Gifs are a fun addition to messages, and I recently felt a need to create a gif for the Thanksgiving holiday. I am not sentimental about Thanksgiving, and in my mind’s eye, I remembered a dancing, naked bird in a music video, probably Peter Gabriel, because his videos were really bizarre.
I searched Giphy, but alas, no bird. I searched YouTube to make sure my memory hadn’t failed. It had not! It looked like I would have to make my own.
I made gifs before using Gimp where you arrange layers in order set the amount of time a frame is displayed (now that I say this, I guess it’s framerate) to create an animation as simple or complex as you’d like.
I made gifs using drawing apps where you draw a few scenes and set the frame rate and voila, all set.
When I located the scene in Sledgehammer where an egg becomes a bird becomes a dancer becomes twins, I considered the problem. All of the images were here, would I really take a bunch of screenshots and load them into Gimp, frame by frame? There was probably something faster out there.
A quick search surfaced Screen-to-Gif.
I downloaded the app and in no time at all I recorded the scenes from egg to twin birds. The app lets you reduce frames, and if you reduce it enough it feels more DIY or rough. If you add the ffmpeg conversion tool, you can also generate an MP4.
And then my sister-in-law asked me about an Excel action and since we’re both busy and I made a gif demonstrating what she described.
Now I’m more excited for the explanatory aspect of gifs. I’ve searched and browsed many a tutorial and occasionally came across a great gif and never once thought about it, but I now have a new tool in my arsenal that can be used for fun and work.