GIF’s and CINEMAGRAPHS

During my study of animations in my high school career, I was asked to look at Animated GIF’s and Cinemagraphs. An animated GIF are very popular and are recognized everywhere; they are a series of static GIF’s placed together side by side in “frames”. This sequence of frames plays a certain number of times or repeats endlessly, in a process called looping. Cinemagraphs are still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement occurs. They are published in GIF format, and give the the viewer the illusion that they’re watching a video. Their produced by either taking a seres of photographs or a video recording and, using masking in photoshop, edit the frames into a seamless loop of frames.

This animated GIF I believe to be successful. I think this because it successfully captures his movement and what he’s doing. The overall clarity of the piece is strong, which allows the actual image itself to be clear and visible; this also connects to, even though its close up, the viewer can clearly make out who he is. I thought that this was successful also because of the fact at what it portrays. The artist, whose name is unknown, captured the beloved Mr. Bean in all his awkwardness in the great moment in his life when he treats himself for dinner on his vacation, in the movie “Mr. Beans Vacation”. What makes it successful I feel is how each frame of movement lines up perfectly with the next, and I cannot see the point at which the clip ends and begins looping again. I feel that this help makes it successful because of its seamless look and feel. Overall I feel this to be a successful GIF because of the seamless looping process, the clarity and overall success of its end result , and the amazing and funny subject matter.

This cinemagraph is one that I feel to be successful. Although I was unable to find the artist who created this cinemagraph, I still feel it to be successful. I found this to be successful because it successfully captures only one part of the movement done by the bee. The only movement done by the bee is his antennas on his head and a slight tilt in his head. This is successful because it successfully captures a minor movement that is repeated that looks endless, and there is o gap in between the movemet. What I mean by this is that there is no point where it looks like it starts to loop again; everything sees seamless.

While looking up bee cinemagraphs, I found a website called “Savvy Design” that had some outdoors/animal/nature cinemagraphs that I thought were good as well. THe link to the website is:

http://savvydesign.wordpress.com/tag/cinemagraph/

More examples of GIF’s I liked: