Hallelujah, this was a pain.

Welp, I never thought the day would come where I would create a gif by myself. I thought it would be a bit easier, however I was wrong. So, so wrong.

First off, let me tell you how frustrating GIMP is in terms of creating a gif from a video. I downloaded the latest version for these assignments specifically and looked up how to create these suckers using a mac. It seemed fairly easy enough; I was able to download the video I wanted and cut it down to the main portion I wanted capture. BUT THEN I REALIZED. To create gifs from videos, you have to get every freakin’ frame. That’s fine and dandy WHEN YOU HAVE GAP FOR GIMP. To my ultimate concern, GAP does not exist for Mac but does for Windows…my freakin’ luck. So I had to figure out a plan…I had to go to the cheap source itself; Giphy. Please understand, while yes, Giphy can make Gifs, I specifically used it for retrieving the frames in which I then ushered over to GIMP and conducted my business like a sad champ. It did work, though I am quite upset with this stupid development of why doesn’t GAP support GIMP.

Anyways, the animated gif assignment I went with for today was the favorite musician gif and I bring to you the biggest pain in my butt of a graphic I’ve ever dealt with:

Here comes the explanation: the artist I chose was Ayumi Hamasaki and the video I chose was her performance of her song “kanariya” from a fairly recent concert of hers. This performance is rather beautiful and Ayu herself is so incredible and still a mother freakin’ queen even at the age of 38. The song also holds a special meaning to me. The lyrics are rather…dark… (“It’s not that the canaries whose voices were crushed to death couldn’t cry“) but it symbolized a point in my life where I was honestly too ashamed of myself for things I had no control over or the horrible things that a select few people opted to do to me. So I think this performance of this song is the best choice I could make.

Did you have any difficulties making a gif? What program did you end up using?

Taylor

I wanted to try and experiment with gifs for the second assignment so I browsed the animated gif assignments and picked the favorite musician gif.

The assignment reads: Choose your favorite musician, and then head to Youtube and pick one of their videos to make an animated gif of. Try to use the best quality video possible, preferably HD.

I immediately knew that I wanted to do a gif of Lady Gaga at the end of her second set at the 2016 Victoria Secret Fashion Show.  The moment where she raises her wings was iconic in my mind. I remember sitting with my friends and watching the show and when she did that, we all were in shock.

This wasn’t my first time making gifs, but it was the first time using a youtube video or someone else’s work. The first time I created a gif was done using stop-motion pictures that I took myself and used photoshop to create it into a gif.

For this assignment, however, I used gifs.com to create it.

What a goddess. Honestly.

Favorite Musician GIF

Choose your favorite musician, and then head to Youtube and pick one of their videos to make an animated gif of. Try to use the best quality video possible, preferably HD.

I love things that are involved with musicians and if I had to pick my favorite singular musician it would be Dave Grohl.  I think he is just a really kick ass dude and I think that him breaking his leg and continuing a concert exemplifies that.

To make my GIF of Dave Grohl I searched for concert footage of the Foo Fighters on YouTube.

I searched online for a web based gif maker and finally settles on makeagif.com

I then selected the method of YouTube to create the GIF.

After the video loaded I then chose the clip of time I preferred for my GIF with a slide bar on the left side of the page.

I then downloaded the GIF onto my Desktop before uploading it into this post. I had to look up on the DS106 website how to get the GIF to animate, and then edited the GIF to be on the page in full size.

Who is your favorite musician? Not going to lie this is a question that holds a lot of weight with me (and there are incorrect answers).

Yes, I am a fan girl. I am fan girl and proud. I loved this assignment (worth 3 stars), we were supposed to create a GIF of a video from our favorite artist. For those who don’t know who I chose, it was Katy Perry and her video- “Hot N Cold”. I’m going to be honest, I don’t think the video has a real consistent plot other than the fact a guy is running from his bride and multiple versions of herself (the song is still catchy though).

The main reason I like Katy Perry is simple- she’s herself. She’s unapologetic about what she wears, who she is, and the music she writes. She’s not portraying herself to be “sweet” or being something that people would like her to be and to me being genuine in a world that requires you not to be speaks more of who she is.

But enough of me fan-girling, the process into making this was simpler than what I originally thought. There’s this really helpful website called MakeAGif. The homepage of the website immediately asks you what type of media you are using to convert into a GIF, in my case I chose Youtube. Then, I was taken to a page which I had to paste the URL of the video I was using. After pasting the URL, the website put it on a continuous loop from the beginning and you type in the start time of when you want the loop of your GIF to start. It then gives you the option of how long you want the GIF to be, since I was a registered member I chose ten seconds but you can chose to have it shorter. Once the GIF is created, I hit share and you have the option to download the GIF.