B-Boy to Vector to GIF Animation
March 2017
I love making animations and you already know this! GIFs offer instant looping gratification and a snippet of everyday awareness. I have been experimenting with various ways to generate GIF animations for several years now. The latest adaptation incorporates vector graphics and illustrations purely made with adobe illustrator….and then manipulated of course!
Making the animation is fun, but its even more fun to riff and manipulate them with filters. Of course most applications for desktop and mobile devices offer some nice pre-set filter based features but I thinks its more fun to cross synthesize them. I use multiple filters, screen grabs and recordings to maximize textures and output. I like the tension and contrast it creates between the original creation and what else it can become.
These three riffs above (after my output of illustrator and photoshop) were first made with the Glitche’ app and then brought into the Giphy Cam app. These two apps work well together because they both allow you the ability to save them as both .gif formats and as video (mp4 & mov.) I love the grainy glitches and degenerated aspects of the output. I tend to keep screen recording and screen capturing the pre-existing versions.
The character. My man above, easily fits into the scene, be it 1980 – 2017. I drew him with the trackpad mouse on my mac book air using the pencil tool in adobe illustrator.. It was fun to do, and I love the limitations of drawing with the trackpad. It forces me to work differently and refine my lines.
The background. I also drew the background scene with the trackpad mouse on my mac book air using the pencil tool in adobe illustrator. Admittedly the buildings in the far background were made with the pen tool.
The two stills come together and it was obvious that I needed to add more characters. Lets call them graphic assets because they are! These graphics are versatile and I love re-applying them for variations so I made a series…below.
This Crew came together with a careful selection process, and it was time to animate.
The GIF animation expands.
These pieces above started the latest series to date combining my vector illustrations with mobile application technologies. Its exciting to work with new characters, techniques and applications with rendering the static to animation.
Oh Ill make more.
