Epileptic inducing animated images

[DeeBye]

I created this in Image Ready, but any image manipulation program + animated .gif maker will work just as well.

I didn't make this method up myself; these sorts of images have been around for a long time. I always thought they were neat, so I googled around until I found out how they are done.

First, I found a starter image. I'm a huge Tie Domi homer (see current avatar), so I google image searched for a picture of him. Here's a picture of Tie beating the stuffing out of poor hapless Randy Mckay.


Here's the resulting animated gif.


There are 4 frames here.
1. Image with no changes.
2. Image 1, rotated 2-5° and enlarged about 5%. You can also skew or apply perspective. Just keep the changes slight.
3. Image 1, with the colours inverted.
4. Image 2, with the colours inverted.

Unfortunately, since animated images must be in .gif format they don't play all that nice with photorealistic images (which are usually .jpgs). The filesizes get really large.

I decided to try to make another one, but this time I would limit the colours to greyscale and use a simple image in the hopes of keeping the filesize down. It turned out pretty well.

Original image (I just used maple leaf brush with a really fat brush size).


Animated.


The filesize is a lot smaller than the Domi one (86kb versus 140kb). Even simpler images using less colours would be even more efficient.

I was going to use this method to create a new avatar, but I rethought that idea after seeing just how vomit-inducing these images can be after looking at them for awhile.

edit: Here's a really great one, not created by me. The person that made it took the extra step of separating Christopher Walken and the galaxy background and applied different transformations to each of them. The result is awesome.

[Viscous]

Wow. Those images are amazing. They should definitely carry the epileptic seizure warning. I couldn't stop staring at that galaxy animation for a good 15 seconds. One application for this sort of animation is on-line adds. Just add a few deviously subliminal frames and you could be a millionaire in no time!

I just started looking into making animated gifs. I use PhotoShop Elements (it came free with my scanner). I also like Lego. I'll shamelessly take this opportunity to show off my latest build.



The technique you outlined could come in pretty handy for jazzing up an otherwise boring animation... thanks for the explanation.

[DeeBye]

One application for this sort of animation is on-line adds.  Just add a few deviously subliminal frames and you could be a millionaire in no time!
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Pay no attention to my sig :shuriken:

Your lego image is pretty neat. Did you take the pictures yourself?

[Viscous]

Your lego image is pretty neat.  Did you take the pictures yourself?
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Yes, I took them with a digital camera. I built the "Knight Bus" on a piece of white card board paper to keep a consistent background color. I also had to buy a tripod to get a consistent camera angle.

But when I put the pictures into a gif, the animation was way too large. And the backgrounds of the different pictures were completely different colors. (I think the reason for this is that, as more of the bus was in the picture, the light from the background was reflected differently, producing slightly different colors. Or something like that. I'm sure there's a good physics reason behind the lighting but I'm not entirely sure what it is.)

So I had to doctor up the background with the paint bucket tool. Luckily, the paint bucket tool did a good job of preserving the shadow of the bus. I only had to do a little pixel by pixel editing to make up for the times when the paint bucket tool didn't get the outline of the bus quite right.

[Dozer]

It hurts my eyes!

[DeeBye]

Yes, I took them with a digital camera.  I built the "Knight Bus" on a piece of white card board paper to keep a consistent background color.  I also had to buy a tripod to get a consistent camera angle.
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You did a great job on that animation.