Words: Alex Williamson (opens in new tab)
It's been a historic year for the GIF - not only is it celebrating the 25th birthday, it's more fashionable than ever before, with help from sites such as Tumblr (opens in new tab) where people's blogs are filled with the pesky little blighters. Designers are now creating artistic high-quality GIFs - usually referred to by the hipper term 'cinemagraph (opens in new tab)'. Oxford Dictionaries even named GIF as their word of the year (opens in new tab).
To celebrate this resurgence of the repetitive and often-annoying animation technique, 'A Short History of the Gif: Moving the Still' celebrates all that's unique about the GIF through the use of claymation and, of course, some GIFs.
What's great about this tongue-in-cheek short is how it uses claymation to create a visual style repetitive in a similar way to GIFs themselves. It's informative, too. Plus we love the goldfish.
Sean Pecknold took charge of the animation at New York and Los Angeles animation and multimedia studio LEGS (opens in new tab). The video is a tie-in with the 'Moving the Still (opens in new tab) exhibition', which showcases GIFS as a new art form in both digital and real space - see this video for more details:
- Alex Williamson (opens in new tab) is an art and design student in London, who blogs about design, art and illustration. Follow him on Twitter (opens in new tab).
Like this? Then watch these!
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- The 10 best 3D animated graduation shorts
What's your view on the use of animated GIFs? Let us know in the comments below!
