a GIF to President Noynoy (and Others)

 Mabuhay si Pangulong Noynoy! (Long live President Noynoy!) Let us all support him! 

Today, June 12, is Philippine Independence Day and so let me dedicate my humble GIF image to the new president of the Philippines, Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino III. In those tropical islands I was born and I could see glimmering lights of new hope behind those coconut trees.
 
Old school animation was fun (did it in the '70s in Manila) but doing GIF animations is better for the time-consuming process is drastically cut down, thus there's instant satisfaction; i.e. if one has spent enough time in Adobe ImageReady instead of getting animated in a pub. The learning curve is quite steep! Best to attack ImageReady fearlessly, go through a lot of trial and errors (can't break your computer, don't worry!) and emerge bloodied but wiser. Also don't forget to watch GIF tutorials in YouTube (plenty of them!)

Working under Nonoy Marcelo, the first animation clip I did was in 1978, a crazy disco dance sequence included in intro credits of the movie Annie Batungbacal which starred that talented singer, Nora Aunor.



Lately in our Banggaan (collision) Art Group, there were discussions of GIF animations which we've tried years ago inside the group; that was when the software was still quite underdeveloped. I remember a few exchange of images and then the line went dead. There was only but one conclusion: At that time, doing GIF animations is not freaking worth it! Imagine, resulting in a few seconds of animation after spending hours on it? (worse if it gets accidentaly deleted!) It was never palatable when a nanosecond counts while away from your loved one. Doing it was writing Codex Gigas in an underground cell:)



Wel-lah! Nowadays with powerful computers, we like to think we're back with a vengeance:)

GIF means Graphic Interchange Format. Banggaan members are like GIFs, too:) for we exchange graphics consistenly and persistently for years; e.g. like drawings, photos and other media files.

 Another one I did for 2 friends who met up for a party, Ed Labadia and Mario Mercado, both of Banggaan. (A bit rough this one, ayayay;  was just excited and published too soon to meet a birthday greeting date)




I also did one for Zen Lopez (another Banggera) of Glendale, CA and was former Arts and Culture Commissioner of City of Glendale. She was also an original Bayanihan dancer. She modelled, too and so this is for her, the catwalker. The caricature head was rendered by Mel Vera Cruz, also of Banggaan. We sort of "collide" images in this old Yahoogroup (Est. 1999) which was initiated by artist-writer Alfredo (Ding) Roces.




Here I used a walking animation guide freely available in the internet in stick or simple linear forms. However if patient enough (animation is no joke, one grows whiskers doing it!) one can use a digital camera to take stills of a moving subject using the "consecutive shots" mode. Then those stills could be traced and translated into linear or cartoony lines. Amateur GIF animators (like me) can use them to practise on movement, improvise, manipulate moves, etc. Just add details and fill in colours and Bob's your Uncle. Sooner or later your
friend will ask you to design a GIF animation banner for her website. Could be the start of something "moving"!:)

This one is of Rod Samonte, Banggaan member from Hollywood, California. Caricature by Mel Vera Cruz.



One below is JPEG image to illustrate a poem I wrote for this special day in the Philippines.

Grandkid saw my blog and begged me to make the dragonfly "move" so I had to make a quick one for him; bah, kids! (and look who's talking;-)

Here's the Freedom dragonfly struggling to take off.




June 17 GIF update, another one for fellow Banggero Mario M., inspired by Robert Crumb, comics genius and my underground Zen guru:) back in the '70s in Manila (where his comics were extremely rare). A cartoonist of extreme ideas and modest master teacher of Natural Laws of the Universe through his alter ego Mr. Natural, Mr. Crumb could have written the Desiderata in comics form, be seriously funny and yet delivered the message home. Somehow Mario fitted this character and so I had him metamorphose from Mr. Natural to the supernatural:)  Here's for the ol' man burnin' Crumb's mull and poster (below). Based on a single-frame drawing by Robert Crumb found in the internet.




Additional info on GIFs: GIF, short for Graphics Interchange Format is a file format for storing graphical images up to 256 colors. It uses LZW compression which is a lossless compression method. Until the year 2004, this was covered by a patent owned by Unisys and the reason why the PNG file graphic format was invented.
There are two versions of GIF both created by Compuserve. The earlier GIF 87a and the enhanced 89a which stored multiple images (thus allowing animation), and interlacing.
GIF files are probably the most popular on the web being used in logos and any color images with 256 or fewer colors. For images containing text GIF tends to be better than JPG because the files tend to be smaller and JPG files usually have some degree of compression and this can make text blurry.(source:http://cplus.about.com/od/glossar1/g/gif.htm)