#anyway right now there are Too Many siken bot quotes in that channel labelled with some variation of 'dammit wkx' so that's where i'm at

[presumenothing]

heyooo this is probably a weird question, but what's ur learning process exactly? like you've been doing the gifs thing, and you seem pretty knowledgeable, so i was curious

not weird at all!! i just (a) don't know how informative this answer is gonna be, and (b) have clearly deceived you into thinking i know anything at all ever, because while i do in fact Know some things my decision making process also literally looks like this:

though in terms of what i Know about the particular sort of gifs thing i like, i literally just posted this which is a hilarious coincidence

but you asked me about my learning process, so!! i have to add a term and condition (singular) here that i'm apparently an unusually fast learner for anything not requiring hand-eye coordination, but that aside… insofar as i have any Process™ it goes something like this:

decide to do the thing. in this case it was "fell into the zhou shen pit" meets "be the content you want to see in the world"

start doing the thing as quickly as possible. i don't wanna say strike while the iron is hot but.... there is truth to that. my first gif wasn't great but it was there

read a lot. i'm sorry, video tutorials, i'm sure you have actual content to offer but also 99% of the time i do not care. fortunately most tumblr posts where the gif tutorials are continue to be in text (never change)

though what and how i read has shifted over time, from initially reading pretty much every general gif related tutorial i found (there is so much So Much to read about colouring) to narrowing down to specific things i'm interested in

aside from more standard gifs (mostly interview gifs? probably??) i usually start out having a strong idea of what i want to make, then it's a matter of looking up or figuring out myself how to achieve the effect i want. (sometimes it's the other way around – i save a cool effect for reference and then the stars align and i get to use it!! very nice of them)

make stuff, post, and repeat. imo especially when you're just starting out to gif, it's important to set the "good enough" bar reasonably low-ish? your stuff is never gonna look as good as what experienced giffers make, at least not yet, and there's probably even a fundamental difference in how you're making your gifs that makes the comparison nonsensical.

basically you're likely to learn more and learn it more quickly by going for quantity first, especially since part of giffing is learning how to deal with inconsistencies like the source video lighting never being the same dammit. insert that story about the two halves of the pottery class here

considering that i started out with 0 knowledge aside from some dusty leftover recollection of using gimp like a decade ago, i think i'm doing pretty good! but also – and i cannot possibly overstate this – i have made a lot of gifs. the birthday countdown alone was more than a hundred. some things you just learn by doing

(if this sounded suspiciously like "step 1: get hamster brain obsessed with one thing step 2: ???? step 3: Profit" that's because it pretty much is. it's the most effective and fun way i learn anything. the lifehack is always to catch your brain with the correct bait)

(the other lifehack is to have some organisation, even if not in any form recognisable to polite society. my gif stuff is in the realm of tidy because i have a channel in my notes to self server literally called giffing where i put everything from "cool thing i saw" to "thing i want to gif" to "not even sure this effect is in the realm of possibility but it would be Cool yknow??". my fic stuff, on the other hand,,,)

#i...... do not think that actually answered anything. oops #if you have a more specific question feel free to send another ask! though admittedly i can't do much in the way of linking resources etc #bc unless they're recent or i keep referring to them for whatever reason i have otherwise almost definitely forgotten where they were #definitely a lot of it was read on tumblr though!! since well. nobody else really makes gifs like this hellsite (affectionate) does #also idk if you were asking about my learning process in making gifs specifically but then again #this pretty much also applies to everything else i have learned for fun and nonprofit #just that it's been months for gifmaking as opposed to literal years for learning japanese and fic writing #well more like a decade plus for the latter But Anyway. when do i get my fandom veteran card and what benefits are there #long post #asks #anonymous #journey to the gif #if you go /chrono on this tag there are probably some text post documentations of when i was actually learning? all the way at the start #the internet really is just my commonplace book now huh. that's fine actually #anyway right now there are Too Many siken bot quotes in that channel labelled with some variation of 'dammit wkx' so that's where i'm at #ramble tag