Activism & Agency - Process

Activism & Agency - Process

Introduction

In order to create our group, everyone in the class decided individually what mission they'd each like to undertake for the Culture mission. Once everyone had identified what mission they'd like to undertake, everyone joined a group of like-minded people to take on the task. After we had formed our group we had, gotten each other’s contact details and set up a WhatsApp group and slack channel to communicate with each other to coordinate our work for the project.  After this, we all brainstormed ideas on how we should take on the task, what we should focus on and what should be added after we get our main point of the assignment completed. I was personally interested in this topic because I think activism is important in the world we live in where there are many injustices and issues that need to be fixed. Without activism, nothing would ever change.

Goals

Our goals for this assignment are to learn about activism in the age of social media, how it changes from before social media, what hashtag activism is, learn about certain popular hashtags in recent times etc.

Among learning about hashtag activism, another goal is to learn how to archive and annotate social media content. To do this, we will be using TAGS,  to archive rising hashtags and produce commentary on said hashtag.

Upon completing all of our groups predetermined tasks, we wanted to create a PowerPoint presentation on our project to show what we have learned and achieved over the course of completing the mission. We had to make sure that we didn’t use too much text in our presentation as it would looks as if we didn’t do much research if we just read from the screen so we decided as a group that we would have bullet points in our presentation to show the important details about each slide and we would then expand further from our knowledge gained from conducting research. We also needed to make sure that we each did an adequate amount of research in the discussed topics because at the end of our presentation we wanted to have a section where people in the audience could ask us questions, so we didn’t want to be caught off-guard. To create our presentation for this mission, we wanted to each create a PowerPoint presentation each, then meet up and take bits and pieces from each to make it as collaborative and well put together as possible. 

The Art of the Animated GIF - Product

The Art of The Animated GIF – Product

Creation of GIF’s 

As part of my project, I wanted to create my own set of GIF’s to include in my presentation. I wanted to show that it actually is very simple once you get the hang of it and understand the technical specifications of GIF’s themselves.

I tried out many different tools that can be used to create GIF’s. I eventually decided upon going with the website Giphy. Giphy is a free website centring around GIF’s. Users can use their tools to create their own or search for GIF’s created by other users by using the search feature. It’s a simple and very user-friendly website. 

To create my GIF’s, I created an account on the GIPHY website, and then navigated to the ‘Create’ section. From there you can add a set of images to create a slideshow GIF or input a URL from YouTube or Vimeo and GIPHY will take the section that you desire to be turned into a GIF and do it for you. You can trim the video, select specific sections of the video turned into a GIF. Along with this you can also add effects such as captions, stickers and filters to change how it looks. 

Presentation

Upon completing this project, I had to create a PowerPoint presentation on the work I had undertaken over the last few weeks. I wanted to discuss everything I had research and talk about my thoughts and opinions are. In my presentation I talked about what GIF’s are and where they came from, what they are used for today, what tools are out there to create GIF’s and how they’re used, and finally demonstrate how I went about creating my own GIF’s. At the end I included a section for the audience to ask my any questions they may have after listening to my presentation. 

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. 

Introduction Post

Introduction to a future video editor

Hello! My name is Rob, I'm 22 and from Offaly but currently living in Tyrellstown for college. I'm currently studying Creative Digital Media in TU Dublin - Blanchardstown campus. In the future I would like to work in video / film production working mainly as a video editor or VFX artist. I've always had an interest in doing this as a job since I was a kid as I was always fascinated by the incredible effects and techniques used in filmmaking.

Some of my favourite movies include The Wolf of Wall Street, Pulp Fiction, and all of the Marvel movies. I also enjoy music, but mainly rap, punk & hardcore and metalcore. Gaming is a big hobby of mine and I play a lot of FIFA and Counterstrike. I really enjoy competitive games.

This is my first year in college and also my first time living away from home which has taken a bit of getting used to but after living on my own for the last few months I can say I much prefer it, because of the independence.