I have been dying to do the Wiggly Stereoscopy assignment by Bill Genereux—it basically uses the animated GIF method to create a 3D effect with just two images. It sounds easier than it really is—nailing it is all in the images you choose—though I must say Norm makes it look easy. Once I had two images I believed would work I wanted to see if I could find some useful tips from folks in ds106 who already did the assignment. Turns out I could, Katie Girard wrote this helpful post that introduced me to the animation filter in GIMP, something I knew nothing about.

Not only can you use the Animation filter to view the image moving through the layers, but you can also change the speed using this helpful tidbit from Katie:

….under Filters >  Animation, I chose Playback….you can see your .gif in action as it rotates between layers. To change the delay between the two frames, select the layer and add a time written in milliseconds using this format: [imagename (nms)] where n = the number of milliseconds. I chose to use 750ms.

The default speed worked well for my stereoscopy, but here is a more specific tutorial for changing the speed at which layers switch in GIMP for anyone interested.

One thing this reinforces for me is how amazing the ds106 assignments repository is. It not only has a ton of great assignments but lists everyone who has done that assignment. Sure some links to example posts will break in time, but the bottom line is it gives other people thinking about what to do ideas, inspiration and even helps them learn some technical details they might not have known otherwise. As time goes on I’m convinced we’ll see more and more tutorials in the assignment repository as well, and to that end this post is the change I want to see