GIFfing it Like it Was 1872

Click the little kicker to see her kick biger

Click the little kicker to see her kick bigger

Don't Rage around Miss Cicely Alexander! This is a response to the Tate’s call for their 1840s GIF party — they have made images available from selected pieces of art from their 1840s room and inviting anyone to remix as a GIF.

That is such a good idea I made it into a ds106 assignment.

I chose as my subject James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander (1872-4). I saw movement possibility in the pair of butterflies, but was curious about the item at the base of the window sill… it is just some sort of etching ?? but when I saw the image it reminded me of one of those silly rage faces.

The first step was selecting the butterflies and putting each in a layer. On the base layer, I clone brushed in beneath them.

To be able to animate the rage head, I selected the rough rectangle of the left pane, cut it and put it in a layer below. This way, the rage face could be n between the two, and appear to rise into the window.

And the swinging leg was less hassle then I thought, select an approximate shape, and as long as it rotated, it would work meshed in with the skirt. I was able to clone brush in behind it, and fill out the shape of the hat.

To animate, I did a series to loop the butterflies over the girl’s head– doing a New Frame, and then moving the two different butterfly layers. I got a way cheaply as I did not have to flip them. I then copies the series of frames and pasted them at the end to have 2 loops. Similarly I made a new layer, and began the same process to make the rage face appear and rise. Once in place, I made another 2 loop series as the butterflies moved over to the Rage head.

Since the leg swing involved a change of shape, I had to duplicate the leg frame 3 rimes, rotate it a bit each time, the last two also distorting the leg to keep it in frame. And then I had 2 copies of the rage head, to make it rotate and shrink as the kick was delivered.

The GIF comes in tiny, because most of the image is a base layer that never moves; thats the beauty of GIF compression. Even the big one, at 550px wide and 965pc high, is only 365k but has maybe 30 frames.

I hope we see some more ds106ers take on the Tate 1840s GIF Party challenge