sections or drag the circles about to make the cutout neater. Not too hard now, is it?

Step Five:

Once you are sure you have gone around the whole toon, join the last section up with the first dot that was made to complete the lasso, now the toon will have a sparkly-dotted line around it like this:



The next step, of course, is to copy the toon and paste it onto the transparent file. This can be done by either right-clicking the toon or pressing ctrl+c, and then pasted by pressing ctrl+v. You will see that the toon is on a "Pasted Layer", right click the layer and click "New Layer" - this gets rid of the dotted line around the toon.

Step Six:

Your toon may look a bit rough, yes? Well now we'll be cleaning up the toon, ready to save & use! Make a new layer but make sure this one has a WHITE BACKGROUND, like so:



Drag this new layer in between the background layer and the toon cutout. This will help you find out what bits of colour should not be part of the cutout that need to be erased. Click on the toon layer, zoom into your toon as much as possible and start getting rid of the unwanted bits using the eraser toon. Keep checking once in a while to see what the cutout looks like (this can be done by clicking the 'eye' beside the white layer) and once you're happy with the cutout, delete the white layer. Nearly there? Awesome!

Step Seven:

If you are pleased with the cutout you have made, the final step before saving is to crop the image. Firstly, right-click the toon cutout and press 'Merge Down' so that the toon is on the background layer - and this will only leave you with one layer. Using the toolbar at the top, click on Image and then Autocrop Image.



This will crop the toon as much as possible so that there's no unwanted clear bits around it. NOW we can save! Make sure that your cutout is saved as a PNG or else you will not have a transparent background! You will now get a window full of options when saving as a PNG. Use the settings below and click the Save Defaults button:



All you need to do now is click Save and you are done!



Please let me know if you have any questions & enjoy cutting out your toons!