Old Cats in Hats

September 10, 2011 3:37 AM

The best animated gif about hats you'll see this year.* by Micaël Reynaud, who has other cool morphing things on his Google+ page, as well as videos, photos, drawings and stuff. If your animated gif tastes go more to abstract/geometric/optical-illusion/seizure-triggering (that's a warning), check out david ope on tumblr (where you expect to find the gifs).

* may load slowly; be patient to get maximum 'wow'
posted by oneswellfoop (21 comments total)

I think that focusing on the eyes is weirder ... In fact the first time I saw this, I thought it was about the eyes.
posted by carter at 3:52 AM on September 10, 2011

These (the photo morphs as well as the geometric animations) are meshing quite well with the Stereolab compilation I'm listening to at the moment.
posted by D.C. at 3:53 AM on September 10, 2011

This one makes me feel like I need a screen that can stop GIF animations.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:24 AM on September 10, 2011

If you have a Mac, you can download it and open in it Preview and see the individual gifs.
posted by carter at 4:45 AM on September 10, 2011

Hit the escape button to stop GIFs. Works on Windows anyway.
posted by Transparent Yak at 5:24 AM on September 10, 2011

There were no cats! We were promised cats!!!
posted by scruss at 6:00 AM on September 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

Google +, if nothing else, is the premiere site on the internet for sharing animated gifs.
posted by empath at 6:06 AM on September 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

I was expecting this to be interesting enough; watching it load slowly and clunkily made me think I knew what to expect once it was all onboard, and then it hit full speed and my brain fell out
posted by nonspecialist at 6:33 AM on September 10, 2011 [5 favorites]

There were no cats! We were promised cats!!!

Relevant.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 7:07 AM on September 10, 2011

I've been enjoying these more modest 8-bit freakouts lately.
posted by phooky at 7:15 AM on September 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Nice try, but this is still burned into my retina. [warning: david hasselhoff]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:51 AM on September 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

The Hasselhoffian recursion will be our salvation.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:31 AM on September 10, 2011

My hat off to you, good sir.
posted by Fizz at 9:09 AM on September 10, 2011

There's still 3 months left. Let's not be reckless.
posted by nervousfritz at 10:25 AM on September 10, 2011

> Relevant.

“You don't have permission to access /wp-content/uploads/2007/10/cat-so-high.gif on this server.”
posted by scruss at 10:31 AM on September 10, 2011

Hey, when those pictures were painted, all the cool dudes called each other 'cats', right?

And the most impressive thing about that morphygif (a word I'm coining) was how you could focus on either the eyes or the hats and still get the 'wow' effect.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:48 AM on September 10, 2011

You don't have permission to access /v3/96/492696/1/46405883.hasselhoff.gif on this server.

Damn. We always long for the forbidden Hasselhoff, and desire what is denied us.
posted by medeine at 11:48 AM on September 10, 2011

Does anyone know how exactly you morph like that? I'd like to take my creepy hobby and take it to the next level.
posted by weewooweewoo at 1:44 PM on September 10, 2011

As far as I can tell after watching this too long but before looking into what the actual images are:

Van Gogh self portrait
Young girl
Bearded guy ("testes"? hat)
Young boy in yellow hat
Young dark haired woman in red hat
Young dark haired woman in blue feathery? hat
Young man in white hat
(possible frame of a dark skinned middle aged man)
Young woman with red haired updo
Blue hatted light skinned person in transition back from right profile to left

Plus now I think its a shape shifter chewing gum and checking me out.
posted by Reverend John at 2:53 PM on September 10, 2011

in the comments, Raynaud does list the artists in order:

Van Gogh,
Renoir,
Cézanne,
Segal,
Henriquez,
Desrosier,
Macke,
Sorolla,
Von Motesiczky,
Merritt Chase,
Van Doesburg,
Matisse,
Van Dongen,
Camoin

14 in all. You could google up the specific paintings, or just keep staring at the eyes...
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:28 PM on September 10, 2011

Joelle Van Dyne should be in this, anyone else find it hard to pull away?
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 5:27 PM on September 11, 2011