visual – Assignment Bank

50 Eggs: A GIF story

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I chose to extract my GIF from “Cool Hand Luke” starring Paul Newman. I highly recommend the movie, and without ruining it, the above GIF is from a scene where Luke, Paul Newman’s character, is eating 50 hard-boiled eggs as part of a bet he made and the whole prison population has money on either his success or failure.

I originally intended to use a different scene, where Luke says “Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand,” after bluffing his way into winning a prison poker match, but it was too long and I opted for a scene that I felt was better suited for this format. I utilized the tutorial from the ds106 website and since I already had the movie in a digital format, I cut it down to size in windows movie maker before pulling it into MPEG Streamclip because I noticed some serious lag when I pulled the whole movie in initially. Following the tutorial, I then took the finished product from Streamclip and pulled it into GIMP to compile my individual JPEG’s into an animated GIF.

Before realizing there was a tutorial, I opted to do what I usually do which is google “How to (insert problem here),” in this case “How to make a GIF from video,” which led my to gifnija. So I took the trimmed video clip from windows movie maker, uploaded it to gifninja, and this was the final product:

I really wasn’t happy with the quality and wouldn’t recommend this method, even though it is easier and faster.

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WTF is a GIF? Annie wants to show you!

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I had no clue what a GIF was before this assignment. At first I found this assignment extremely intimidating, but once reading Jim Groom’s tutorial on how to make a GIF a few times I felt like I was ready to give it a try. The first thing I did was download all the software I needed. I used YTD video downloader to download the clip from youtube. Then I used MPEG Streamclip to trim down the clip and provide a sequence of images. Finally I used GIMP to create my GIF by layering all of the images together.

“I’m not drunk!’

This week’s digital storytelling assignment was to create a GIF from our favorite movie. At the moment, my favorite movie is Bridesmaids. The GIF above is the scene where Annie gets pulled over and does a little dance for the cop to prove she is not drunk. I thought it was kind of funny that instead of just doing his sobriety test she choose to dance for him and it actually worked.

The process of creating GIFs is pretty easy once you get the hang of it especially when you have a handy dandy tutorial to help you out along the way. After I made one I went straight back to make more!

Like this one!

“I’m ready to party!”

This is the scene on the airplane on the way to Las Vegas. The evil Helen gives scared to death of flying, Annie an “anxiety pill” that gives Annie a ton of energy and she obnoxiously announces that she is ready to party. Annie outburst gets them kicked off the plane.

Annie is ready to party and now that I have made my GIFs, so am I!!

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Assignment 1: GIF

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This is my awesome amazing GIF. I created it with a little help from DS106 Handbook. I love Dr. Seuss’ books and I especially love the movies made from them. Recently, I watched Dr. Seuss’ the Lorax and the message “Change the Future” struck a cord with me. For most my peers they are either just being college or nearing the end of their college careers, either way there is a lot of pressure to answer who are you going to be? I believe when confronted with the prospect of the future we all look confused and frightened much like Ted in this GIF. All I can say is watch the Lorax and be inspired; maybe even save a tree!

Assignment 1

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LLAMA FACE

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Our assignment this week was to create an animated gif image that showcased part of a favorite (or least favorite) movie. If this works, I’m going to build MYSELF a summer home on top of an ancient Peruvian village.

HOLY LLAMA FACE BATMAN, IT LIVES! IT LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!

And now I know how to make animated gifs. Aahaha. AAHAHAHA. AHAHAHAAHAHAH!!!

Beware, ds106. You have unleashed a monster.

I chose this particular scene from “The Emperor’s New Groove” because it perfectly sums up Kuzco’s character–self-absorbed, a little bit ridiculous and convinced he’s the coolest thing out there. Doot-doot-doodle-doodle-doot-doot-doo-doo, KUZCOTOPIA!

Below the gif I wanted to make originally. I used Jim Groom’s excellent gif-making tutorial for both of these. I had to cut this one down a bit because, for whatever reason, MPEG Streamclip gets all ornery if you try to export a clip that pushes the 1MG mark, at least on my laptop. Laaaaame. Still, I managed to create this wonderful gif from the iconic movie “The Iron Giant.” Meet Dean McCoppin, sexiest and most long-suffering animated character of the late 90′s:

Again, it sums up his character pretty nicely. Chill, down-to-earth, and completely unprepared for the barrage of insanity that’s about to overtake his life. If you grew up in the 90′s didn’t see “The Iron Giant” as a kid you had a deprived childhood. Deprived! Do yourself a favor and go see it. Just make sure you bring tissues for the last part of the film–it’s one of those “Oh God, where did these FEELINGS come from?!” movies.

This assignment was both more difficult and significantly easier than I’d at first assumed. The process itself was way simpler than I thought it would be, but again, I had some serious technical difficulties. Like I said earlier, MPEGStreamClip decided to get annoying on me and crashed a couple of times, and then outright refused to export the entire set of images I needed for the whole gif I wanted to create. I did really enjoy the fiddly bits though–finding the perfect moments to start and stop my gif, getting the timing right, fixing the size of the first one in GIMP. Those little details are things I could spend hours on–and did, actually! But it’s incredibly frustrating when the tools you’re working with aren’t reliable, which is proving to be the biggest issue with my ds106 work so far.

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Creating my First GIF

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I’m just going to say it right now that creating a Gif was the hardest thing I did this week. I did a lot of research on how to do this and downloaded a ton of different software to figure it out. First thing I saw before I even started thinking about how to make my own gif was Martha’s twitter post about first UMW student (I believe the student’s name was Alex Spangler). So I clicked on the link to the blog and read a little about how his made his gif. I also found the tutorial on the DS106 website that I found very helpful: http://ds106.us/handbook/tools/creating-animated-gifs-open-source-software/ The software I downloaded that I actually used was Fastest Youtube downloader, and MPEG Streamclip. What I found most difficult at first was figuring out how to download youtube videos. That’s when I read about Fastest Youtube downloader on the tutorial site. After that it was really easy for me to search for a youtube video to download. After the video downloaded and I saved it I opened up the MPEG Streamclip. I followed the directions on the tutorial to shorten the clip to the part I wanted. I had trouble at first figuring out how to trim, and select in and out of the movie clip, but I finally got it. I then followed the directions on the tutorial on changing it to other formats. I changed the format to different screen shots and then I uploaded them to the website http://makeagif.com/ and then it created my gif for me. It felt really good to me that I figured it out.

So after saying all about the process of how I made my gif and frustrations I had I’m now going to talk about why I chose it. This scene is from the movie The Hunger Games. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/ In a short summary there are 12 districts that every year they offer up one boy and one girl from each district to fight to the death. I won’t tell too much for those of you who have not seen the movie. I chose it because it was one of my favorite parts of the movie. It is when Katniss is saluting district 11, and it is one of the main turning points in the movie that will start a rebellion in the future. I am very happy about how this gif turned out.

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

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Creating my First GIF

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make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

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Flash Gordon Approaching

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About 15 years ago, my uncle introduced me to my favorite “its so bad its good” movie. The movie was Flash Gordon (1980 version). I liked it so much as a kid that my uncle eventually gave me my own VHS copy to wear out.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080745/

This .gif I made is from one of the final scenes in the movie in which our hero, Flash, joins forces with Prince Vultan and his Hawkmen in a final assault on Emperor Ming’s palace. During the attack you can hear pieces of the Flash Gordon theme song by Queen.

I found the process of making the .gif to be extremely easy. Following Jim Groom’s directions I completed this in about ten minutes. I made a larger one but decided a 5 meg .gif was too large so I took it down a few frames to decrease the file size.

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Animated GIFs Galore!

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I came into DS 106 rather late, so I’m playing catch-up and will be posting the bootcamp content out of order. Just for fun, I thought I would start with the animated GIF project (Say It Like The Peanut Butter).

I decided to create a GIF from my favorite movie, American Beauty. The film is rife with shots and moments that would lend themselves well to this medium. The famous footage of the plastic bag floating down the street would probably be the most obvious choice, as well as the most overdone, so I decided to go with the brief but important scene when Lester Burnham catches his wife Carolyn in her affair when she stops at the fast food chain where he works. The dialogue is sharp, the situation is characteristic of the film, and Jeanine’s interjections into what could be a very dramatic scene solidifies the element of irreverence that runs throughout the film.

This particular shot is of Lester’s look of approval to Jeanine and her authoritative dismissal of Carolyn, demonstrating that through this misstep Carolyn has lost her position of control.

Video Source: http://youtu.be/LYmO9oXsTF8

Software Used: PwnYouTube, MPEG Streamclip, Adobe Photoshop CS5

I had a lot of fun using the Animate feature in Photoshop, so I decided to also create a GIF of the full version of the Kurt Vonnegut quote that I use as my blog header:

Quotation Source: Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without A Country

Software Used: PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop CS5

Note: For some reason the GIFs aren’t playing in the published version of the blog post, but if you click on the image it will open in a new window and play. Still trying to figure out why this is happening…

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Woot, Look at that! I made a GIF!

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My Favorite Movie? Pan’s Labyrinth.
My Favorite Scene? The Pale Man; aka: The Baby Eater.

Isn’t he just adorable?!

I had never in my life made a GIF before, The tutorial made by Jim Groom helped so much. I downloaded GIMP (which I have used previously for photography) and StreamClip. I found both easy to use as I navigated my way through Mr. Groom’s tutorial. I will say, my Tumblr will be home to all sorts of new GIFs with this newfound knowledge.

Why did I choose Pan’s Labyrinth? Pan’s Labyrinth is absolutely one of the most intriguing movies I have ever watched. I could go on for hours about my love for Guillermo Del Toro (the director) and his awesome skills. Pan’s Labyrinth is a movie that is spoken in all Spanish with English subtitles. Del Toro wrote the subtitles himself to make the words flow as easily as they did in his head. A simplified version of the movie is as follows: Girl (Ofelia) loves fairy tales. Girl is also slightly delusional (workings of a small child’s imagination). Girl meets Fawn, Fawn says “BY GOLLY, YOU’RE A PRINCESS!”. She believes him. He explains that she must complete three tasks to prove that she is the lost princess Moana. She must, 1. Get the key from the belly of the toad. 2. Enter the lair of the Pale Man and retrieve the dagger, making sure as to not eat anything from the wonderful feast, and 3. She must shed the blood of an innocent. First task, no problem. Second task, not so much. Ofelia enters the lair of the Pale Man. She walks past a gigantic feast set out before this waxy looking creature. She sees wonderful pictures on the wall of the Pale Man eating babies. YUM. She uses the key that she retrieved from the belly of the toad to get the dagger. On her way out she spots some delicious grapes. Having skipped dinner, she grabs a couple. OH NO, she’s awoken the Pale Man. His eyeballs are on a plate in front of him, he has to physically insert them into his hands before placing his hands on his face to see. Even then his eyesight is spotty. Ofelia escapes the lair after a close encounter with the Pale Man. Task 3…. Well I can’t tell you that much more or it will ruin the end of the movie! It is a fantastic flick. I generally don’t like foreign films with subtitles, they sound very mechanical and fake. This movie however… flows. It’s fantastic. I would recommend it to anyone.

Here’s a link to the IMDB page for Pan’s Labyrinth: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

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Lydia got an A, so I made a Gif

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So, I made a Gif. I didn’t even know what a Gif was really. But after many hours of frustration and trial and error I made a gif and know what one is. But that seems to be what ds106 is about, learning by trial and error to create something that is interesting as well as a reflection of your unique style.

So this week our assignment was to make a Gif of a scene from our favorite or least favorite movie. I chose the final scene from Beetlejuice where everyone is happy and getting along and Lydia gets to dance and float. Its my favorite scene from one of my favorite movies, I always wished I could dance and float whenever I got an A on a test. I definitely would’ve gotten more As with an incentive like that. I also thought it would make a pretty nice Gif.

I had originally planned to make a Gif from my favorite movie, Drop Dead Gorgeous, but both the DVD and YouTube methods weren’t working for me. Soo I switched to Beetlejuice, my next favorite movie. Jim Groom’s Creating an Animated Gif tutorial helped me A LOT. I ended up using YTD Video Downloader to get the video off of YouTube because doing it from DVD took much longer than I was wanting to spend. Once the video was downloaded I also used the YTD downloader to convert the file to an MPEG mp 4 file.

Once I had my video converted I opened it with MPEG streamclip and followed Jim’s tutorial at that point. When I got to the point in the video where I wanted to start my GIf I did selectin and then selectout where I wanted my gif to end, clicked trim, and I was almost done. Finally I used Gimp to layer them all together and BAM, I had my gif.

*One thing to note, if you are using Gimp one thing that kind of threw me was open the first image that you want for your gif first. When it appears in its own Gimp window go to file, open layers and then select the rest of the images you want to use and it will layer them all together for you.

Although the process was infuriating at times, the final product made up for it. I am pretty proud of my first Gif and may be addicted to making them now. From what I’ve hear its kind of like childbirth, you go through hell to produce it but once its here you forget all the bad stuff because its awesome.