The journey to my ultimate gif
an·i·ma·tion
/ˌanəˈmāSH(ə)n/
nounThe technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the movie is shown as a sequence.
Let’s start from the beginning
Animation has always been a part of my life.Ever since I was a kid I was obsessed with Disney, not just by the story but by the the animation, I would redraw scenes from movies like , Hercules and Tarzan (I’m still in love with Tarzan btw). I liked the over-exaggerated expressions on the characters faces and how they can create an emotional response by drawing.
At the age of 12 my dad got us a Acer Aspire Desktop PC, I was the happiest kid ever. It had everything I needed! MS Paint, Windows Movie Maker and the part was Adobe Flash. I taught myself Action Script 2.0 and started making stupid little games.
Frame By Frame animation
My first animation
I was obsessed with Fancy Pants you can say that I was inspired by that game. I loved the smoothness of the animation and the way the developer took the time to animation allot of situations.
Fast Forward 5 years , 18 years old I’m about to embark upon the biggest adventure of a young adults life … College.
I signed up for a Major Called Devine at Howest Kortrijk. And this is where my silly little gifs started.
The Orange
My first class during my time at Howest, we were getting an introduction in flash and Action Script 3.0. And like the good student I am, I was not paying attention. The teacher was talking about an orange or something and that got my brain working. And this was the result.
Sean Malto KickFlip
It’s actually a Switch Flip but I made a mistake during the drawing process, and I’m lazy sometimes so I just kept it like that (Don’t judge me ok).
After Effects
Bubble pop
I discovered something called Dribbble, a website where you could share your work with a very inviting and constructive community. During that time I wanted to work on my portfolio and I was thinking of adding an intro animation to my personal website.
Adventure Of Jake
Next To animation I have an obsession for development. And I had this idea of creating a platform game called Adventures of Jake. A skinny hipster that wants to save the world from being mainstream. I started by animating his head and of course that beautiful, majestic beard.
After that I animated the rest of his body, Remember when I said , it’s all about the details. If you look closely at his shirt it moves when his leg touches it. This animation was a step in the direction of how I developed my style , these were only a few things missing (Never made the game, I’m lazy remember).
Olympics
And yet another idea for a game. I created this animation during the olympics, I was thinking about making a game that included a bunch of Sports. And this would have been Hurdles. Every time he jumped and it was pretty close it would go into slow-motion mode.
Style change
I wanted to try different styles of animation, because I felt like there were to many other creatives that had the same style as mine. But I really wanted to differentiate myself from the rest. This was a good step in the right direction for me, I taught myself something during this period that helped me towards creating my style of animations. It’s called Turbulent displace, it adds a distortion effect to you animation and if you play around with the values and lower the frame rate you can create a frame-by-frame look. I love it.
Plant & Coffee
This is one of the first tests I made with this style , I liked the look and feel of these and I wanted to create more of these animations.
Light House
There was a scene in the movie Song Of The Sea, it was so beautiful. I paused the movie and I just started at that scene for about 10 min. I wanted to capture the feeling I had during this scene, so I decided to capture it in an animation of the way I saw it and the way I interpreted that scene.
Logo Animations
Logo animations are a big passion of mine, I never design a logo without imagining how it would be constructed in a animation. Actually it’s usually the first thing I think of when I’m drawing symbols and logo’s.
Allyens
This logo was created for a creative agency called Allyens, it’s run by a couple of friends of mind. I wanted to create a logo animation that could be added anywhere in a video and it would fit perfectly.
The Grind
During one of my logo design challenges, I made this logo. The Grind, it’s a logo for a coffee shop. For some reason I can hear the cup sliding over a wooden table and smoothly settling in its place.
2018
I feel like after a long time of creating stupid little gifs, I’ve reached a point where I’m almost happy with the style I’ve adopted. It’s not a style that everybody likes, but let’s be honest there is always going to be someone who doesn’t like your work.
Vespa
One day my dad said Rachouan “let’s buy a vespa”. I’ve always like the look of a vespa but I just wanted to imagine myself on a vespa, so I made a gif of myself on a vespa.
Gorilla
One day I was thinking back at simpler times , where I watched my favourite Disney movies. And then I thought of Tarzan, The movie that started it all … I wanted to make this gif to always remember where it all started for me. And the joy that it adds to my life.
To Be Continued …
This was a small selection of the gifs I’ve made over the years. If you like them you can take a look at my Dribbble.
