Digital Artist/Designer who recently/accidentally got into creating & generating Photoshop gifs . . .

Hippychick

Member
. . . I've actually made hundreds but only included the 'fancypants' ones in my online gallery which has generated a shedload more traffic on website, but was wondering if I could be utilised for this skill as I get asked all the time by folk on Twitter to make gifs for them, but am doing the ones I agree to for free. Anyone know? Link: http://flying-colours.me.uk/gifsindex11.html (most recent page, but navigation easy using stars).
 
Just to clarify, my question since reading there are actually 'gif artists' out there (& I really just started as a fun way to show my Photoshop skills) is really just, does anyone have any info on people who do it or know a URL to point me at? I used to use Flash for fun (with sound) for silly little animations, but the feedback I'm getting for the more sophisticated Photoshop ones is so positive I feel it may be another string to my bow so would like to use it professionally if I knew where to look?
 
Recently I've been asked quite a bit to make gifs for people.

I actually quite enjoy doing bits of animation as I usually set things up for the animators.

At one point gifs were considered old and obsolete which even made Adobe stop supporting them in After Effects but there's been a huge resurgence through social media so I think there's a possibility to specialise in them and make a decent income.

James Curran seems to be doing pretty well out of it.
 
I remember gifs as the nasty little flashing/flying emojis etc. that littered every domestic website when the internet was first born – along with multi-coloured text you couldn't read, also in a nasty font & justified over entire width . . . then there were the other graphics – stretched to fit & so many other crimes. But then more recently just as video clips from movies/youtube etc. until I sat down & started learning how to do funky stuff straight from Photoshop rather than Flash (as all pixel based). They certainly haven't hurt my portfolio & have had CV downloaded numerous times as a result, but freelance work is so hard to come by now after having it too good for too long before.

There is of course a great number of people who are technically competent & even proficient in Photoshop now, but can’t imagine a huge proportion being really creative & artistic too. I just do stuff every day regardless cos I’m hard wired now, but would be good to also use this skill to pay some bills.

Anyway, thanks for that as any info is helpful.
 
GIFs are really just a format. Essentially they're a looping (most of the time) animation, but being in a GIF makes them easy to share and embed. So really the question is, is there a market for short, looping animations and motion graphics, and the answer is definitely yes. If you want to get into motion graphics, look at After Effects rather than Photoshop. The PS timeline does the job, but for complex animations, After Effects is the way to go. If you're experienced with Flash too, you might pick it up quite easily.
 
Sold. Only reason I've never 'dabbled' in After Effects is cos whichever agency I was at didn't have it (probably considered too much like playing about) or was too busy with retouching or visualising myself as a freelancer. I'm at the stage now where I want to be more ambitious with animation, so, you've persuaded me if the market is there. ;–D
 
Short animations are popular on social media, I see them a lot on Instagram, mainly as adverts, but some are quite clever or interesting to watch so I'll let them play out. You should also look into SVG animations for building animated web content without Flash. Some inspiration.
 
GIFs are really just a format. Essentially they're a looping (most of the time) animation, but being in a GIF makes them easy to share and embed. So really the question is, is there a market for short, looping animations and motion graphics, and the answer is definitely yes. If you want to get into motion graphics, look at After Effects rather than Photoshop. The PS timeline does the job, but for complex animations, After Effects is the way to go. If you're experienced with Flash too, you might pick it up quite easily.

Not sure if they've changed it on newer versions but as I said, After Effects won't export or save in gif format as they removed the functionality as they deemed it obsolete.
You need to render it as a .mov and then open it in Ps and then save it out as a gif.

It's no biggie but it's another step to get a gif but it's worth using Ae as it's much better for animation IMO.
 
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