Flixel: an interactive animated GIF app for iPhone
"Flixel was created as a result of seeing the incredible work of Kevin Burg & Jamie Beck (via their cinemagraphs.com site). After seeing this mesmerizing new artform, we set out to create a tool and a platform to bring it to a wider audience - the 'Polaroid' of cinemagraphs, if you will.
We owe Flixel's existence to the pioneering efforts of Kevin Burg & Jamie Beck, but we've also found a lot of other professional-level cinemagraph artists out there."
(Flixel Photos Inc., 2012)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Echograph: an interactive animated GIF app for iPad
"A little over a year ago, Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck mashed up fine-art photography with animated GIFs, and the 'cinemagraph' was born. Since then, a cottage app-industry has sprung up around this ingenious digital art form, offering everyday folks easy tools for creating artsy animated GIFs of their own. Now a new iPad-only app called Echograph is targeting professional and 'prosumer' imagemakers who want to get into the cinemagraph-making game.
If apps like Flixel are trying to be the Instagram of animated GIFs, Echograph is more like Photoshop Elements. It's pitched as a creative tool, not a social network or a digital-hipster fad. That's why it's designed for the iPad, which can display higher-resolution imagery and offer users enough screen space to subtly finesse the details of their animated compositions. 'We saw an opportunity to harness Echograph as a more professional medium that takes full advantage of DSLR and higher resolution videography,' Echograph CEO Nick Alt tells Co.Design."
(John Pavlus, Co.Design)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Off Book: the art of Animated GIFs
"GIFs are one of the oldest image formats used on the web. Throughout their history, they have served a huge variety of purposes, from functional to entertainment. Now, 25 years after the first GIF was created, they are experiencing an explosion of interest and innovation that is pushing them into the terrain of art. In this episode of Off Book, we chart their history, explore the hotbed of GIF creativity on Tumblr, and talk to two teams of GIF artists who are evolving the form into powerful new visual experiences."
(PBS Arts: Off Book, 7th Mar 2012)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Jamie Beck's animated GIF photography
"New York City-based fashion photographer Jamie Beck, in collaboration with Kevin Burg, a web designer with a background in video and motion graphics, has created a series of gorgeous animated GIFs she calls 'cinemagraphs'. A couple of them feature Canadian supermodel Coco Rocha, and these have gained quite a bit of media exposure recently. According to Rocha, cinemagraphs are 'more than a photo, but not quite a video.'
Even though the concept of animated GIFs is as old as the Internet, the ones circling around the web are often tacky and low brow. Jamie Beck's animated GIFs, on the other hand, have an amazing atmosphere that has elevated the art of animated GIFs.
Jamie Beck's first few animated images were sequenced still shots looped in rapid succession which is a fairly common way of making an animated image. Then he began utilizing more fluid motion isolated in certain parts of an image to to capture a moment of time, but also to un-freeze a still photograph by showing that moment's temporal movement."
(Amusing Planet, 16 Apri 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Far better than 3-D: animated GIFs that savour a passing moment
"You know how people sometimes say that jazz is the only truly American art form? Animated GIFs are like the jazz of the internet: they could only exist, and be created and appreciated, online. That said, PopTart Cat is not exactly on par with Thelonious Monk. But photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg may have finally found a way to elevate the animated GIF to a level approaching fine art, with their 'cinemagraphs' -- elegant, subtly animated creations that are 'something more than a photo but less than a video.' ...
The pair was inspired to create these cinemagraphs while preparing to cover Fashion Week this past February: 'We wanted to tell more of a story than a single still frame photograph but didn't want the high maintenance aspect of a video,' they told Co.Design via email."
(John Pavlus, Co.Design)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
