Hello! So for today, I've been asked to try and create GIFs using adobe photoshop with the inspiration of our choice of music. Now, as you people probably know (Because I don't shut up about them) I have chosen to use Mind Shrine as my music inspiration, so I felt like it was quite a simple process, but I will find out if it'll be a tinge harder than I thought.
Now, let's talk a little about GIFs first, what are they? GIFs are simply another format for an image, like PNG and JPG/JPEG. Their name isn't actually GIF though, instead, it's an abbreviation for Graphics Interchange Format, and knowing this I'm glad we have said acronym. For a little unnecessary history about them, they were first invented in 1987 and their last release was all the way back in 1989, older than me and my brothers combined!
So, why is this relevant to the overall goal of this music topic? Well, since most musicians have to also be online celebrities, its good for their fingers to be in all sorts of pies across the web, especially GIFs/ This is because said GIFs are still widely used across large platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Discord amongst others. They are used in different ways though, where Twitter uses GIFs almost as reaction images, whilst Instagram uses them as a way to communicate to people in private messaging and uses them as "Stickers" on people's stories, and Discord uses them purely for communication to other people. To also add, the reason why said GIFs were so widely adopted by these sites is that it's by far the smallest way to send motion pictures from one person to another when it comes to file formats.
So, how did we make these GIFs? Using timeline. Now, this was a completely new process to me since I don't do any sort of animation, and instead focus on more still imagery rather than moving, but the prices were so simple that I feel like I could do It more. To explain what it is, it's a little window at the bottom of your screen that lets you turn the layers you have o your layers window into frames, giving you the ability to make frames!
This was quite fun, because I basically made one graphic, turned it into a group, duplicated it a bunch, made minor adjustments in position and rotation to each one until it all looped back, merged all the duplicated groups back into layers, pressed timeline and my animation was right there! So, let's look at the two I made.
I don't remember if I talked about why I exactly did make another, but just to let you know its because I thought the one I made was so bad that I couldn't bare with myself to leave it at that, and even then the second one's animation is way too choppy, which is on me, but anyways let's look at the first GIF I have ever made!
So yeah, that's it. Look in my defence I did say that I thought it was so bad that I had to make another one, so your expectations should've been low. I also want to add the inspiration for this, and it's actually Mind Shrine merch! Yeah, remember when I said that my next post was going to be inspired by their clothing? This was supposed to be it. But the specific piece that this is inspired from is their Green and Black
I was mainly inspired by the circle that says "MIND" along with the text on the right in a vertical line that says "SHRINE". This also gave me a good way to use a new sub tool in the typing tool that doesn't have a name but instead has a logo. I tried to look on Photoshop for what it could be called but couldn't find it. It's a really simple process, you just click it and it makes the text go from horizontal to vertical. It's not the most revolutionary sub tool but it's one non the less.
Well, back to the graphic itself. It's quite simple, I just turned the circle shade with the store of dots for a couple of frames, although I didn't put enough frames and didn't make the transition smooth enough, so instead, we have this choppy low effort look. You can see the inspiration for the T-shirt with the vertical text along with the circles used around the text. I was tempted to make the person too, but I didn't feel like spending that much time on a GIF, since I could have animated them.
Enough about beating around the bush, let's look and reflect on the work I have made here. What do I think of the work that I have produced here? I think it's okay, a pretty good first test at making GIFs although there is a lot to be improved on and a lot to experiment with.
Was it successful? I honestly do not think it was that successful at all, the animation was quite choppy and make it look very slow, and the graphic also looks a bit boring although the design is quite nice.
What would I do differently? Easily the first thing I would do is make this a 30-frame animation, rather than a 12-frame one. This would give a smoother look rather than choppy. I would also give a slight wobble to the text in the middle to show that they're not just stuck on there and instead are as alive as the circles that surround it.
How could I develop this further? By trying more complex graphics like the idea I had for the person in the Mind Shrine merch. I could also experiment by bringing other techniques like live tracing things I've drawn or lino printed, or even using photography in a GIF since this isn't limited to just illustrator. I could also try and look for better inspiration rather than a single piece of media from them, maybe trying making a graphic based off of a song by listening to it or even doing a Pinterest board themed after another song of theirs or a whole bunch of other things that I'm honestly not too bothered to write about.
Would I revisit this? Yes, and I actually did, so let's look at it.
This is the second one I made. As I have mentioned before, I hated the last one so much that I wanted to try and make a new only out of pure embarrassment and understanding that I could truly do something better, along with having the time to make a new one rather than uploading the blog post about it a couple of days later.
I digress though, this didn't exactly have any sort of inspiration, this was more made at the moment as I was creating it. If you couldn't tell already this is a sort of remix of the original graphic. I also used some new tools that I don't think I have talked about here yet, and they are the distortion tools on the filters channel at the top. They are quite funky and have a bunch of different options. I chose to use the swirl option for the text and the ripple option on the ring outside. This gave me a really interesting look after playing with it a little bit, I really could be saving my little experimentations but I always forget.
With this as well, you can also see that I have used a square for the background too. I will touch more on that later in this blog post, but the main reason why I put it there is that I felt like the graphic was a bit empty without it. With other improvements as the topic, I made a smoother animation for the GIF whilst also using fewer frames! I did this by simply moving the assets a little bit compared to what I was doing last time, so I could make fewer frames along with making the animation look smoother. I also used different effects like drop shadows and colour overlays in the blending options of some of the layers too.
I also included colours in this one, since one of my complaints about my first one, is that it looked boring. I would tell you the inspiration for each action I did here but I honestly don't have any. I guess I also used the warp tool on the outside circles, along with getting rid of the smaller circles since I think it made the design look too busy. The last thing I did was changed how I moved the layers. Rather than just using the rotate tool I used the regular moving tool to make them move across the screen, which I think gave a bubbly kind of look.
But enough about what I have changed, let's do one last reflection before I pass out. What do I think of the work I have produced here? I think this is a huge improvement compared to my first GIF with almost everything addressed about the last one along with extra, although it's not perfect.
Was it successful? It's a whole lot more successful. This shows the name a whole lot better in a more visually appealing fashion to keep people's eyes on, along with kind of letting the viewer understand what type of music they make with the flowy kind of movement.
What would I do differently? Very easily I would have used more frames, to make an even smoother look because even now I think it's choppy. I would also make bigger swoops in the movement for the graphic rather than the small circle it's all moving in, I'm not too sure what shape but a survey one that's quite slow. I would also make the individual circles float around slowly since I think it would really suit that since without the movement of them it looks still. I would have also made the letters move individually, and made the overall movement slower as if they were floating.
How could I develop this further moving forward? I could perhaps use different tools like Pen tool to get authentically drawn pieces rather than using premade assets, along with doing a lot more research behind the moving media they already have, like their IS IT YOU? phone number promotional video, but that's a little late now.
Would I do this again? I think so, I feel like I would combine it with patterns, I'm not too sure why, I just like the idea of it.
Sources of Secondary Research
https://www.howtogeek.com/441185/what-is-a-gif-and-how-do-you-use-them/
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