Dear class,
Our next weeks after the break will take us into an early form of digital animation called 'animated gifs':
Please read the Wikipedia entry above so that you are well-versed in the history of this form. Animated gifs existed long before Photoshop and the Web. Culturally, they are usually employed humorously, but many other uses have developed in both digital/new media art and in advertising. We will get into more elaborate examples of animated gif art as well as advertising in the coming weeks.
During our break, go online and search 'animated gifs'. Save links to your favorite examples and post them to your blog as a list. We will look at some of these and discuss them briefly next time we meet.
In the meantime, here are some examples and some ideas, as well as instructions for how to construct an animated gif in Photoshop:
via tom moody: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/date/2004/12/21/
via tom moody: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/date/2003/12/29/
Article: from Rhizome.org
GIFABILITY
Last winter, Dan Harmon, who was then the executive producer of the television sitcom Community, shared that he tried, “many times a season” to put star Alison Brie “in a situation, wardrobe-wise, that I know is going to end up as an animated GIF file!”[1] Those GIFs, which circulate on Tumblr and other social media networks that traffic in images, are frame-capture GIFs. Unlike other GIF types, frame-capture GIFs plainly collect and endlessly repeat a single pop cultural moment from movies, TV shows, sporting events, political occasions, newscasts, cartoons, or even video games. As GIFs are silent, text is used to share dialogue or help shepherd the meaning of a GIF. Frame-grab GIFs are low-quality, incessantly mobile things, they can be awkwardly cropped and their focus is always obviously legible. Somewhat counter to this are what Daniel Rourke has termed art GIFs,[2]which, while also frequently sourced from movies or television, contain higher resolutions and have a self-consciously highbrow pretension, usually focusing on subtler, “artistic” moments. [read in full]
Angelus Novus GIF by Garrett Rosenblum © Garrett, Inc. 2012
INSTRUCTIONS:
Create a folder full of images that you want to sequence together as frames in an animated GIF. You can find special programs online to do this, but we're going to do this in Photoshop:
- Put the images you want to animate into one folder.
- Click File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. When the “Load Layers” window pops up, click Browse to select & open your image files, and then click OK. This should import the files you selected as individual layers in your document. Rearrange the layers into the correct order, if necessary.
- Open the Animation palette (Window > Animation) if you have CS5. In Photoshop CS6, this is now known as the Timeline palette. So, go to (Window > Timeline) instead.
- In the Animation/Timeline palette menu (found at the top right corner of the palette), click Make Frames From Layers. You can also click Reverse Frames if needed. This will take each layer in your document and set it as an individual frame in the animation.
- Now we will change the duration of each frame. Make sure you are in frame view, not timeline view. If you do not see thumbnail icons of all your layers in the Animation/Timeline palette, click the icon in the lower right corner (the hover text will say “Convert to Frame Animation”). Now, back in the Animation/Timeline palette menu, click Select All Frames.
- Click the drop down button just underneath each frame image (circled in red in the image below). This will bring up a menu where you can set a duration. Since all frames are selected, all frames will be set to the same time. Each frame can be changed individually, if desired.
- The drop down button circled in black in the image above will change how many times the animation will loop; either a fixed number of times, or forever.
- Once the frame order and timing as been set up, it is time to save the image! Click File > Save for Web & Devices, make sure the file format is set to GIF, change any other options if needed, and save the image!
You will now have an animated GIF taken from a folder full of the individual frames. In fact, as long as each frame exists as a separate layer in Photoshop, the Animation/Timeline palette can be used to create the GIF.
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