Commotions

Davey Do

Davey Do

Senior Member
Location
Goofy, Illinois
GIFs stands for Graphics Interchange Formats, which is a file that supports both static and animated images. In other words, the format will show a non-moving two dimensional image, like a comic, or an animated image, like a cartoon.

I made my first GIF on October 10, 2020 and became totally immersed in the process mostly because it encompasses so many areas of art media. In the The process of making GIFs, I've used sketching, notes, sculpting, soldering, wood carving, stagecrafting, painting, photography, and computer graphics.

For the first time, I could make images, like cartoon characters that I've drawn for years, come to life! What a charge!

But I really don't care for the term "GIF". I was thinking about that this morning as I was drinking my coffee and sketching, a wake up routine that I've done for decades. I thought, what I'm really doing is animating comic strips.

They are...

commotions20201218_12322371.jpg

COMMOTIONS!

I like the sketch so much, I copied it, downloaded it, and made a GIF which I shall henceforth refer to my GIFs as as a comic in motion: A Commotion!

commotion.gif

Come with me, my friends, as I make a commotion!
 

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I just sort of stumbled on making GIFs. Last year I attempted to do some animation, but the process was laborious and I just couldn't get the hang of it. I use my art to relax, and this was not relaxing, so I shelved the idea.

I stumbled upon a website, imgflip, and could immediately understand how little animated episodes could be made. I am not a natural at anything but art and making little animated episodes came easily.

There are websites for artists who make GIFs and there are some great GIF artists out there. The one thing that I could not understand was why they didn't loop images for a complete, non-jumpy animation.

Here's a little animation that I made, composed of about 20 images, that does not have a loop:

simple-.gif

The pencil comes down, draws the face, and the everything disappears. Quite disconcerting. Especially when the very same images can be downloaded in reverse to complete the loop. No more images needed to be generated in order to complete the loop:

simple.gif

In this loop animation, the pen comes down, draws the face, erases the face, and leaves to return and complete the process. Very reassuring.

I'll be back!
 
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I'm playing around with different media and here I tried for the first time to use my tablet as part of the scene:

comp clay.gif
 


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