[WIP] I have trouble understanding layers with GraphicsGale. Please help !

[Volcano Bakemeat]

Hi fellow artists,

I'm making a little pixel-art animation for an art school I'm attending; however, I'm really unfamiliar with GraphicsGale and I couldn't find any good explanation so far (english isn't my mother tongue, so yeah, it can be a bit tricky at times)

Here's what I've got so far :

Basically, I want to animate a flowing cape on a separate layer which would be "below" the main raccoon layer (just like in Photoshop or Manga Studio) but, uh... for some reason, I can't make it happen. I don't get how transparency works. Does it have something to do with the alpha channels ? Can I do this here or should I switch to another program ?
Sorry if my issue isn't clear enough - just tell me, I'll try to be more coherent. My school contest begins the 1st of september and I still have a lot of other stuff to wrap up by then, so any help would be really, really appreciated.
Many thanks !

[Pusty]

It should already work lol
The layer which is higher should be above the ones under it
if not select "cap" press on "..." and select "Transparent Color" (and if necessary select the background color of this layer)
Now you should have your cape layer below the main one (you have to select the cape layer to draw on it)

If you don't know how to animate it:
Bottom left this weird arrow then duplicate then duplicate to the right

now you can draw on different frames with 2 layers

[PixelPiledriver]

Your top layer has a solid Alpha Channel that is blocking the layer below.
Here's some illustration on what you are struggling with:


You can read more about using an Alpha Channel and drawing modes at my post here.
http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=17943.msg160261#msg160261

However, for what you are making you don't need to use an Alpha Channel.
You are only using 1 index of Alpha color, the gray.
So you should delete the Alpha Channel from the top layer.
Layers in GraphicsGale  that do not have an Alpha channel have a single Alpha Color.
You can set the Alpha color by clicking the "..." button of the given Layer:

[Volcano Bakemeat]

Sorry for the late answer, I was really busy lately.
This is exactly what I needed. It was that easy, huh. Thank you so much ! I'll definitely upload the finished version after my contest.