Chris Pirillo » animation

How to Disable Animated GIFs in Chrome

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:49:16 +0000

I admit it: I’m a huge fan of the animated GIF. Don’t worry, though – I’m not going to embed any in this post, because the chances of you wanting to see an animation after reading that headline are slim.

There’s nothing wrong with the GIF image file, itself – it’s just that when frames are spliced together into a single GIF file, the resulting animation may be jarring to some (especially when used as a web page background).

In most browsers, you can simply tap the ‘Esc’ key to halt the sequence (since turning off support for GIFs altogether is never advised). Google Chrome, however, doesn’t currently support such a feature – so, until that happens within the browser itself, there are a few Google Chrome Extensions you might try using:

If you care to test any one of these scripts, here’s a page with a simple animated GIF to try. Did the extension work for you?

I was prompted to assemble this post after one too many people complained that they didn’t want to see any more animated GIFs cluttering up their Google Plus experience. They may still appear in My Google+ Profile from time to time, but that shouldn’t stop you from following me (especially with these extensions installed).

How to Disable Animated GIFs in Chrome

Star Wars Story Told with LEGO Brickfilm

Chris Pirillo — Sat, 15 May 2010 08:38:14 +0000

Star Wars Story Told with LEGO Brickfilm

We’ve talked about Brickfilms in the past. There is a lot of work to do in order to produce one of these little films. Brickfilms are created using stop-motion animation. This is an animation technique which makes an object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in tiny increments between individually-photographed (or video filmed) frames. This creates an illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Clay figures can be used in stop-motion because they are easy to reposition. Films using clay figures is often called clay-mation. Films with stop-motion animation using LEGO bricks are generally referred to as Brickfilms.

There are several websites dedicated to the art of stop-motion film-making. I know that a few of our community members have attempted to do these in the past. I have to say, though, that I haven’t seen any turn out as good as this Star Wars one did.

The entire story of Star Wars is told in just over two minutes by a kid who happens to have one heck of a lot of LEGO bricks. I thought I had too many of them lying around… but this kid has me beat.

If you know of other cool stop-motion animation films, be sure to pass them along to me. If you’ve created one that is especially good, I may just share it with the World.

Star Wars Story Told with LEGO Brickfilm

8-Bit Creatures Have Invaded New York!

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:17:44 +0000

8-Bit Creatures Have Invaded New York!

One More Production has done it again. Patrick Jean and his team’s latest short film, PIXELS, was shot on location in New York City.

The level of creativity in these video clips are nothing short of fantastic. This has to be one of my favorites, though. What Geek doesn’t love both 8-bit AND video games? I’m glad that @GapingVoid brought this to my attention.

8-Bit Creatures Have Invaded New York!

How to Create Stick Figure Animations

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:43:44 +0000

How to Create Stick Figure Animations

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I am definitely not an artist. I have trouble even drawing a simple stick figure! Thank goodness there’s software out there that will help me. It’s a lot of fun, too! Stykz is cross-platform, and won’t cost you anything.

Stykz is frame-based, letting you to work on individual frames of your animation. Figures can be rotated, scaled, flipped, duplicated, colorized, and relayered. Figures can be created and edited directly in place; no separate “editor” window is required. Stykz’s PolyFill tool lets you fill shapes with just a few clicks! You can individually adjust the line segments in a figure, setting their length, width, color, and angle.

As you can see, it’s not just some boring old software that lets you make simple designs. Oh no! Stykz is full-featured, allowing you to create very complex little stick men and women!

Windows and Mac versions can be downloaded now, but sadly, the Linux version is still in beta form, so it’s not available just yet. The Linux public beta is coming soon – so stay tuned! The program is awesome, and a lot of fun!

Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video:

How to Create Stick Figure Animations

How to Visualize Twitter Tweets

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:42:45 +0000

How to Visualize Twitter Tweets

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Yes, that really was a tweet you saw on my screen. Each of the tweets had one thing in common – my last name. I had fun watching them assemble themselves on my screen.

Using Visible Tweets, you can choose a keyword to follow on Twitter. The service then locates tweets that have that keyword in them somewhere, and assembles them on your screen.

Visible Tweets is a visualization of Twitter messages designed to be shown in public places. You can choose to follow them on Twitter to keep up with the latest developments. You can also send them an @tweet, letting them know of ideas of feedback that you may have for them.

This would make a great screensaver, by the way. Sadly, it’s not one. Hint, hint!! It’s interesting watching the letters pop in, and see the animations ebb and flow.

Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code:

How to Visualize Twitter Tweets

How to Create an Animated GIF: Webcam2GIF

Chris Pirillo — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:09:02 +0000

How to Create an Animated GIF: Webcam2GIF

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I was moving my lips, but I wasn’t saying anything. It’s not a movie, it’s an animated .GIF. It’s a single file with a series of frames spliced together – set to loop forever. I made this in less than a minute! This was done with nothing more than my webcam, and an Adobe Air app called WebCam to GIF.

WebCam to GIF is a tool that lets you to create animated GIF images using your webcam. You can use this to create an animated avatar for forums, social sites and more. If you don’t already have the Air platform installed, you’ll want to do it. There are a ton of great apps available for it. The best thing is that it is cross-platform, and works on even Linux!!

This isn’t the first animated GIF I’ve ever made. I’ve been doing them for years – starting way back when all hyperlinks on the Web were blue. Yeah, I know, I’m getting “old”. GIFs are a lot of fun to play with, and are just another way you can enhance your photos and make them fun.

When looking at the program, you have the live preview on the webcam showing on the left side. On the right side, you have the way to browse the images you’ve taken in the series. You can choose how many times it will loop, and decide the quality and size of your creation. When you start snapping captures, you can move around and change the frames (or even delete frames from the series).

It’s easy to do, and it’s fun. Remember that it’s not a video… it’s a GIF! Take your series of photos, mash them together, and loop them forever! Have a GIF of yourself doing almost anything! Download and play with it, make your own GIFs, and come share them with the rest of us.

Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video:

How to Create an Animated GIF: Webcam2GIF

Have You Ever Wanted to Animate Your own Cartoon?

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:46:03 +0000

Have You Ever Wanted to Animate Your own Cartoon?

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My friend Duncan Riley posted a link on his FriendFeed yesterday, and I had to check it out. The link said that you could build your own cartoon. I love cartoons, and I love trying to create new things, so this works perfectly! You can simply drag and drop… edit… and go! With GoAnimate, there’s nothing to install. It’s all done online. Create and share your animation in just minutes.

GoAnimate can do loads of stuff! While we do our best to make it easy to use, it is always hard to pack so many features onto a computer screen and make it easy for say a chiwawa with its legs attached behind its back to use. Whether you have trouble creating animations or you want to learn about the more advanced features of the application, this page is the place to be!

You can use any of their hundreds of pre-installed images, or upload your own. There are cool backgrounds, sounds, and of course animations you can edit and change. Create your comics, share them with your friends, and build a fan base for your work. At this point, you can even embed your cartoons.

I’ve never seen something quite like this before. It’s pretty powerful stuff, and tons of fun. Be sure and share with all of us whatever you create!

FirstRSS ERROR: "http://shop.tagjag.com/products/cartoon" NOT FOUND!

Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video:

Have You Ever Wanted to Animate Your own Cartoon?