The Art of the Animated GIF - Process

Art of the Animated GIF - Process 

Goals

For my project for mission 1 of introduction to digital media, I decided to take on the challenge of The Art of the Animated GIF. I was interested in this particular topic as I found it intriguing how they have become a frequent form of communication in our everyday life nowadays. 

My goals this assignment is to learn all about GIF's. How they work, the history, and how they're used years back and in present time. I will be learning about the technical specifications of the GIF, while also exploring the cultural practices and impact it has had on society in its lifetime. 

The biggest goal for me in partaking in this task is to learn how to create GIF's myself while also learning what the best tools are and practices for creating the best possible GIF's.

End Product

By the end of this, I hope to be able to properly explain GIF's and their history to other people and create a presentation to convey my thoughts effectively to my fellow classmates. I would like to create a few of my own GIF’s to show that I have put in the work and research on the topic, and to also teach people how they can create their own GIF’s if they so desired to do so, by demonstrating what I had to do in order to create my own GIF’s for this project. I hope that my demonstration will steer people in the right direction. 

Resources

Google and YouTube probably me my most helpful resources when researching and creating GIF’s. While I may know what they are, I definitely do not know the technical and historical aspects of them. These two resources will be extremely helpful in the completion of my project.

The mac labs in college will also be extremely helpful tools for my projects as those rooms are equipped with powerful iMac’s which will greatly help the GIF creation section of the task. I will also want to test out a few different methods of GIF creation and with some being software based like Photoshop, having a powerful computer to use will be very useful to avoid crashes and long waiting times. 

There are a handful of very useful articles at my disposal that I can use to learn about the historical and technical specification aspects of GIF’s like https://news.artnet.com/art-world/a-brief-history-of-animated-gif-art-part-one-69060 which covers the history. 

Our college also provides us free access to the Microsoft Office service which includes things like Word, and PowerPoint which will be crucial to this project as I will be creating a presentation for my class about my project. 

One of the methods I would like to try out for GIF creation is Photoshop, which I can use for free using my college email, and that has been a lifesaver.