Archive for the ‘animate GIF’ Category

 

Kool Aid Animated GIF tutorial

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

This is the first part of a three or four part sequence on making an animated GIF and converting it to a texture file for Second Life. All we cover here is creating the GIF. The next video will deal with the Second Life side of things.

As has been the case for many folks who’ve passed through the ds106 system, Jim Groom’s tutorial on using GIMP and MPEG Streamclip proved invaluable in helping me to figure out how to this.

What follows are the steps I followed in making the animated GIF featured in the tutorial:

  • Select and download video as mp4 from YouTube
  • Open video in MPEG Streamclip; select in and out points; trim clip
  • save trimmed clip as image files (frames) – adjust frames per second depending on length of clip and desired GIF quality
  • Open frames as layers in GIMP; crop and resize image as desired
  • save image as GIF; select Animate; select delay rate between frames as appropriate
  • Open GIF in web browser
  • Return to GIMP and adjust as desired
  • Load finished GIF to blog for the world to enjoy

I hope this tutorial is of some benefit. Feedback and suggestions for improvement are, as always, much welcomed.

Posted in animate GIF, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, Tutorial | Comments Off on Kool Aid Animated GIF tutorial

Jumping GIF

Saturday, May 26th, 2012

8 frames – 741 kb

After several attempts over the past few days, I feel I’m finally getting a sense of how to make animated GIFs that have smooth looping motion with an economical files size. This jumping GIF was pulled from a four second video capture at 4 frames per second. From the 16 frames that were created, only eight were used. I’ve discovered that an even number of frames will make turning the GIF into a texture file to be taken back in to Second Life is preferable. Incidently, using GIMP, I’ve set the delay rate between frames at 280 milliseconds.

Now that I’m getting a better handle on this process, I hope to be able to write up a useful tutorial with screen captures later this week.

The backdrop image is from Earle Berkey’s May 1951 cover of Startling Stories. It is apropos of nothing in particular other than trying to conform to the spaceflight aesthetic that seems to be emerging at the Always Be Reflecting parcel.

Posted in animate GIF, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, Second Life | Comments Off on Jumping GIF