Producing the Art of the Animated Gif

This blog post is going to be about how I actually went about completing this mission.

As I said in my previous blog post, the topic that we decided to focus on was the art of the animated gif. For myself personally the reason that this one stuck out for me was because of how massive Gifs are on social media and how often I use them myself. Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit are all websites I use myself and it’s available on all of these, it’s also available on message sharing apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and even iMessage for iPhone users.

When we picked our groups to work with on the mission myself, Andrew and Mia created a WhatsApp group between us, in this we shared our progress throughout the mission and asked eachother for advice if we ever got stuck.

The first thing that I did was researched the history of the Gif format. One of the articles that I read was titled “A Brief History of Animated GIF Art”, it was really informative and gave me loads of interesting content to include in my presentation. It was a great article because it had four parts to it covering the past three decades, it was published by Paddy Johnson in 2014 for the website ArtNet News.

The next article that I looked at was regarding how to make a Gif - it was written by Eric Ravenscraft in August 2019 for the website “Lifehacker”. He basically suggested all the different ways you can make Gifs no matter what device you’re using - desktop, laptop or mobile device. Some of the apps/websites he suggested to do it were Giphy (probably the biggest and most famous), ImgPlay and ScreenToGif. It was really handy how he done it as he gave step by step guides on how to use it and which device it worked on. The app I actually decided to use in the end was Momento, I’m an iPhone user so just downloaded it from the AppStore and it was so easy to use, all I had to do was basically upload a picture from my gallery that I wanted to turn to a Gif and the app did all the work. It’s also a free app which is a bonus. The picture that I used for my Gif was taken during Peer Mentoring from a few weeks ago and includes me and two of my friends from the course.

When Andrew and Mia had finished all of their work on Microsoft Word we put it all together on a PowerPoint and presented it to the rest of our group in the Lab. When designing the layout of the powerpoint I had to make sure each slide looked the same as the last. I think the design and layout of a presentation is definitely a really important aspect in these missions because if I was watching one and it was messy and hard to follow I'd be put off concentrating.

My next blog post will be about reflecting on the mission. It will include what I though went well, what didn’t and what I learned from doing this mission.

Art of the Animated Gif - Why did I choose it?

Mission 1: Creativity
For our first mission in Introduction to Digital Media we had to research and present on one of the following: Art of the Animated Gif, Digital Audio, Augmented Reality, Interactive Fiction, Gaming, Adaptation,Remixes and Mashups, Critical Making or Creative Coding. In class we all looked into each mission and thought about which one we thought would suit us an interest us the most. I read through each brief and compared them to see which one I thought I was most interested in. For me personally I thought this mission was thee hardest one to decide on, I thought every topic seemed really interesting to learn about. The two that I looked into most were Art of the Animated Gif and Augmented Reality. In the past few years AR has become massive with the likes of Pokemon Go and off the back of the success of this there was a Harry Potter inspired game released. I thought it'd be interesting to look into it more but in the end I decided to go for the Art of the Animated Gif. Looking into the goals for this mission I realised I didn't know much at all about Gifs, I use them every day so thought this one would be best one for me.                   

The goals for this assignment includes the following:

-To research and learn about the design and history of the Gif format - when did it all start? what inspired it? who created it?

- Learn about the technical specifications of a Gif File

-Learn about how Gifs are used in different communities

- Learn about the different tools to make Gifs - What apps or software could I use to make the gifs?

-Make my own Gifs - when finishing learning about the different ways to make Gifs I would make them myself.

In our groups we had to split into teams of 2 or 3 to achieve the goals above. The Art of the Animated Gif turned out to be a really popular one and majority of my group chose it, I ended up doing my research and presentation with Mia and Andrew. Before we started our research into the presentation we spoke about the goals and what we each had expected to learn while doing this mission. We decided what each one of us would do to complete it and got to work.

Next blog post coming soon,
Seán

Introduction Post

First blog post of my Introduction to Digital Media module to share a little bit of info about myself!

My name is Sean Clarke, I'm 24 and I'm from Swords in Dublin.


What I hope to earn from this course is that I expand my knowledge on the world of digital media and to learn how to use all the programmes that go along with it. Within this module itself I think it will definitely help me to understand how to use programmes I've never used before like PremierePro and am excited to get started with it. First time back in education since 2014, I finished my Leaving Cert in 2013 and done a PLC in Business and Tourism from 2013-2014 in Colaiste Dhulaigh. Since 2014 I have been working full-time in Boots on the pharmacy counter and earlier in the year decided I'd had enough and needed to get back into education.

I've travelled a fair bit in the past few years and gave gone interrailing twice which included exploring Italian cities and Eastern Europe, Budapest was my favourite and is still the best city I've been to! I love everything TV and Movies and am currently running out of TV shows to watch. My favourite shower I've ever watched was probably a show called Six Feet Under that aired in the late 90's/early 00's, best series finale ever in my opinion. My twitter account is @SeanCla31310754 give me a follow to keep updated!