During university, we had a project based on gifs and we had to create one which included an self portrait. After researching many artists, I found out I preferred cinemagraph style gifs because it allowed me to create an still image but still have some part of the image/clip moving. As I prefer to do photography I wanted to make sure my gif was mostly still image based because this is what I’m more skilled at.
References
Figure 1: Laurent, R. (2016) Romain Laurent. GIF. [on-line] http://static1.squarespace.com/static/52b33a6be4b07a518c7ecced/
559d9a22e4b0c1679a03db64/559d9a23e4b01af9ed998810/1436391977614/34.gif?format=750w Date Accessed: 22nd April
Figure 2: Laurent, R. (2016) Romain Laurent. GIF. [on-line] http://static1.squarespace.com/static/52b33a6be4b07a518c7ecced/
559d9a22e4b0c1679a03db64/559d9a27e4b00219c95a7edb/1436391997561/11.gif?format=750w Date Accessed: 22nd April
These examples from the artist, Romain Laurent potentially gave me the initial idea to create a gif which was a full body self portrait. I liked the idea of having my full body in the image because it gives the image some sort of meaning.
Another initial idea I chose was inspired by the artist, Mario Sahe-Lacheante on a gif he created. It captured pouring a drink into a glass but the whole image was still and just the liquid between the bottle and glass was moving. I really liked this gif because it was engaging for the audience as it’s an still image but still displays some sort of movement. Like this example, I will position just my arm in the image as it will be beneficial because the main subject would be the liquid moving.
Look at this example here;
Reference: Sahe-Lacheante, M (2016) Fixel Cinemagraph. [on-line] https://flixels.s3.amazonaws.com/flixel/37j166egeqadu8of6jxw.hd.mp4 Date Accessed: 22nd April
Other cinemagraph examples, I found engaging are available on the link below. These gifs were created by many artists their names will be found below the gifs on the webpage.
https://flixel.com/cinemagraphs/fresh/
After researching, I am excited to create a gif as I haven’t really designed one before. I created an interactive small 4-5 frame gif before in a group but I really wanted to create one which showcased more skill. Having this opportunity to create something I’ve never properly done before is intriguing and hopefully I will learn many new methods within the development of this project.
Abbie Fothergill 