VisualAssignments2 – Assignment Bank

Inglourious Basterds

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This clip is from the amazing movie, Inglourious Basterds. Although not entirely historically correct (;)), I still love it! I created this GIF from a video I downloaded from YouTube. I then used MPEG Streamclip to trim the scene I wanted to use and exported it. After downloading GIMP, I opened the layers and adjusted the settings. I decided I wanted to add text to my GIF, so I googled how, and after a really, really, REALLY long time, I finally figured it out. It took several tries, but I’m glad I stuck with it. I had to make certain layers invisible, then add the text, and merge the layers back together. Sounds easy right? Well, now it is! I finally exported the final GIF to my computer and it works! Luckily I didn’t have any problems with adjusting the size this time!

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The Django Stare

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This was a clip from the trailer of the movie “Django Unchained.” (LOVED this movie!) I created this GIF by downloading the trailer from Youtube and singling out this section by trimming it in Quicktime. I then went to Photoshop, imported the clip into layers, and adjusted the amount of time it took between layers (0.05 seconds). Finally I saved it as a .gif by going to File–>Save for Web and Devices–>Save.

The challenge that sometimes occurs is getting the file size down to a certain number of MB; if the number is too high, it wont upload anywhere! Mine was originally 3.4 MB, but I turned it down to 1.5MB by changing the size and reducing the amount of colors. (You can adjust all these settings after you go to “Save for Web and Devices”)

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Open as in “for business”

Featured Image “open for business” cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by @cogdog

Whether you are outraged, amused, or overwhelmed with ennui by the flurry of Instagram ToS sentiments, I agree with Gina Tripani:

Deeply happy users are questioning/debating their favorite tools’ Terms of Service, demanding their makers clarify the language. Iteration!

— Gina Trapani (@ginatrapani) December 19, 2012

I saw a few of these appear in my instagram feed:

Dear Users:
You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk!

I thought it would be better to see a bit of e-motion with all those words; in honour of #GIFest, here is what I think Angry ToS panda would post to instagram:

screenshot of instgram with animated gif cows

Cows nodding, “Isn’t this great? We get all the food we want! For FREE!”

Okay, I know the metaphor is getting over used and there are already many analyses at what Instagram’s terms of service really means, from I’m Not The Product, But I Play One On The Internet to Instagram isn’t a Public Utility.

Already, the outrage has prompted Instagram to pipe their new ToS through a newspeak social media filter so it is basically the same but doesn’t sound so gross. Just like Facebook’s, of course.

Truth be told, I really just wanted to make a cool animated #GIFest based on this hilarious video @cogdog shared.

I contemplated using it to deride MOOCs, as is (apparently) my #DS106radio duty. Alas, I had originally started a post in response to the supreme abject harbinger’s inquiry: “why does anyone use instagram?”

So, why do I use Instagram? Initially, the short answer (for me) is that the app was fast and easy to use. There are elements of community that were unexpected and pleasant, but mostly it was the fastest way to go from seeing a cool thing, to getting a shot, cropping and posting to multiple locations.

The main decision boiled down to whether I wanted any kind of reuse (for myself or anyone else). If yes, I post to Flickr. If I don’t care then I use instagram. Usually, if starting in instagram, I would post to both. I would never, ever post my DSLR pics to instagram because if I have to go to all that trouble, I sure as hell am going to putting my photos somewhere useful, like Flickr.

On a rare occasion, I’ve wanted to use someone else’s instagram photo in a blog post. Even if they wanted to give me permission, sharing and reusing is really difficult. It may even be ToS violating, though IANAL so I’m not sure. When in doubt, I do what I think I should be able to do.

Using the app “share” button, it only links to a page, not the image itself. Using the web interface, right clicks on the image are disabled. There are workarounds. What you have to do, from your instagram profile page, is find the individual picture page, then Inspect Element (chrome), find the crazy url that ends with .jpg.









: How to embed a picture from Instagram

Compare that to how simple it is to just use Alan Levine‘s simply awesome cc attribution helper

Screenshot of Chrome cc attribution extension by Alan Levine

How to embed an image from Flickr

I already used Flickr’s old mobile app every day before they updated it so I’m not going to go on about how killer the new one is, except to say, it’s efficient and does what I want.

If you need more thoughtful analyses, I suggest you read Ma’ayan Plaut’s rationale for quitting instagram from yesterday and now today, why she stands by her decision. Now if you’re really feeling riled up, go sign the petition to make the Flickr API a National Historic Landmark.

Keep Clicking Those Ruby GIF Slippers

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What could be more key and symbolic of the magic of Oz than the red slippers that Dorothy snagged from the Wicked Witch who got mushed by her flying house? The fact that Dorothy always had the magic but did not know it until sparkly Good Witch clued her in.

This GIF is done for the classic ds106 Say it Like Peanut Putter assignment

Make an animated gif from your favorite/least favorite movie capturing the essence of a key scene. Make sure the movement is minimal but essential.

I knew an animated GIF of the shoes would be part of my new story. So I used PwnYouTube to download the video for the “No Place Like Home” clip as an mp4

I opened this in MPEG StreamClip to snag just the 2 second segment of the shoes flopping. I opened it in QuickTime player to then save it as a .mov file (since Photoshop 5.5 cannot import mp4 files). I brought this in using File -> Import -> Video Frames to Layers. Since it was short I snagged 3 frames a second, and from there deleted frames that were not showing much difference from previous frames. Lastly it is exported as a GIF, we get not only shoe movement but some twinkling of highlights:

Poor Dorothy might have to click those heels forever.

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Minimal movement gif

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For this DS106 assignment it asked for as minimal movement as possible in a gif. So after a while of searching for a good scene to use my boyfriend linked me to a great scene in the show Suits. There is 2 layers here, the top layer is a still image from the scene where I cut out the eyes. Underneath I had the scene continue so that only his eyes are moving. This was fun, I have never made a gif like this before

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/say-it-like-the-peanut-butter/

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Sweet Feet’s shoes over the bridge = destiny

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DS106 Visual Assignment: Make an animated gif from your favorite/least favorite movie capturing the essence of a key scene. Make sure the movement is minimal but essential.

This is the scene from the movie Holes where Zero throws Sweet Feet’s shoes off the bridge and they land on Caveman. This act is what ultimately brings the two characters together down the road.

I used Youtube downloader HD to get the video file, VideoPad to generate the still shots from the video, and Photoshop to create the animated gif.

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Say It Like Peanut Butter (Pulp Fiction)

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Here is an animated GIF from one of my favorite movies “Pulp Fiction.” In this scene Vincent shots Marvin after his gun accidentally after they dive in a pot hole.

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What Tom Hanks Thinks About Me Making GIFs

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I need to laugh like this more often.

This assignment sucked. It made me cry. Many many times. Actually, it just made me cry again, as I just finished typing it up, and when I clicked save, it deleted all of my writing, saving only the GIF.

What would I like to do? I’d like to cry, and scream, and throw my laptop across the room. All week long I’ve grapped with this project, just to have it go buggy on me time and time again in tons of weird ways just like this. But you know what? I’d rather not cry.

I’d rather laugh, just like my good friend Tom Hanks here. It really doesn’t matter what goes wrong, I may get mad at it, and I may cry a bit, but in the end, I’m going to laugh at it. Because what the heck good is it gonna do to cry, anyway?

I used about every resource known to man to look into how to do this project. I even asked my friends on Facebook, checked it on ehow, and read tutorials on gimp.org. Of course, in the end, I followed the advice in the handbook at ds106. And here’s the end result.

But the most valuable lesson of the week? Computers still hate me. But that’s alright. I’ll deal. And I’ll remind them whose fingers have the ability to hit the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys. Just sayin.

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Say it Like the Peanut Butter

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I made a gif of the scene when Andrew and Steve, some of the main characters, are using their telekinesis abilities to fly. I recently watched this movie and I thought it was really well made and deserved a gif. I like this scene particularly because in my opinion it’s the best thing to one could do with telekinesis. It’s what I would mainly do if I had the same power.

It was actually a bit difficult to create but I’ll talk about that in the weekly summary.

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Star Wars Gif

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Like father; like son.