Dark Inspirations

Another inspiring hero of mine is Tim Burton. He definitely has his own style, a true artist who happens to be highly successful. My first Tim Burton film (he was a producer) was James and the Giant Peach; I love the stop action animation and the charisma he provides these characters. The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories is dark humor stories and poems of Tim Burton's own creation. In college I was inspired by this collection for my own small story "Creature by the Sea". My favorite films tranfer constantly between Big Fish, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. I can watch any of his films and be inspired.

Be Animated

With Flash becoming obsolete the animated GIF is making a comeback. I found a nice little video tutorial on how to create simple animated GIFs. Apple choosing to no longer support flash has made it likely that it will become obsolete. Photography sites used to be streaming with various flash code, because it fit the purpose. Photographers need large beautiful images in small file size and flash can do that, but now if you want to appeal to the market that owns apple products photographers have to adapt there sites to use other forms of code such as java, but some are making motion with GIFs.

Since I work in advertising we still use flash a lot for making online ads because you can get the best movement and resolutions for file size. Some clients create their own ads and turn in animated GIFs so the file will move on all formats, but they will have grainy images and can't figure out why.

GIFs have a selected amounted of colors you can use, and changing your number of colors can greatly decrease loading time. This type of file is limited to 256 colors, so you have to be mindful of the color spectrum in your photography. One way to reduce the number colors is to use simple vector art. Keep this in mind when you want animate on your blog or website.