Update 2017 – scroll to the end of this very long (ex) storify to get details of some new giffing resources I have come across in the last little while. Enjoy.
See more amazing gifs from the artist above here:
I am using this space to collect data to write a post to answer the question above and also to offer it as resource to anyone who may be asking this question:Why do you gif?
You might think that is is a simple enough question to ask a digital storytelling community on G+ yet Robin may have been surprised at the extent of our engagement with the question. 18 comments later, he said:
“Wow thanks for all these awesome responses!! Given me tools as well as how to incorporate a gif meaningfully into learning. You all ROCK!”
You might have thought that would be the end of it. But we continued to comment and engage with the post. Partly it is because not all of us accept the premise that the animated gif could (or should) be incorporated meaningfully into learning. We enjoy teasing each other and openly discuss our differences. I sometimes think that this very polarised responses to the gif is the thing that makes it such a central part of the DS106 narrative. Be that as it may, I planned a quick post to answer the question of the title, Beautifully posed by Sandy Brown Jensen. In response to Robin’s question above she said:
“First of all, figure out your objectives in the cognitive realm, i.e. why do you want to make a gif at all?”
I took up the challenge to answer the question, never imagining that it would take me to pages full of links that discuss the value of animated gifs, its history, its uses, how to use art appreciation tools to evaluate their quality….and very beautiful examples of animated gif new and old. The post was never going to be a quick one!
I decided to ask on Twitter. I asked the question and created the #whygif hashtag to help me collect answers. We started with the straight forward answer – we make them for fun. This quickly gave way to responses that positioned the gif as a work of art and/or a learning tool. For myself, as I read responses and collect resources, I keep thinking about the emotional responses they generate both when I make them and when I watch them. Why make one at all? “They can disrupt patterns of thought and play havoc with our idea of what a ‘story’ is.” say some. “They are only one of ten concepts in the Assignment Bank. I encourage creativity wherever and whenever it bolts its lightning to the ground, including gifs, but lets not oversell them!”
Below are the tweets I have had so far. What is interesting is that the conversation continues, some of us in DS106 love them, others are neutral, others hate them and we keep talking.
William Wegman’s First Animated GIF http://t.co/p3MXgKpKTV via @Colossal #whygif #ds106 Awww….used to keep this breed when in US @cogdog
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 19, 2014
@mbransons How do they do that? it is beautiful. Great for my post #whygif because it is a tough technical challenge to get beauty!
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 18, 2014
@johnjohnston would you find time to answer my #whygif quiz? check the hashtag it's lovely. you are a tumblr gif star, wanna hear yr view:)
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 15, 2014
#whygif Because a loop can tell a story that no still image or progressing video can. The repetition can be critical to the story itself.
— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) March 15, 2014
#whygif B/c it’s a challenge to get the timing just right to capture all of what you need & none of superfluous. And challenge=fun @mdvfunes
— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) March 15, 2014
#whygif To capture something crucial in a moment, to bring it out even more clearly through repetition. @mdvfunes
— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) March 15, 2014
@twoodwar transformed yesterdays daily creates! http://t.co/IGhrVvaW57 #whygif 'cause it is magical. #ds106
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
@mdvfunes #whygif cut to the core, loop and completely transform one thing into something different yet made of the same thing
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 14, 2014
@mdvfunes #whygif opens completely unique new possibilities and is one of the first unique art forms of the Internet
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 14, 2014
@mdvfunes #whygif sometimes motion is essential, other times it should be
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 14, 2014
@mdvfunes #whygif changes your view on the media world
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 14, 2014
@IamTalkyTina Talky you are so #gifsmart I am silly needing to ask! Want to convince some skeptics. Post will be full of gif wisdom #whygif
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
@heystorytellers or scared of sheep 🙂 #whygif
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
#ds106 thank you to those of you who have answered #whygif I have a new column on TD and smiling and going awww…. more more! #whygif
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
#whygif It's the only way to inflict a #verfremdungseffekt with Jean-Claude Van Damme running from kittens.
— B. (@brianshortstory) March 14, 2014
#whygif What's the point of only doing it once or three times anyway? Two would just be silly. But the Forever setting should be #4life
— Talky Tina (@IamTalkyTina) March 14, 2014
#whygif Plus, it helps you see more of the Art because it makes you focus and look at the Art longer and you see things that you missed.
— Talky Tina (@IamTalkyTina) March 14, 2014
And #whygif "A GIF is GIFt that keeps on GIFfing" because you set the loop setting of it to Forever instead of just Once or Three Times.
— Talky Tina (@IamTalkyTina) March 14, 2014
Silly! You know the answer! #whygif ?? "A GIF a day keeps the doctor away!" Plus, because "A GIF is #4life" and "A GIF is a True Friend."
— Talky Tina (@IamTalkyTina) March 14, 2014
#whygif? Fun, fun, fun. Play, gif.
— Jaap Bosman (@JaapSoft) March 14, 2014
“@mdvfunes: Why make animated gifs at all? #ds106 collecting views for a post. Can you use #whygif – Storify you smart tweets" @joseph_kes
— Kate Green (@KateGreen28) March 13, 2014
@Todd_Conaway @mbransons to refuse the contemptibility of man through art. Wow! He had a way with words! #whygif
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
#whygif ? To experience becoming, have fun and find precious moments to share. You? #ds106
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
@sandramardene @KateGreen28 @cogdog could that be that our @sandramardene has actually liked some gifs? 1or 2 by @cogdog? #whygif #ds106
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
Why make animated gifs at all? #ds106 collecting views for a post. Can you use #whygif wanna Storify you smart tweets:) Thank you.
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 13, 2014
Some of us are concerned with the potential health issues from making certain types of gifs,
Some of us are starting to find our own way through an answer of sorts, which may always stay as work-in-progress
John Jonshston published his thoughts here as a result of our conversations on G+:
I am thinking I need an art appreciation course to be able to express the value of what I consider to be a unique art form.
Meantime I cannot stop looking at this.
I feel proud of my achievement making this fast cut gif. I have now started tagging some on Tumblr as #gifart. A big change for me since entering DS106 last year – I was only planning to make digital artefacts. I am a psychologist not an artist.
I tried a while back to answer the question: Are animated gifs art? Creating a kinetic typography short film from an Alan Levine quote. When I started DS106 I had a fairly negative view of these particular artefacts. Hearing what Alan had to say about their value changed my mind.
Each time I work on one I experience what he refers to above. Isolating the moment is what makes it worth the effort. This week I read something that adds to its appeal for me
I responded to Michael who sent through the above on Twitter,
#whygif MT@mbransons and right there my friend is why we gif. To experience becoming. Words full of soul #ds106
— ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) March 14, 2014
I have also started to do a bit of research. Learnt about the Kuleshov effect and feel there is a connection between the appeal of animated gifs to some and the essence of what it shows.
Images in motion have fascinated human being for far longer than its instantiation in the animated gif.
There is a research project going on trying to unpack the ‘non-verbal’ language of the animated gif. Might we be saying in a near future: do you speak gif?
Go to the site and try it yourself, I am not impressed with the choice of gifs but I like the idea of finding ways to understand more how we react emotionally to them.
Some people are now learning the technique of animated giffing an using it for very practical purposes. The interesting thing about this example is that the writer says that words, still pictures, other media had not helped him explain the process. He was able to do something with the animated gif that other means did not allow. A language? This for me connected with something else. The idea that we can use animated gifs to do more than just isolate a moment of life as is, we can create the impossible,
Michael says,
“So never mind the endless perfect moment, loop a portal to the impossible.”
The assignments on DS106 are many,
There are presentations at conferences exploring the history, the medium as an art form that has evolved,
From this,
To this,
It is being used for film analysis. Making a full movie gif requires in-depth understanding of a film/movie.
.@mbransons just turned me onto the fullmovieGIFs sub-reddit http://t.co/ytlpUM34XV So awesome! Here's The Shining http://t.co/NwSZrIfLAy
— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) March 3, 2014
Jim Groom is working on integrating the animated gif into a curriculum centred around film analysis
There are some more resources here.
Technical help, examples and explanation put together by the University of Mary Washington, the physical home of DS106.
I have started a Tumblr just for my gifs.
I was learning about styles in art and I read:
“Style is both general and very individual. Just as every person has a unique handwriting, every person’s art has a unique style. Some big general categories are Realistic (photographic), Expressive (less realistic with lots feeling), Fantastic (surrealistic) (real but impossible – as in a dream), Formal (very orderly and controlled), Nonobjective (without subject matter), Abstract (not realistic). Of course since every individual is unique, these are often combined and there are many sub categories as well.”
I guess that part of the reason why animated gifs create such strong but often polarising reactions is because each person’s art has a unique style and what we like is filtered through what we value in art and life.
I have a sense that my ‘quick post’ may well turn into a book or a website ‘All about gifs’?
May be I had better remember a story I once read.
And I had to add this one as it is one of my favourite animated gifs. You will have to wait until I have learnt about art appreciation for me to tell you why and not feel silly 🙂
There is also Gif TV of course!
I will just keep adding resources here as I research the animated gif.
and more from him,
“It’s a more organic and intuitive medium to relate an experience – more so than a photo or a video. Think of how we recollect memories: close your eyes and think of something from your past. You don’t see a frozen still image – you see GIFs! Even when we dream at night we see fragments of events that collectively create some kind of narrative which we assemble into a story when we wake up. Even when we daydream we don’t watch a full-feature uninterrupted film in our heads – we think in fragments, often non-linear. ” ELLE MULIARCHYK
“The philosopher Daniel Dennett stresses the essential ‘gappiness’ of the various ‘multiple drafts’ of consciousness (1991). According to him, it is an illusion that we experience a unified and uninterrupted stream of consciousness.” A Palmer on Universal Minds.
“Every time I seem to exist, this is just a temporary fiction and not the same ‘‘me’’ who seemed to exist a moment before, or last week, or last year. This is tough, but I think it gets easier with practice” S. Blackmore
Artists turn gifs into careers
Update 2017 – Resources for those who enjoy app giffing
I am enjoying using ImgPLay Usually apps make gifs that are too large so you cannot use them without editing in Photoshop of Gimp. This one seems to produce decent sized gifs and offers useful choices for set up that are usually only available in photo editors.
Mosh.io is a current favourite. The ios app is coming soon. This the most fun I have had with an app for a while. It is a glitch gif application – so if glitch art is not your thing, it may not be for you.
If you want to learn about Glitch Art. there is only one human I reccommend for that. Nick Briz.
And Net Art Rocks is his latest production. It is on my list of coursed to do to up my craft.
And many of the resources I have learnt about to make internet art, come from this wonderful artist and human: Ryan Seslow. He is always trying out new platforms and testing the limits of app mixing. Find him online and learn from him.
Some more platforms Ryan has introduced me to – New Hive And a review
My absolute favourite at the moment is Assembly. There is a free version but it is limited. It seems to also only be available for ios for now. In the free version you can make assets which you can then use in animated gifs or other web art. If you get the paid version, you can record your creative process and this can make awesome gifs.
Ryan has written about this app on his blog. And you can follow him on Instagram to see some lovley video tutorials of how he is using the app to create amazing icons.
Finally, here is a video from Michael Bransons Smith on this tutorial.
Michael’s YT channel is a cornucopia of resources for making animated gifs and other net art. Enjoy getting lost in there to. And that is all for now, folks. Thanks to @dogtrax for asking the question and motivating me to update this awesome list of giffing resources for #CLMOOC peeps. I leave you with a latest gif from @gifadog on Tumblr.
Comments
Wonderful!! Wow so much great stuff here! :)))