Animated GIF Assignments

Turbo Charged Animated GIF

Are your photo editing skills up to the challenge?  Create an animated GIF with at least 3 seperate animation zones.  [See example here] I suggest starting with a simple movie poster, photograph or greeting card. You’ll be becoming best friends with the lasso tool and layers, so you may want to brush up on those.  This is definitely a 5-star assignment. 

It’s Your Birthday, Happy GIFfin’ To You!

Did you say someone is celebrating their birthday? <i>And you need a birthday card to help them enjoy their special day?</i> Then look no further than the <b>”It’s Your Birthday, Happy GIFfin’ to You!”</b> ds106 assignment!

Make someone a special birthday card, but make it extra special by including a GIF!!  Try to make the design unique to them (it’s THEIR birthday, after all!). Share the card with them, and also share it with us so that we can share in their special wonderfulness, too! 

GIF Your Garden

If you’ve got a garden, you’ve probably got garden sprites. And if you’ve got garden sprites, then you’ve probably got some mischief on your hands. Turn your everyday “normal” garden into an enchanted garden filled with unseen trouble makers. Extra points for capturing garden sprites, gnomes, or trolls in the act.

Turn a GIF into a FIG

Recently, I was exposed to reverse-animated GIFs. I must say, some are hilarious. Find a video clip, or shoot one of yourself, and then make it playback in reverse over and over again as a GIF. Try to find a situation that is absolutely mind-blowing when played backwards.

Sports Heroes

Make a Gif of your favorite sports hero!

GIF for a reason

Make a GIF out of your favorite scene in a movie and tell why you did that scene (and not just because you wanted too).

Dancing Jim all over the world

Take the template gif of Jim Groom dancing and add a background and foreground, to make him dance in an interesting place.

StereoGIFs

Back in the 1800s, stereograms were a popular way of creating the optical illusion of depth in a static image by placing two very similar images side by side. they could be viewed using a stereoscope to create the illusion. The New York Public library has an extensive collection of stereograms, and recently created the Stereogranimator tool (http://stereo.nypl.org/) to allow people to turn these into animated GIFs, which are just as effective in creating a sense of depth. Use the Stereogranimator to create an animated GIF that makes the image appear to be 3D, or try manipulating the frames to create another interesting effect (e.g. http://stereo.nypl.org/view/41623)

Fruedian Alphabet

Go to Google type in “I hate a” and look for the auto-complete (additional examples here).  Screenshot your auto-complete suggestions as you move from A to Z and pick one letter to make into an animated gif.  

Do them all if you’d like.

At Least It’s an Ethos

Take the line from the film The Big Lebowski “Say what you will about National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos” and change National Socialism to a different -ism, like, for example, [[Veganism]]. Here is the GIF for you to use as a template to change National Socialism to a different -ism. Now here’s the trick, after that you need a GIF to setup the punchline. So Walter Sobchack is referring to Nihilism in the scene we are quoting when defining National Socialism as an ethos, my idea for this (now convoluted) assignment came from Tom Woodward’s unsettling animated GIF of me eating Roy Rogers chicken, which could only lead me to the following punchline…