Doing this again I would constrain to jus tthe head movement and cut the frames of the hands.

Nightmare Alley 

The animated GIF process needed more practice for me to begin to get a better feel for how it can create message and meaning. The first one I did in Unit 2 was accidental in that I didn’t do much more than click, fumble and go “ahhh – okay!”. So with this next unit focusing on visual I am opting for a few of the assignments and paths from #noir106 and the Burtis prompt to create a Noir animated gif, along with my open course challenges. Finding some Noir films on YouTube, I settled on Nightmare Alley with Tyrone Powers. Mostly because I new his name and that he was considered a hunk of a man for the time.

I chose this section because I just liked the way his eyes bug out and he goes from talky to serious.

This time around the download software didn’t work – so I needed to find a new app that was free. It worked! From there I used the Jim Groom tutorial as a guide and used the Streamclip editor and Gimp. I LOVE GIMP! While I do have Photoshop, it keeps needing upgrades, has far too many features it will take me a life time to explore and I believe in open source and sharing as a business and cultural premise. So using GIMP and finding it as developed as it is was wonderful.

I feel more accomplished after these 4 animated GIFs and their outcomes and ready to move on to another visual assignment task. I am most excited about moving forward with my own content and applying the methods.

Trying to capture just the blinking – but with this one still couldn’t figure out how to retain the speed I set it to before exporting.

This one I pulled what I had in the other tools and then went to the gifmaker app and was able to slow down the speed, but not crop the picture.

But do you want to know the real eye opener? This creates a really loaded up desktop!

I need to establish some habits for creating folders and spaces for saving, uploading, etc. instead of using my desktop as I usually do. This process creates tons of files! And for someone who tends to save rather than toss – I won’t be successful if I keep trashing my desktop and then lasso it all and put it in a folder called “To Be Filed”. Some of the learning in this #ds106  #4life experience is to learn strategies for efficiency and organization so that time is spent creating – not following the elephants in the parade. The tagging, the blog structures, categories – all help as habits so that focus is on creation. Thanks #ds106er’s for sharing.

What strategies have you begun to make a habit?

Assignment: Say it Like The Peanut Butter   and is 3 

This Say it Like Peanut the Butter assignment post will have a few iterations because now that I have gotten this far….. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CREATE A REALLY COOL ONE WITH A MESSAGE!

As part of Unit 2 in ds106, the challenge assignment is to create an animated gif from a favorite or unfavorite movie. The bigger challenge is to find resources to help you learn how to create one. The assignment was created 4 years ago and it seems things have gotten a whole lot easier to pull out a clip and make a short animated gif. So easy in fact that I am not sure I learned too much on the first attempt other than I can cut down on a lot of time by using some of the tools available.

The movie I selected was “It’s a Wonderful Life”. This scene is where George realizes he does exist because his mouth is bleeding. Other scenes considered were him running up the stairs and the finial coming off, and the end where the bell rings for Clarence.

I have to admit – it took me a while to start to do this part of the unit because all I could think of was the early days of web page design and how blinking pages were the rage and then everyone settled down and they became the “what not to do” for good design. I think the animated gifs can be appropriate and useful  communication in digital stories if done with purpose and intent. So as with most creation and art – if it has purpose and meaning it will be good and of value. That being said – the exploratory gifs that come out of this assignment within the viewpoint of seeing if you can find resource, help, and the new ideas for your own learning and then share with others on the same journey is right on target and wonderful to see.

I have seen some pretty killer animated gifs in the ds106 Google+ community and some other places linked from ds106 so this first attempt is more the proof of looking for resources and trying them out to see if something can be created and to research and read about what animated gifs are and why to use them.

I found Jim Groom’s tutorial page and started to download the tools. In doing so the gif creator just showed up and made a gif for me when I thought I was downloading the video. ! I wasn’t able to eliminate frames. I would have liked to have taken about the first 7 out so that the hand motion was just the animation. When putzing with some duplicates – the gif would run once but not loop, I have my version 1.0 done so far.

This gif is the “cheater”, easy way out. but it really did spark the creative juices and desire to master the finer details. Using other tools to make it smoother, make it my own iteration so it doesn’t have a tool watermark, and some content of meaning to me. I want to get to Gimp and to Photoshop to try the creation. So I will continue to work on this assignment and create another more extensive gif. Stay tuned!

Below is actually my first attempt (or warm up attempt) before finding a movie. If using my own photos, I would improve by using a tripod so that the background and perspective stayed aligned. He was a good sport!

Animated Gif -