GIFS For Smiles

What GIFs?

GIF stands for "graphic interchange format" and is simply a file that contains a moving image that loops. Have you ever been scrolling through social media or texting your friend, and they sent you those goofy tiny animated images with a meme template? That is a GIF! Enough with the impromptu history lesson, however! We're here to have some fun and bring our wildest creations to life!

GIF-Ing it my all

As with any project that I tackle, I have to go looking for inspiration to get the gears in my head turning. I like to start with generic searches and eventually narrow it down to the themes that I like the most and want to emulate in my work. This time around, however, I had a tough time settling on a piece during my search. Despite the amount of cute and simple designs I happened upon on Pinterest, I wanted my GIFs to have more purpose and impact on viewers. Right then and there, I finally had my "eureka" moment! Thanks to 2020 and all the challenges it threw at us, I could tell that everyone was run-down, exhausted, and in much need of some smiles. Exactly how I would do that was still a little unclear.

As a character designer and aspiring animator, and general cheery person, I am a huge fan of bright, vibrant colors, expressive characters for world-building, and fluid movement. If you want to look at all the GIFs that caught my attention for making this project, feel free to take a look at my Pinterest!

My mission was to bring smiles to anyone who happened upon my work. Easier said than done! Rather than tackle this challenge from the audience's perspective, I thought I would take a moment to ask myself the question, "what makes me happy?" Chocolate was the very first thing that came into focus. Whenever I feel down and stressed out beyond belief, chocolate snacks are a Godsend! Before I knew it, I had my first idea ready to develop! However, I still needed to figure out the focus of my second GIF. I thought I would resort to the drawing board for another few hours brainstorming things that have the power to spread joy and positivity to everyone, but then it hit me like an on of bricks: "I like to spread joy to everyone!" My second GIF will simply be a little message to viewers to keep smiling despite all the hardships they might be going through! Sometimes, all it takes is one kind gesture to turn someone's day around!

Each of the base designs was created in Illustrator and then transferred to Photoshop for final touches and added to the timelines. Once in Photoshop, I tackled my Chocoholic GIF, the more complicated of the two, thanks to all the little details I wanted to add. Before I mapped out and timed out each animation frame, I touched up the chocolate bar itself by warping it with the perspective tool to make it more exciting and dynamic, more three-dimensional. I then proceeded to create the wrapper on it and the text, which also required some perspective tool warping so it would like up with the bar itself. With some random gray squiggles to create the portion of the wrapper that had been pulled down, some foil texturing on top of it to make it more detailed, and some light highlights to give the bar some shine, the chocolate bar was good enough to eat! I chose some background colors that would complement one another and make the whole thing pop with some minor details that would make it fun and interesting to watch more than once. There are nine frames in total, each one adding a new piece of the puzzle to the whole picture, including the first bite of that scrumptious looking chocolate bar, which was made by copying the original chocolate bar layer, erasing part of it, and drawing in little crumbs to emphasize that someone had eaten it. It was a small change, but it effectively made the GIF leagues more fun and gave them more life!

My Smiley Face GIF was up next and is, in my opinion, the more impressive of the two since the Chocoholic's chocolate bar was just an image that was slightly altered, with its elements being added abruptly from frame to frame. On the other hand, the smiley face changes narrowly frame by frame to give it a smoother, more fluid movement, much like an actual animation! However, this still seemed too simple, so I decided to draw on eyebrows that would change shape as the smiley face's frown transformed into a smile and put a big red clown nose on him to encourage viewers to smile and have some fun! To top it all off, I decided to have the background change! While frowning, the background is a dull blue, but it begins to lighten up into a warm yellow with a bright white glow behind the smiley face to show that his smile is like a ray of sunshine!

The numbers below each frame are the delay or how long each frame lasts. They allow you to toggle the timing and spacing of your animation! Be sure you have "Forever" selected in the bottom left corner when making your GIF! Setting it to such makes it continue to loop over and over!

After I finalized each GIF and made sure I was pleased with the results, all that was left was to export each project using "Save for Web (Legacy)" as a GIF. Doing this ensures that they would open as animated GIFs rather than still images.

I never imagined that Photoshop was capable of helping me create frame-by-frame animated GIFs! I'm proud of the work I did with each of these, even though it was only my first time doing something like this in this program. Even though they are on the simple side, I hope it brings joy to everyone's day, especially in such a challenging year.

If I could change anything, I would love to have made each GIF a little bit longer with additional details and elements. Perhaps if I made more in-betweens of the smiley face's smile, it was smoother, even if I animated in some confetti raining down! As far as the chocolate bar goes, I should've added more than just one little bite. Maybe I can animate an entire chocolate bar being devoured in the future!