The ds106 Digital Storytelling GIFfest (known as GIFestivus2012 around here) continues, this time with a two-fer. As well as providing another submission for the Animated GIF Assignment 856: Muppet GIF assignment, it’s also going to reflect a new Animated GIF Assignment 880: Multi-Frame GIF Story.
Thanks to Jim Groom for pointing me at the multi-framed GIF story idea. It seems like an excellent way to highlight important themes or details within a longer narrative, like a movie (hint, hint). But it also tells a nice visual story here from this short muppet clip.
I’ve always wondered what Beaker did to get his hair like that.
Some thoughts, just as I finish finagling these six GIFs into a nice table so they can be viewed in tandem.
- I didn’t know that you could get electric metronomes. I guess you maybe need them for really, really long songs.
- The fifth panel was made using a small number of sporadic frames that existed as the lights shorted out now and then in the original clip. I thought it would be neat to envision how this might look with a longer sequence of darkness. The big plume in the upper left was the result of a little photoshop editing.
- I wonder how this might be different if I applied the “less is more” approach, say three or four key frames per GIF. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll revisit this when I’m out of other ideas for GIFestivus2012.
Neat, eh? Now I want to do this with a movie. I wonder which one I’ll try? Hmmmmm.
I love this collage effect, in one space it illustrates variations of the theme, which are individual yet together.
Makes me think of some variation on the Brady Bunch.
Or maybe of there is a way in a pari fo them to have action move from one to the next.
The six GIFs are basically in sequence from the original video. I tried to isolate one main visual idea in each one, although the third and fourth are pretty similar, just made from different sets of frames.
1. plugging in
2. hair is shocked
3 & 4 lots of shocking going on
5. in the dark
6 the final steam-off.
The thumbnail I posted to the AnimatedGIFAssignment880: Multi-Frame GIF Story was made with four frames taken from a screen capture video of the completed GIFs once they were posted, just to give the idea. I’m sure if you wanted to do this as one GIF, you could have each frame tell a bit, and then move on, in sequence.
While I’ve not sorted out the answer yet regarding GIF limits (file size? number of frames?, cumulative run time?), I’ve been stalled with my work from yesterday in that Photoshop keeps balking each time I try to do the Save to Web … process. It will be worth it when it’s done. Maybe if I save it as two files, and export half from each. Then put them together?
Turns out that splitting the frames across two photoshop files (save two copies, delete half from each, then Save for Web) gave me the answer I needed to get the export. Then, after some web searching, it was possible to assemble them into one GIF using a Java executable called GiftedMotion (version 1.18). Success! My GIF is out, ready to see the wild!
I’m in love with frame four, Beaker starting to realize he’s about to go boom. I’m a fan of these collages as well. Though I played with building one in a single GIF a few months ago with the Robin Hood Bunch. Part of me thinks this approach is important as the total GIF affect changes with different browsers, mobile in particular which stacks them one atop another. Something to think about.