GIFfest – Assignment Bank

You’ve Come A Long Way, GIFby

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Watch your step on the sidewalk of yesteryear’s Information Highway

I’m 99.9% convinced that the first time I saw and recognized and animated gif for what it was, it was something very much like one of these:

Maybe you have similar memories? (Hopefully they are not PTSD-induced flashbacks!) Clearly the image of website construction was influenced by the metaphor of building the Information Highway at the time.

2012 celebrated the 25th anniversary of the GIF, and provided many wonderful examples of how the venerable image format has matured into a platform for art, and as a source of ds106 Assignments. I was so pleased when Alan Levine selected the “man digging quickly” GIF to represent the new Animated GIF category in the Assignment Bank. Alan’s GIF icon fits right in above (second row, centre) doesn’t it?

After posting my Daily Create 386: Blue Screen of Death animated GIF yesterday (“Windoes has detect s aystem fluat”), I realized that I needed to tweak my blog theme theme (the standard-vanilla base Gantry theme, used with the versatile Gantry Framework plug-in) to allow for a full-page width image — a custom page layout that does not have sidebar. Normally, I can easily do this within this theme (I use it on a number of sites), but for some reason, the current installation on de•tri•tus is being problematic, and I’m going to need to go into Maintenance Mode and likely re-install a few things to sort it out. (I will likely switch to the WP-Maintenance Mode plugin at the same time.)

It was at this point that I then got distracted into thinking about a custom “Under Construction” animated GIF for de•tri•tis.

Let’s Bring the “Under Construction GIF” forward into this Century!

A search on FlickrStorm led me to a nice CC-licensed image from 2006 by Brandon Daniel (bdu on Flickr) , which I then re-worked into an animated GIF. I then personalized the GIF with my blog name and a nice subtle message about the site being in a maintenance situation, and wound up with this.

“System Maintenance Animated GIF (de•tri•tus 2013)” by aforgrave, on Flickr

This sounds like an ideal opportunity for a ds106 Assignment, yes?

I checked the existing assignment bank, and found 2 existing yet different enough animated-GIF assignments:

Visual Assignment, 590: DS106 Technical Difficulties
Design Assignment, 842: Rainbows and Unicorns in the Server Room

Neither one of these exactly captures the drive for a new, sophisticated “under construction” GIF for use on your own, personal web page or blog.

So, let’s make one!!

The Challenge

To honour this little progression of the animated GIF, and to provide all new and existing ds106 bloggers with a challenge, I’m suggesting a new Animated GIF Assignment 911: “Sophisticate Your Own, Personal ‘Under Construction’ GIF”. We all have blogs. We’re all working with GIFs. Make yourself your own, personal animated GIF to use when you are messing around with the gears, or the innards, or the unicorns, or with whatever keeps your site humming behind the scenes. And give yourself an extra bonus point if you find and use someone else’s CC-licenced image. You need to do the attribution and all that good stuff to claim the point. Model appropriate blog maintenance, great design aesthetics, and a conscientious web-citizenship sharing ethic all at once.

Got it? Are you up for it? Are you ready? Go! Be sure to share your result. We aren’t likely to actually see it in use — ’cause we keep our blogs up and running most of the time, right? – so make sure to show it to us now!

But wait!

A Little Reflection

As I went to Google “under construction animated GIFs” on the web to use up at the top, I found the result page to be strangely quiet. (Try it!) Google Images turned up a page of construction images, but they were oddly static. So static, in fact, that I suspect the obnoxiousity of these have resulted in them being systematically purged from Google’s results in an attempt to avoid their resurgence. Not an entirely bad thing. Conspiracy theory aside (or maybe just judicious for-the-better-of-society editing), in the end I had to seek out that media-format of the 90s, the optical disk.

For the first time in years (as I think about it), I visited the shelf in my office cupboard where all of my CD/DVD-based software has been stored. That I didn’t stir up a layer of dust was surprising. I never used it any more. The Internet and things like iTunes and the App Store have changed how we get at our media. Heck, a lot of the apps we use are even web-based now.

However, I found the “Web Graphics” disk from a multi-disk set I purchased long ago (I think it has a quarter of a million graphics and photos distributed over maybe 13 optical disks) and on it was a directory with Animated GIFS. In there, I found a directory labeled “Construction,” and from there, I selected the representative samples shown above.

Knowing that I may likely never revisit this disk (though I think I may just copy the contents to my HD for future use), here is the list of categories provided on this disk, for posterity, and as a little snapshot of what was available in 1997.

Memory Lane: Animated GIF Collections on a 1997 optical disk
3D Balls Alphabet Anatomy Arrows Backflip Bouncers Bullets Buttons Computer Construction	Creatures Dividers Elements Entertainmant Flags Flamers Holidays Home LInks Machines	Mail Miscellaneous Money Music Notices People Plain 3D Planets Science Fiction Shapes	Signs Sports Statics Technology Time Transportation Wood Door

When I think about how we are using GIFs now, for telling and augmenting stories, there is no doubt that the GIF has come a long way, baby. And as a technology, it is far from dead. It’s just gotten a lot more sophisticated.

So let’s (carefully) bring back the “under construction GIF.” Sound like fun?

Now go make your GIF!

“Optical Disks Montage” by aforgrave, on Flickr.

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Marnie

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“Marnie” by aforgrave, on Flickr

From HItchcock‘s 1964 film of the same name. Here, Marnie (played by Tippi Hedren) waits quietly in the washroom stall at work at the end of the day while waiting for everyone else to leave. The camera focuses on her for the duration of the scene, while she listens and waits to hear the other ladies finish their small talk and leave for home. Once all is quiet, she then re-enters the office to burgle the safe.

Over the course of the film, her husband (played by Sean Connery) continues to rescue her from prosecution, and seeks to uncover the mystery behind her compulsive behaviours.

The lighting and framing in this shot is wonderful, emphasizing how isolated and removed Marnie is from everyone. Given that there is virtually no movement for the duration of this piece, aside from a shadow on the wall above Marnie’s head as someone enters, and then subsequently exits the stall behind her as the room empties, it makes for quite a tense shot.

Having been finalized close to the end of my GIFestivus2012 run (although I still have a few left to post), this one was one of the GIFs I was able to work on and apply what I’ve learned to make decisions as I went to move towards the finished product fairly quickly. Reduced from 152 frames down to six frames (with several repetitions), the GIF features a mask for all but the face (could have just gone with the eyes, but there is a bit of head movement and some face shadows), timing intervals ranging from 0 to 8 seconds, an overlay in the upper right (can you see it?) to deal with the aforementioned shadow on the rear wall, and at the full 256 colours, a comfortable 205 kb at 600 pixels wide. (Given that I was posting GIFs > 1GB to begin.)

I’m submitting this one as part of GIFestivus2012, for the ds106 Animated GIF Assignment 865: GIF Me Again About My Eyes.

More Hitchcock to come, though I’m still looking for a nice scary one for MBS’ Animated GIF Assignments891: Psycho GIF.

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The Big Steal

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More BBC inspired giffing. nice to see some B&W back on the box. The Big Steal – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia described as a noir/comedy staring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer is great stuff.

I just marched through the movie grabbing some sections with Movie2Gif – John’s World Wide Wall Display doing a little extra cleaning up in fireworks.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to find any section to illustrate the most interesting aspects of the movie. Firstly the female lead was I feel treated as more of an equal that usual. The only North American who could speak good Spanish, the movie is set in Mexico, she held her own bantering with Robert Mitchum, driving a car and firing a gun in fairly high heels. , the villains all shouted at the Mexican characters. The two main Mexican characters spoke good English and displayed intelligence.

I didn’t manage to gif any of those moments but here is a few I did:

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Advancing Storm

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“memories” by jasleen_kaur, on Flickr
(CC BY-SA 2.0)

In support of my renewed commitment to the Photo-A-Day Project 365 endeavour, I’ve been transferring images off of memory cards, and started sorting and cataloging photos from as far back as the summer of 2011. It’s actually been that long since I took a disciplined approach to managing my images!

Some may recall (Giulia, so patient!) that it took me most of August 2011 to get whittled through my 800+ photos from Unplug’d11 (I was somehow quicker this past year! I didn’t take as many pics.).

Things like our family trip to Washington D.C., however, or the Windsor photo walk in August with Diane Bedard (@windsordi) and Alan Levine (@cogdog) never did get sorted out in the mad rush of the weeks preceding the return to school in September. (I was getting ready to teach in a new school you may recall, but we found out the week before that it wouldn’t be ready, so we set-up in my previous school, but I had to unpack in a completely different space, and then we moved to the new school after four weeks once it was ready, … yada, yada, yada…)

So, while I’ve not yet posted any of those images as of yet, I came across an animated GIF that I completed this past summer (2012) during our family holiday in Québec on the shore of the St. Lawrence. In checking back on de•tri•tus, it turns out it got lost in the shuffle and was never posted! (It’s not the only piece of art — or piece of writing — that got misplaced or unfinished when something else captured my attention.)

However, in the spirit of GIFestivus2012 — and perhaps with a nod towards the current political/education situation in Ontario, I present, Advancing Storm.

Advancing Storm” by aforgrave, on Flickr

This GIF was made from two panorama shots that I took with the iPhone PANO app while on the beach below the cliff. Between the time of the first panorama and the second one, the clouds swept up the river, and by the time the app had started stitching the second image together, I was booting it for the stairs back up the escarpment to the house.

Made from only two images, the animation is somewhat artificial — I’m fairly certain I used the ‘tween feature to cause a gradual shift from the first to the second image — either that or I effected something hand-crafted using layers and transparency. But the overall effect is not unlike the very rapid darkening of the sky that took place on or about July 12th, 2012.

As an afterthought, I’m going to submit this for a new Animated GIF Assignment #892: “GIF the Weather, Man!” Care to join in the fun?

(BTW, I’ve also found my long-uncompleted Bladerunner GIFs from that same week. I’ll get those finally sorted out and post them shortly. My newly GIFestivus2012-enhanced GIFfing skills should help in that regard.)

And thanks to Rowan Peter (@rowan_peter) and Alan Levine (@cogdog) for their support in clarifying that, yes indeed, you CAN post animated GIFs to Flickr (with a name like that, why not??) — AND have them animate!!

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Infinite Dash of Rainbow

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I’ve had this GIFestivus2012 GIF done for a few days. It’s for Ben Rimes’ Animated GIF Assignment 871: My Little Pony, Friendship is GIFtastic.

Rainbow Dash and the other pony look like they’ll be flying for some time now. Check back later to see if they’re on a break.

It took quite a bit of fiddling to get this one close to a loop. But now it looks like an old Hanna Barbara cartoon where the characters are fake running in front of the rotating scenery. Still a lot of frames — I edit these things down as best I can! It still looks good at 16 colours. But large at 1.3 MB for this 640 pixel wide image.

More recently I’ve had some success reducing file size by adding transparent sections to various frames, and having the non-changing parts present on only one common frame. But there’s nothing in this one that repeats. Each frame is different.

However, we’re getting there.

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Beat Gif

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Wandering round youtube I found Jack Kerouac (rare footage) / Cat Power – Good Woman – YouTube. Most of the Kerouac I’ve seen have been chat show footage with a drunk Kerouac. This clip shows his gentler side. Unfortunately to get the gif file size down I had to crush it hard.

Playflow:

Downloaded the mp4 with Fastesttube in Safari.
Loaded it into Movie2Gif and exported some gifs, all with 15 frames.
Opened fireworks and did a wee bit of cropping of some of the gifs.
Created a new document in Fireworks, imported and placed the gifs.
Made a new layer for the ‘frames’.
Used the export wizard to get the files size down to 1.1MB

I guess this is a ds106 Assignments: Multi-Frame GIF Story.

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5 from 39

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Enjoyed the original 39 steps on the TV the other night. Some giffable moments:

I just skimmed through a downloaded version in Movie2Gif and exported a few gifs. One or two I edited a wee bit in fireworks.

Most of the DS106 croud seem to use GIMP or photoshop for giffing but I like Fireworks. Movie2Gif is just a fronted for Gifsicle which does a nice job of stitching frames together from stills. Fireworks is good for grabing a bit of a frame and ‘spreading’ it over all the other frames to freeze that section of the gif.

This sort of fits the ds106 Assignments: Multi-Frame GIF Story. If I get some more time I might go on with the movie, maybe get 39 gifs from it.

As usual, not ~~much~~ any refection on the movie from me.

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Wishing You the Best for 2013 !!

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Wishing you the very best for the coming year!!

This animated GIF is made from a series of screen captures from MineCraft, where the sign for 2013 was built during the last two hours of 2012. Rather than using Lego this year (I’ve kept my previous builds for 2010, 2011, 2012 — I’m running out of blocks) this sign was built from hand-crafted sandstone blocks, and decorated with torches and hewn nether rack. Unlike the 3 previous years, where the signs where smaller than me, in this instance (relatively speaking) the sign is several times my height in the Minecraft world. Ladders, climbing, jumping, falling, … and eventually, flying were involved.

Many thanks to EDU Gamer MineCrafters extraordinaire @liamodonnell, @melaniemcbride and @jasonnolan for the wonderful New Years’ fireworks that added so much to the lighting of the 2013 sign. You EDU Gamers truly rock!

A number of different images of the in-world fireworks from various screen captures were composited onto the existing ones so that the final image (with added message) could reflect the true excitement of the transition to the New Year.

A video version of the animated GIF is posted on Flickr. It’s not as sharp as the GIF, despite being a much larger file.

And so, again, my very best wishes for 2013. Be creative, innovative, positive, strong, purposeful, focused, playful, humourous, happy, collaborative, energetic, insightful, wonderful, sharing and caring … and any other fine adjectives that strike your fancy!!

The year has begun!

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OSS117?s Bedhead

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Prior to the two recent film parodies of OSS117 (Cairo, Nest of Spies, and Rio Doesn’t Answer) starring Jean Dujardin, I’d not heard of the original character, secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, who pre-dates Ian Fleming’s James Bond by four years. Appearing first in 1948, OSS 117 was a creation of French author Jean Bruce, who wrote 91 novels in the series, followed by another 143 written by his wife after he passed away, and then continued by their son and daughter, who added another 24 books. That’s a few more books than the 12 Bond books written by Fleming. Although there were a number of OSS 117 spy films made during the late fifties and sixties, they stayed off my radar, which, attuned to such narratives (albeit after the fact), did manage to pick up James Bond, Simon Templar, Napolean Solo, Jim Phelps and crew, Harry Palmer, and even Maxwell Smart, Matt Helm, Derek Flint, and Modesty Blaise.

At any rate, I was impressed with Jean Dujardin’s tongue-in-cheek, yet low-key send-up in the 2006 film, OSS117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. Dujardin’s physical comedy is less overt that Peter Seller’s Inspector Clouseau, and the humour is more heavily based in subtle digs at the original spy movies and characters of the sixties. Watching Dujardin’s portrayal of Hubert de la Bath reminds you of Connery’s Bond, but in a way that helps you appreciate how ludicrous the character is.

For example, Bond’s hair. Rarely does Bond EVER have a hair out of place. This point is simply emphasized by a single, short scene in Cairo, Nest of Spies. Like Bond, de la Bath’s hair is always immaculate. We are taken aback one morning when he appears with severe bedhead. However (and this takes only seconds in the film), his hair is simply restored to its natural perfect appearance with a single swipe of the hand. And then the movie moves on to the next scene. That’s the extent of the bit. Downplayed, yet so telling.

Here’s a GIF of the short bit.

Lest you think I’ve abandoned GIFestivus2012 (perhaps soon to be extended as GIFestivus2013), I’ve been working on a series of GIFs from a movie over the past week for the Multi-Frame Animated GIF assignment. Or maybe it should be for the Summarize a Movie with Animated GIFs assignment (just ran across that one!) ??? In addition to watching the movie, I pulled around 30 clips as possibles for GIFfing, and have been working away at some of them since then. I also have plans of trying the Animated Movie Poster assignment, as I think the material would be really good for that. But that project will stay under wraps a bit longer.

I will return to this OSS 117 Cairo, Nest of Spies down the road, but I had this one done and thought I would post it as a one-off. Not sure if it fits into any of the existing assignments. Likely has too many frames for Say It Like the Peanut Butter assignment.

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Mutant muppet party puppets

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I had an idea to combine Muppet GIFs and Rock ‘n Roll GIFs by working with the awesome Sequestered in Muppets video, but I couldn’t do justice to the original. So instead I used the mutant muppet party puppets from The Coup’s Your Parents’ Cocaine video. My rock ‘n roll peeps would probably say this video doesn’t qualify, and since they’re not real muppets, maybe he project fails on all counts. Too bad. I like the mohawk guy.