The Art of the Animated GIF

theodp writes "Some artists work in oils, some in pastels, some in acrylics. Photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg? Their medium of choice is animated GIFs. 'We wanted to tell more of a story than a single still frame photograph but didn't want the high maintenance aspect of a video,' said the two of their unusual collaboration. Needless to say, these are not your father's GeoCities 'Under Construction' GIFs — it can take several hours of manual editing for Beck and Burg to breathe the whisper of life into each image."

Comments

Re:Uhm..

[no known priors]

I think it's more that Gawker uses a moronic JavaScript method of making pages, with no non-JavaScript fallback. I use NoScript, therefore, I'm not going to see the article. That's fine, as I'm sure that someone else will post all the interesting bits in the discussion thread.

I really wanted to see those animated gifs that take ages to make though. They must be awesome. But not enough to potentially open up my browser to an attack. If Gawker are too incompetent to make a non-JavaScript fallback,I don't thin they'd be able to protect themselves against someone taking over their site and inserting malicious JavaScript in it...

(Also, MNG and APNG, neither of which has any real support. Have the GIF patents expired yet?)

Re:Wake me up for animated pngs...

[Gaygirlie]

zzz...1997...

What does the age of the technique have to do with anything? Hell, wheels were invented and used thousands of years ago and they're still in use even today.

zzz...256 colors...zzzzzzz....

Limitations in color representation again doesn't really say anything negative. Those GIFs look just great, and it tells about the skills of those who created them that you cannot spot any definite miscolourings in any of those images.

Please. Wake me up when we've invented animated PNGs.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/APNG

Re:not loading

[x*yy*x]

It's your own fault for using plugins that break compatibility. Frankly I don't think Gawker even cares about you, since they're ad run site like most of the internet and rather just have the visitors that are worth something to them.

Re:APNG/MNG

[TheRaven64]

And, in common with most DRM forms, it means that you get a better experience with a pirated version. If you want to enjoy the Mona Lisa, go and look at a decent quality copy - to see the original, you queue for ages in a hot room, then get a few seconds to look at it through glass that's so thick that you can barely make out the detail before being moved on so that the next people in the queue can see it. Look at a decent copy, and you can spend as long as you like and can easily move from a place where you can see the entire picture to a close view of individual portions.

Re:go to their website directly

[TaoPhoenix]

Actually, you just mentioned one of the key problems with Web 2.0: "Why bother to link the site of an unknown artist who might be able to use the traffic, when you can link an intermediary aggregator first?"