This is one of my earlier tries to create gifs.  This gif is designed to have a foreground layer and a background layer, just like my other gifs.  I create a kind of flickering light effect to the background.  The texture of the background layer is contrasted to the foreground layer.  I also like my organic drawing of the watermelon because my purpose is to change the usual look of the one of my favorite fruits to a more artificial look.  We can still tell that they are watermelons, but they are more fun and playful with their colors.     In this gif I incorporate a picture of the helmet from the brand supreme that I found on the website.  I tried to use bold colors not from the actual color themes from the brand but from my impression of pop culture in general.  The used of red in the background tile was also a subconscious choice because of their distinctive red box logo.  When I look at this gif now, I am less satisfied with it because the movement of the background does get disturbing as one look closely. This is probably my favorite gif: not because of the complexity of making it but because of the conscious color choices I made.  This is a little experiment of color consistency to me.  First I created a grey texture of spiral waves and I transformed grey texture into pink, blue, green, and yellow segments.  I overlaid the four different segments to create my tile.  Then I simply applied color filters with almost same colors that I used for pattern.  As a result, my tiles change as the I put on different color filters.  Therefore, depend on the color interaction, the spiral wave tenure of the segment of different colors become more or less ambiguous.

Digital Tools: The Art of the GIF   I can’t say that I was inspired by one artist per-say, but more so a specific style. I’m very fond of geometry and optical illusions and I was inspired by “Op Art”.  Most famously, artists Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely created optical illusions with their paintings. Some Op Art relies on the difference of foreground and background to create a seemingly 3D image on a 2D surface. Figure-ground perception allows us to distinguish a figure from the background.  Based on which one you focus on you’ll perceive the same image differently. By using red against a black and white backdrop, the red is perceived more likely as the figure creating one optical illusion. The pattern that I made to use as part of this gif had an interesting effect that made the middle diamond look like it was a circle every now and then. I wanted to create another optical illusion going forward. The rapidness of the gif makes the stills come alive in a way that suggests expansion. It looks as if it’s growing; which is something I hadn’t anticipated. I’m a big fan of gifs in general. I like to look at one for a long time and watch it over and over again. That’s not really something you can do with the particular gif and some of my other work. It almost instantly causes eye strain or gives you a headache. I guess that comes with the type of gif I made. Perhaps moving forward I can try to make more eye-pleasing work. The created shapes in this gif have a game-like quality to them, both in movement and their physical shape. I’m by no means a gamer but I appreciated the vintage game-like quality of it, so I went further with that. At first it seems as if the shapes are all revolving together. The longer and closer you look you realize that’s not the case. Some are moving in opposite directions and even at different speeds. If you stare at a certain section for too long, the arrows sometimes look as if they’ve changed directions and that’s not the case at all! The gif comes from several tiles I made and replicated. I like how you can’t see the tiles, and the gif looks like one big animated one. It would be interesting to see this completed in another color. I could see the shapes starting out in one color, then after a few revolutions, one seemingly random shape would change color, then after a few more revolutions, another shape would change color and so on and so forth. There’s also a game-like quality in that too I suppose.       This gif is representative of my “crazier” gifs. I can’t stare at it for too long. At the beginning when everything is small it feels like things are morphing. It has a certain biological, cellular quality to it, as if the shapes are going through mitosis and evolving. Then all of a sudden things go berserk with the rapidly-paced, larger images. The morphing was something that I was striving for, so I’m pleased about that, but I wanted it to be a more organic growth. The final gif grows but  happens all of a sudden. To be honest that’s okay too though. It catches you off-guard and changes the rhythm. The interesting part is that the time between each frame is actually the exact same between all of them. Perhaps the smaller frames have more variation causing more of a flow.

This GIF was inspired by Valentine’s Day–and the notion that love can cross boundaries no matter where or from who the love comes from. Also, I wanted to mimic what’s called the Dot Test with hearts instead dots. My plan going into the project was to find a way to represent love through the hearts and to represent people through the color scheme of skin color. What worked well was that the colors of the hearts are visible on each skin color, emphasizing the theme, and that when the hearts are outlined they then are able to cross the diagonal and metaphorical ‘barrier’ separating the top left and bottom right hearts. What didn’t work well is that the outline of the top left hearts and their movement towards the bottom right hearts could have been more smooth and coherent.This GIF was inspired by a visiting scholar, Heather Cleary. She presented on digital text and how text can move across the screen and create images. My plan was to try and hand-write a word (which wound up being my name for the sake of simplicity) and give an organic feeling of change to each frame by re-writing each frame of the GIF. What worked well was the sensation of shaky words that fall off the page. What didn’t work well was the color scheme. I chose a Nature Theme on Adobe Kuler for the color pallet and tried it, but I think I should’ve done a black and white color scheme instead of colors. This GIF wasn’t inspired by a particular artist, but by the idea of building tension. My plan while entering the project was to first, play with one circle shrinking and growing while exterior circles constantly moved. The more I explored the options, the more I realized the center circle seemed to be exploding outwards with tension while the exterior circles are closing in on the center circle. What worked well was that by having the corner circles move a bit each frame, that caused them to look agitated. What didn’t work well is that the center circle doesn’t truly explode. It increases in size, but to add to the tension it would have been better if the cennter circle became spiked.

I used one of my favorite tiles for the Gif above. What I really became interested in, and what is very evident in the Gif above, is the idea of nature contrasted with the man made. Of course, the images shown are drawn roses-and are a representation of real roses. I really enjoy watching the black lines come in and separate the blocks of roses- making the image a little bit less chaotic.

Throughout my gifs I thought about the word CHAOS a lot. I thought about nature, and the use of computer-made objects such as lines and circles. I stuck with a very limited color scheme and focused on what ideas I had.

For the roses Gif above, I ended up with only 17 images. I started with the basic tile then would add a line here and there, save then repeat. Once I made the gif the first time I did not like how the lines would come out into the blocks then simply cut back to the beginning of the gif. So I then added each layer from 17-1 backwards in Gimp so that I could get the retracting effect of the lines. This created a better flow and a Gif that didn’t make me want to fix something. Although, even now, I wish I could fix the upper left hand corner lines so that they come out from either side rather than in a already square fashion.

In my next Gif I focused on fixed points, fixed areas, and rigid lines. Below, I created a Gif with a very simple pattern and movement that would too look endless in a loop. 

I ended up with 54 layers. To make this gif I made a very precise grid. I followed the grid very carefully so that each line would be precisely positioned in each frame. Watching the gif now, I want to open Gimp and make one where lines intersect. But I do enjoy how this one turned out- although simple. Nothing is jumping around, and it reminds me of the roses gif simply beach of the patterns. Watching it, there are no surprises. 

The gif below takes from the two gifs above. I thought about CHAOS, and about very exact shapes. The precise circles are distributed in an un-perfect circle that although bothers me makes a sort of sense with the chaotic movement of the perfect circles. 

Nothing is exactly perfect in this gif, and although it bothers me. It bothers me in a good sense. Although the gif is somewhat unpredictable it is predictable in the sense that it loops over and over. The gif draws elements from both gifs above. I finished the gif with 39 layers then placed 39-1 so that it would collapse back to the original circle in the center then loop seamlessly. The gif itself has 78 layers.

The process of gif making is much more time consuming than I thought it would be, but I enjoyed creating something I am happy with. There are many many gifs I am not happy with, but the process is definitely about practicing and figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t.

For this project, I was inspired by a variety of sources. For the first gif, Windows, I was inspired by the shadows of my windows in my dorm room at night. The shadows were more diagonal and haphazardly placed, but the silhouettes overlapped each other which inspired this. Each color is actually a paintbrush of a window frame. I wanted to use red and blue because one evening an emergency vehicle was outside and the shadows were these flashing colors, and then I added green and brown to go with the colors. The light yellow background is based on the color of my walls when the sun is rising or setting.  This gif was inspired by a 1960s pattern I liked by an unknown artist. The original pattern was just circles on lines, but I decided to recreate the pattern with various other shapes. Then I put all the images in one file on different layers. I made sure to make the gaps transparent so almost all the layers are visible in every frame. The animation is made by cycling through the layers. I wanted to do a gif that was a little less uniform than the previous two, so I hand drew this gif. I was inspired by a colored scarf I had, but I ended up liking the image without colors instead because it flows continuously. Though it is not visible here, the background of this gif is also transparent because I like the idea of partly transparent gifs. My plan going into this project was simply to experiment with motion. I enjoyed planning out each gif and imagining how the frames would follow each other, but I think some move faster than I wanted. I can change this in the future by adding more frames. I think my ideas worked well, but my mental image of the result needs work.

  An artist that has inspired me is Patakk.  Their work is geometric and tends to shift between different shapes.  I like the simplicity of the gifs and how they move.  Patakk uses many simple color schemes which I think are great. My plan for this project was to change the colors of my patterns and to add some effects to them as well.  I like the disrupted look that the effect “shift” has on the gif.  I like the colors I chose to use in my gifs, and I like how I went about changing the colors.  While making the gifs I just went with what I thought looked good, and that’s where my colors came from.  Overall, I’m happy with how my gifs turned out.  I think they look great.  I prefer the ones I made with Gimp rather than the ones I made with Processing.  I think that the ones made with Gimp just have more interest to them than the ones I coded.  I think that if I had added more color variety to the coded ones then they could have been better.

This was the final GIF I made. It originated from a brush I made that depicts the shape of cattails, and I used the Fractal Trace tool in GIMP to create swirling shapes. I was inspired by the work of Yayoi Kusama, and the detail and depth in her infinity rooms. I like her varied use of color, texture, and light. My favorite pieces by her were the Dots Obsession Infinity Mirrored Room, Obliteration Room, and the Aftermath of the Obliteration of Eternity. My absolute favorite was the Aftermath of the Obliteration of Eternity, because it reminds me of both the vastness of outer space and the way city lights look from a distance, and it is so intricate that I could look at it for a long time. I was also inspired by the lush, detailed patterns of Gustav Klimt and by Daniel Buren’s use of space and color in his art installations. This GIF used the Sparkle tool to create the cloud-like effect on white pixels in the image. Since I have not made GIFs or any sort of animated images before, my plan going in to this project was to experiment with different tools and ideas to see what works and what doesn’t. I found that I often needed more than 6 frames to be happy with the motion of the GIF, and most that I made had between 8 and 12. I also found that once the images are compiled the final appearance in motion is sometimes different that what you would expect. I think I need to continue to experiment both with the software and with expanding my imagination around colors, shape and scale. One challenge that I had was feeling limited by my ability to draw shapes and to imagine what to draw. I found that by picturing what I wanted the motion of the GIF to look like I was better able to make the individual frames mesh into a collective GIF that made more sense to me. I think that experimenting with lots of different tools and filters in GIMP worked well for me because it gave me new ideas and helped me start to learn the capabilities of the software. This is probably my favorite of the GIFs I created, because I think that I got the smoothness of the motion right and I like the combination of the subdued color palette with the detailed confetti effect.