Animated gif confusion
February 21, 2010 1:16 AM Subscribe
How was this animated gif created? I can't figure out the principals at work here. Warning: rainbow lobotomy ahead.
It's palette cycling - where each colour of an image changes from frame to frame, moving around the palette of the image.
It used to be a cheap way of getting animation, since the image itself never changed - just the colours. You saw it a lot around the snes era. Maybe a waterfall or sea which cycled through a bunch of blues and gave the impression of flowing as a pattern of lighter colour moved along its length.
posted by Lorc at 1:34 AM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
It used to be a cheap way of getting animation, since the image itself never changed - just the colours. You saw it a lot around the snes era. Maybe a waterfall or sea which cycled through a bunch of blues and gave the impression of flowing as a pattern of lighter colour moved along its length.
posted by Lorc at 1:34 AM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
You can see it being used constructively on the burning sky at about 6:30 in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A31jV3nElY
posted by Lorc at 1:41 AM on February 21, 2010
posted by Lorc at 1:41 AM on February 21, 2010
I've uploaded the individual frames to flickr. Let me know if this link doesn't work.
posted by b33j at 1:54 AM on February 21, 2010
posted by b33j at 1:54 AM on February 21, 2010
Best answer: here's a tutorial on how to use 'em.
On the other hand, simply "shifting" a gradient like that using gradient maps, at least in the version of photo shop I have, would be kind of tedious. Although I suppose you could apply a gradient map, then use curves to make the image your using 'wrap around' like that.
It would be really easy to write custom software to do that as well.
posted by delmoi at 1:57 AM on February 21, 2010
On the other hand, simply "shifting" a gradient like that using gradient maps, at least in the version of photo shop I have, would be kind of tedious. Although I suppose you could apply a gradient map, then use curves to make the image your using 'wrap around' like that.
It would be really easy to write custom software to do that as well.
posted by delmoi at 1:57 AM on February 21, 2010
That's pretty clearly palette-cycling based animation, yeah. Photoshop's gradient maps look like they could be used to do palette animation on a modern machine that doesn't use indexed color, but as delmoi says, it would be a bit tedious.
posted by hattifattener at 4:01 AM on February 21, 2010
posted by hattifattener at 4:01 AM on February 21, 2010
In case "palette-map" cycling isn't a meaningful term to you, here's an analogy:
ABC --> BCD --> CDE...
So HELLO -- > IFMMP --> JGNNQ
Each color in the image is located on a color wheel. On the next frame, the color wheel is spun a little bit, and the colors are re-mapped to new colors in the same relative wheel locations.
Many apps can do this. I've done it in After Effects, using the Colorama plugin.
posted by grumblebee at 8:26 AM on February 21, 2010
ABC --> BCD --> CDE...
So HELLO -- > IFMMP --> JGNNQ
Each color in the image is located on a color wheel. On the next frame, the color wheel is spun a little bit, and the colors are re-mapped to new colors in the same relative wheel locations.
Many apps can do this. I've done it in After Effects, using the Colorama plugin.
posted by grumblebee at 8:26 AM on February 21, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by missmagenta at 1:29 AM on February 21, 2010