How can I create a starry night bg that doesn't look fake in Gimp. By fake I mean that it doesn't end up looking uniform instead of slightly random.

I have never actualy done this but seems reasonable.

Make your base layer (blue/black/purple part of the sky)

Then on various transparent layers make tiny/medium sized white dots, blur them till they look like stars.

Then apply a IDK 15% trancparency color on each star layer (stars arent always white) and merge.

Thanks. Any one know how to do animated snow? Preferably in GIMP....

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Simple_Animations/

Replace text with "fallin snow" I guess

Also, does anyone know how to fix the transparency levels in GIMP, like making it 50% or 24% transparency? I asked this in my thread, but no one seemed to answer :(

If you mean by layer then you go to the layer tab and toward the top there is a bar title opacity and th number next to it. There.