Eric Buist

Animated .gifs used to be the bain of the web. Little creatures waving at you in all of their 8-bit glory, websites with flashing backgrounds giving seizures to any un-knowing visitor, and other small annoying animations. This was all up until someone started making their pictures move.

These are referred to as cinemagraphs. There is a flickr group dedicated to them (http://www.flickr.com/groups/cinemagraphs/) and a recent tutorial on photojojo.com. In the wake of these findings I have started to mess around with .gifs and hope to explore it more over the course of the next few weeks. My tests and samples can be seen here if you are interested. My friend Jon Brown is also doing some really nice ones for modcloth.

I hope this can point you in the direction of making new and creative content, half animation and half photo. Enjoy!