Mission 1-Creativity-The Art of the Animated GIF
Product
My first assignment in introduction to digital media was on the Art of the Animated GIF. The goals for this mission were to learn about the design and history of the GIF format, to learn of the technical specifications of the GIF file, explore the cultural practices around the GIF and it's use in different communities and produce and share some GIF files.My first goal was to learn about the history and design of the GIF format, so I began looking up information and ended up finding out that the GIF format was invented by a man named Steve Wilhite while he was working for the company CompuServe and that the format itself was ideal for sending images using the slow modems at the time, from this goal I wish to show how far the GIF format has come, from being a way to send images and to overcoming the poor level of technology at the time to being what it is today.
Next was to learn of the technical specifications of the GIF format, this led me to learning things such as how the GIF differs from JPEG files as the GIF uses lossless compression which basically means that it's image quality doesn't degrade and also that the original 87-a format was an innovation as it allowed for images to be sent across the internet,whereas the JPEG files were, I wanted my end product to be able to show the technical specifications of the GIF format, but also how it evolved to become the format it is now.
Next was to explore the cultural practices around the GIF and it's use in different communities, using a mix of my own personal experience and research I was able to conclude that the GIF has a very strong presence in today's society and is used everyday, however it does seem to be only used by young people and people who would've used it when it first came out back in 1987, I wished for this end product to give clear stats on who uses the GIF the most, whether it be young or old.
Finally I can talk about the last of the goals which was to produce and share some GIF files, this goal I enjoyed the most as it was different and let me feel like I actually worked on something. I wanted my end product for this goal to show I had the ability to make and animated GIF and below is an example of the GIF that I made.
My final product was the actual presentation which I felt was able to show all of the work that I had done to my class as well as give a more in depth look at the Art of the Animated GIF.
Overall I felt that the end product that I wished to produce was completed and that it showed the completed goals set out by the brief, also the suggested/helpful links that showed me how to actually make a GIF were to help to .
Process
My aim of this mission was to be able to make an Animated GIF, which included explaining how I went about doing it and discussing the other methods that were used to make an Animated GIF,i.e the GIF made by other members of my group.When I was doing my project I found that there were plenty of resources that helped me to do the assignment as well as other resources present that could've helped me too. My overall project was to make an animated GIF and to also present it to my class and this is how I did it. I first discussed with my group to work on a project based on the Art of the Animated GIF, from there we decided when we should meet up,for how long,how many days a week, e.c.t.
We also discussed what we would do in our own individual time and what to include. We would come in and meetup in the library and discuss what we wanted to include and what we didn't want to include. We talked about the resources we could use such as the links on the CDM website page.
From there we learned the history of the GIF as well as the history of some famous GIFs and how they came about, one example being the super Mario cloud GIF which was of the sky moving by, it was invented by Cory Archangel who took apart his NES cartridge and made it so only the clouds were visible. When working on my own I was able to make my own GIF of a dog walking on it's own.
I was able to make this GIF by using the programmes Inkscape which let me draw the animation and another programme called GIMP that allowed me to alter and layer the images upon one another so that it would appear like the images where moving. Other members of the group were able to include their own GIFs using different methods, where mine was all done by me , they took a video and edited it so that it was turned into something else, something new. As we continued working together we talked more about what to include and what not to include, we used both the information given in the links on the brief as well as searching things for ourselves on the internet as it required both for us to fully explain ourselves.
We tried to speak to other groups that had chosen to do the same topic as us and try to see how they were going to do their assignment. After the main work was done all that was left was the presentation, this required us to make a slideshow explaining GIFs themselves as well as how we made our own ones. We used GIF examples in our presentations and were able to compare early GIFs to more modern ones and how their uses aren't just for entertainment purposes.
Review/Reflection
Over the period of time I had to do this assignment I was able to learn loads about GIFs themselves such as the impact they had back when they were first introduced and how they allowed images to be sent across the internet in a new and better way, to the cultural impact that they have on today's world and also the making of them. I initially knew very little about GIFs and my original impression of them was very wrong as I had only thought them to be useful in text conversation but there is more to them. They can be used for demonstrations or instructions or even as attention grabbers.Looking back now I do feel that I could've definitely improved on my assignment by including extra things such as, I could've made more animated GIFs as I did only have the one, I could've focused more on the actual assignment rather than the presentation and I could've included more relevant information inn my presentation or gone into more detail about how to make a GIF.
I also discovered that it was a lot easier to make GIF than what I had originally thought as there were plenty of instructional videos on YouTube and as well as the links on the brief explaining different ways to make a GIF and different techniques. The programmes themselves were very straight forward and easy to use, for Inkscape it was a simple matter of just drawing the shapes and arranging them the right way as well as colouring them. For GIMP all it was just layering the images on top on another and going back between the two programmes, editing it by moving parts around and then opening it back up in GIMP and layer it again.
At the start of the project there was only myself and another in the group as we couldn't find a third member, so this just meant that we had to work harder, so after working on it for a bit we found another member without a group and decided to let them join, we immediately gave them work to catch up on and the did so. While I was working on my GIF, they worked on their version of it and because of that it gave us a better variety of material to use in our presentation.
Overall I felt that the actual work on the GIF was good although some more could've been done to improve it and our work on the presentation was good and allowed my group to get our points across while also keeping it reasonably simple.
