*dramatic soap opera music*

[presumenothing]

Challenge #8

In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year: it can be a list of fanworks you're especially proud of, a gift of your time to the community, a quality or skill you cultivated in yourself, something you generally feel went well. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Learning how to gif! With extra proud-ness given that I (a) started from basically 0 knowledge of Photoshop save whatever remnants I remember from using GIMP like a decade ago, (b) generally don't consider myself as being any good with colours, and (c) managed to pull off pretty much every moderate-to-very unhinged gif idea I had, including some animations done from scratch.

Probably a whole 90% possibly more of everything I made was Zhou Shen because I'm single-minded like that (full gallery here!), with the rest scattered across various fandoms, starting with a particular SecUnit-favoured show…

( Murderbot, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon: Gif on Tumblr ) – logo design from Tor

( Word of Honor: Gif on Tumblr ) – more gifs in the tag


( The Legend of Luoxiaohei: Gifset on Tumblr ) – more gifs in the tag


( Project Sekai: Gifset on Tumblr )


( Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun: Gif on Tumblr ) – drawn and animated from scratch!


( Murderbot, All Systems Red: Gif on Tumblr ) – another one created from scratch!

All can be found in my gif tag on Tumblr, including some before/after comparisons and effect breakdowns if you're interested in the process.

(Non-fannishly, it'd be cooking! Which was a development I would never have seen coming.)

Comments

[laireshi]

Oh yay! Congrats!

[presumenothing]

Thank you! <3

[spikedluv]

Those GIFs are amazing! Congrats on learning how to GIF!

[presumenothing]

Thank you! I love learning new things in general, and having that overlap with fandom made it extra fun.

[mithun]

What a cool skill. Your gifs look really fancy!

[presumenothing]

Thank you! ♡

[externalities]

i thoroughly enjoy your "journey to the gif" posts

[presumenothing]

very good to know! haha

[muccamukk]

MURDERBOT! I love these so much!

[presumenothing]

Thank you! And YES MURDERBOT! Definitely a highlight of my 2021 media consumption.

[kingstoken]

What wonderful gifs! It is so hard to believe that you only learned how to make gifs in the past year, you're amazing. By the way I think the burn away Word of Honor gif is my favourite.

[presumenothing]

Thank you! I made a lot of gifs throughout the year (didn't actually realise how many until it was time to wrap up the year hahaha), so it's definitely a case of practice makes improvement.

That burn effect gif was basically the result of me being kept up at 1am by fascinating thoughts like "oh no this idea is so cool but oh no how am I even gonna do it??", so I'm really happy with how it turned out!

[unavee]

Wow, I love your gifs! Especially the animations from scratch. I don't know what Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun is, but the gif is adorable.

[presumenothing]

Thank you <3 the animations took a while to figure out (especially since I can't draw so it was really just… throwing shapes together and hoping for the best haha) but definitely worth it in the end!

Hanako-kun is a manga/anime series, but fortunately no context is needed for cuteness :P though the agents of chaos bouncing across are also my fave characters in the series which makes it even better.

[tsuki_no_bara]

those are some really nice gifs. i wouldn't have guessed you just learned how to do it.

[presumenothing]

♡ thank you! My earliest gifs definitely don't look anywhere near as nice as these, but practice definitely helps.

[corvidology]

And they're lovely as well!

[presumenothing]

Thank you! ♡

[cornerofmadness]

Oh cool. Part of me would like to learn how to gif and the rest of me is like do you have the patience for this?

[presumenothing]

Oh that is definitely an internal dialogue I've had with myself over other things, haha. I'll admit it was a little frustrating at first (the learning curve was… extra steep given I had trouble even finding the correct tool in Photoshop half the time) but hey, turns out being able to see the results visually is great reinforcement!

[cornerofmadness]

Oh I can understand that. I would have to keep it for some nebulous time when I move and have access to high speed internet. I can't even download the source materials

[svgurl]

Congrats on learning to gif! It's a great skill that I have wanted to do for ages but don't seem to have the patience for. And the ones you posted all look great. :D

[presumenothing]

♡ thank you! And tbh I'm not a super patient person in general either, but in terms of motivation it does help that the results are (literally) visible haha.

[hamsterwoman]

Very cool skill to pick up! I especially enjoyed the Murderbot gifs.

[presumenothing]

Thank you! And the Murderbot ones are particular faves of mine too <3

[tielan]

These are spectacular! Well done!

[presumenothing]

Thank you! ♡

[sam_gardener]

These gifs are really impressive! (especially Wen Kexing ;). Also so many of my fannish interests Zhou Shen, shl/tyk, Murderbot! I'll check out more of them on your Tumblr.

[presumenothing]

Wen Kexing is truly giffable, haha! All the cinematic drama.

And yay for same interests!

[halfcactus]

I’m on data so I can’t really open anything rn (though I am delighted to see a post about processes) but anyway XIAO HEI!!!!!!!

The motion animations are amazing, especially the Mass Murderer type effect! Did you do all that in PS?

[presumenothing]

XIAO HEI!!!!!!!!! x100

Yes I do post gif process stuff to Tumblr sometimes, never mind that I might also be the main/only audience for it LOL.

And also yup all done in PS, with extensive use of smart objects and the timeline function (and also shapes and brushes since I can't draw freehand) – I've heard that Illustrator is apparently the more suitable software for such things, but even I can only handle learning that many things at once hahahaha.

[halfcactus]

Illustrator is great for drawing shapes, not so much for animation—After Effects is probably what you want for more animation features (probably similar to the PS Timeline feature that allows keyframes? Which I never really got the hang of XD). But I could never get my “””unofficial””” version to work long enough for me to use it 💀

You already did so much on PS though!!!!! Like the one where those critters are eating lollipops 🥺 It’s making me miss playing around with PS haha. I don’t think I even know how smart objects work, only that that knowledge is going to come in handy when you move to AfterEffects!

[presumenothing]

OH YEAH After Effects is probably what I was thinking of!!

I hadn't done any animation stuff before this (…unless you count powerpoints…) so tbh I had trouble understanding the whole timeline/keyframe thing at first, especially since most Tumblr tutorials still use frame animation, but then once it clicked everything got so much easier… and then I proceeded to overtax it doing all this lol. It's surprising what you can do just using PS, though I feel like not many giffers take full advantage of it! Or possibly I just like fancy gif effects waaaaay too much.

[jesse_the_k]

These are exquisite GIFs!

Especially the Murderbot ones.

[presumenothing]

Thank you, the Murderbot ones are among my faves too!