Gif Series
My intentions for this project were to show the overall versatility of the Graphic Interchange Format (gif). Through my work I believe it speaks to a larger narrative of engaging the use of the medium in order to be polarized and being able to utilize it as a form of artistic expression. Furthermore, through the project i've been able to realize the subtle versatility of gifs and how they can be used to give movement and life to a previously static or still piece of art.
I believe, through the progression of my project, I was able to show the themes of creative versatility through animation of simple sketches that carry a larger narrative throughout the series of gifs. Likewise, I believe I showed the simplicity of gif creation through the use of rough doodles that I put in motion, carrying the themes of dry humor and nihilistic levity. The perception I am trying to create a broad abstract approach at the content of the gifs but also giving the viewer the idea or impression that it can be executed by anyone.
Doodle Daze, the Gif Series in question, is based on the coming together of drawings from my notepads that I'm trying to create a life for outside of the page. I utilized different drawings I've made over the years and gathered them together and brought them to a digital platform (Adobe Illustrator) where I remastered them into vectors for media versatility. After turning my drawings into vectors I worked out a plan to make them move in some way, that being popping text, slight facial movements, or rapid on-screen movement. Thirdly, I would painstakingly draw and color in different frames of animations on Illustrator making sure they all were able to be as seamless as it possibly could. All the gifs come together with an overall thematic presentation that is in the form of my individualistic art-style, from dry-humor to a slight horror industed drawing they all come together to create the aesthetic of illustrative artwork.
As stated in my proposal, I will use three distinct methods of distribution. Distributing them through three different platforms lets me see the different engagement on each platform and which audience suits my style the most. I will use Imgur and giphy to try and see how it does in the realm of gifs in general and track their engagement through the website’s statistical analysis. I will also add them as a post to my graphic t-shirt clothingline instagram story and track the engagement through there. I feel like using instagram gives me the ability to see how people resonate with the context of the medium having an audience that already knows my specific artstyle, while imgur and giphy will be an experiment to see how the gif project does in a general social media specifically for the format. Currently, the series has not been met with much traction but hopefully in the following days there will soon be a pick up.
From the engagement I have received I feel like the most notable has been in Hot Garbage Apparel since I already have a following that is accustomed to my humour and drawing style; nonetheless, in imgur and giphy currently there is no noteworthy outreach received by the audience. When completing the project there were definitely some drawbacks from the execution. Something I didn’t feel I took into consideration as much as I did was the time parameters, meaning that on every individual gif I had to draw a different frame and go over it in color which was more time consuming than previously expected. Due to some of these time constraints I would have wanted maybe to dedicate more time to some of them, to polish them further but due to the extraneous nature of animating frame by frame that was not possible. Through this project I learned the value of the medium of gifs and how you can utilize them in ways that can benefit your art further, from a static or still piece and give it life with moment and other overlapping compositing.
