Mommy, why is that picture moving?
Date: October 16, 2012Category: Author: Danielle Azar
If you’ve been on the internet lately, as you obviously have if you’re reading this, you’ve seen these: a moving picture, usually of a cat or politician, repeating the same action over and over again. They seem to be popping up everywhere recently, I’ve even seen people leave one as a comment to a blog post. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes disturbing, and often times a little annoying but they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon so I began my investigation on what these are and how to make my own.
These images are called animated GIF’s, GIF standing for Graphics Interchange Format, and generally look like a graphic image on a Web page that repeats the same move over and over again. An animated GIF can loop endlessly or it can present one or a few sequences and then stop the animation. This effect can be achieved through Java or Flash but GIFs are generally easier to create and usually smaller in size and thus faster to display. The technology behind these has been around since 1987, which is forever in technological terms, but they have been enjoying a recent resurgence in popularity through social media. As any social media marketer knows, the social is very image-driven with pictures receiving far more attention than words alone. Based on that assumption, what could be better than a picture that moves, especially if it’s easy to make?
Social media sites Tumblr and Reddit are the main catalysts behind the recent popularity of animated GIF’s, with both sites boasting wildly popular GIF tags with millions of readers (watchers?) every day. Both sites are notorious for being ahead of the “coolness curve” and the popularity rapidly spread throughout the world wide web.
The medium is great for showing reactions and are often used in place of emoticons. They are also great for showing a humorous clip, a quick demonstration, or an eye-catching display. Sometimes, they can be quite beautiful. However, they are not good for everything and run the danger of becoming stale from overuse in my humble opinion.
Here’s an informative video on how to make one of these in using free open-source software Gimp:
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