Animated Gifs for Adults

September 24, 2012 8:00 PM

Cinemagraphs are elegant, seamlessly animated gifs that capture action in a subtle way that makes you feel like you're watching a video. There are cinemagraphs for everyone, including Stanley Kubrick fans, fashion aficionados, and people who like rain or kittens. Photojojo explains how to make your own. But of course, there's an app for that.
posted by desjardins (37 comments total)

Does anyone know how to use an animated GIF as wallpaper in Windows 7? Preferably without using sketchy software. Because damn, these are just so gorgeous.
posted by griphus at 8:06 PM on September 24, 2012

I watched Eyes Wide Shut again the other day for the first time since I saw it in the theater. I figured Kubrick films always improve with age.

Not always, it turned out.
posted by Egg Shen at 8:09 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

These apparently take quite a bit of skill, judging from the crap the cinemagram app spits out.
posted by desjardins at 8:09 PM on September 24, 2012

Egg Shen, you are wrong and now you can't come into my clubhouse.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:12 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]

I rewatched EWS recently as well and rather enjoyed it. This review/explanation really let me get the most out of it.

I just watched Lolita for the first time since I was a teenager (I picked up the Blu-ray collection recently) and I had no idea that it was a pitch-perfect satire of 1950s romantic comedies.
posted by griphus at 8:16 PM on September 24, 2012

Egg Shen, you can come to my clubhouse. There you will find rich people in masks and little else. They will make sex with you and you will not understand or enjoy it. Then, you can watch Eyes Wide Shut again and we can see if your opinion has improved.
posted by dobbs at 8:17 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]

There is also the MS Research Cliplets for making them. It works OK and I used it to make this.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:18 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Egg Shen, at MY clubhouse, the "la petite mort" is not just a metaphor. Join us?
posted by HuronBob at 8:21 PM on September 24, 2012

It's okay, I'm a doctor.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:23 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Who would have thought animated gifs would be the most important new art form of the 21st century.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:32 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I went to a retail website that uses a cinemagraph in its page header- just a still photo of a muffin with a wrapper that occasionally, very occasionally, flutters in the wind. I kept thinking I saw it move and then looking back and seeing that it was still, and I thought I was freaking hallucinating.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:34 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]

I guess it's a subtle distinction between cinegraph and regular old animated gif, and they're not necessarily perfect, but this guy does some of my favorites. Mostly nature-film themed.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:37 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

There's been a The Deck ad which is for an app which lets you make this kind of thing. I remember clicking through on it and looking at it for a while and recommending it to a photographer friend of mine. And that's about as much involvement as I have had with it. But it's there. I think the graphic for it has three horizontal blue bars in it, but I'm not sure.
posted by hippybear at 8:37 PM on September 24, 2012

Also, I much prefer this kind of use of gif animation to other forms I've seen. I hope it gains wider use.
posted by hippybear at 8:38 PM on September 24, 2012

Thanks, Ufez Jones. We can stop the thread right here.
posted by desjardins at 8:41 PM on September 24, 2012

Those Kubrick ones would be enhanced if they looped the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song in the background.

But I say that about all of Kubrick's work.
posted by mazola at 8:50 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I didn't put this in the post, but I also recommend checking out r/cinemagraphs.
posted by desjardins at 8:55 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hippybear, are you thinking of Flixel, by chance? A neat app that takes a bit to get the most out of, but pretty slick once you get the hang of it.
posted by nbergus at 9:10 PM on September 24, 2012

The one I'm thinking of has a spash page with a flowing waterfall animated photo. I don't think it's Flixel, but I'm not sure. I'll keep my eye out for the ad and link it here when I see it.
posted by hippybear at 9:18 PM on September 24, 2012

Is it this?

(That's now an animated GIF, but palette cycling using HTML5.)
posted by griphus at 9:20 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

desjardins: "These apparently take quite a bit of skill, judging from the crap the cinemagram app spits out"

One of the biggest selling points of Echograph (iPad-only) vs. Cinemagram is that Echograph contains no "my camera is a broken piece of trash" Instagram filters.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:25 PM on September 24, 2012

griphus: "Is it this?

(That's now an animated GIF, but palette cycling using HTML5."

Hippybear, just keep saying "no, that's not it" so that people keep posting very cool things here.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:08 PM on September 24, 2012

In the future We will be able to order e-ink greeting cards with these.
posted by Popular Ethics at 10:10 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]

Previously
posted by benzenedream at 10:15 PM on September 24, 2012

Is it this?

No, it's definitely not that.
posted by hippybear at 10:18 PM on September 24, 2012

That's the spirit!
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:21 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

In the future We will be able to order e-ink greeting cards with these.

I keep thinking about the famous witches and wizards Cards for Harry Potter. I really wonder what the absolute smallest hardware capable of displaying these is. They could, at the very least, be fridge magnets right now probably.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:34 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]

Many things I learned today...Now going to start creating some of them :-)
posted by molisk at 11:52 PM on September 24, 2012

Hey, where's my rain of kittens? Oh. Where are my glasses?
posted by hat_eater at 11:56 PM on September 24, 2012

These apparently take quite a bit of skill, judging from the crap the cinemagram app spits out

I have no idea what you mean
posted by ominous_paws at 5:36 AM on September 25, 2012 [2 favorites]

Google+ promotes cinemagraphs as banners for G+ Events.
posted by Akeem at 5:59 AM on September 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

OIC. This is one of those apps whose main reason to exist is to use bandwidth.
posted by Goofyy at 6:08 AM on September 25, 2012

Ad hominem: Fridge magnet cinemagraphs you could definitely do. DealExtreme has a bunch of 10 dollar photo viewer keychains, at least - the refresh rate is probably not that great, but I'd imagine you could fit one of the smaller cinemagraphs onto them with some firmware hacking.
posted by GenericUser at 6:29 AM on September 25, 2012 [3 favorites]

DealExtreme has a bunch of 10 dollar photo viewer keychains...

WHY DID YOU TELL ME THESE EXIST

WHY
posted by griphus at 7:48 AM on September 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

Been looking for digital picture frames/keychains that have native support for gif animations, but have come up dry so far. Thinking of combining a Raspberry Pi with a small LCD rearview screen to display them.
posted by squalor at 1:18 PM on September 25, 2012

IWDRM is a gallery of living movie stills
posted by desjardins at 1:02 PM on October 6, 2012

Hey, that ad for an app that helps you create these finally reappeared on the front page of MetaFilter in The Deck. It's for Echograph. I knew I wasn't imagining this.
posted by hippybear at 4:11 PM on October 7, 2012