It seems emoticons and gifs, and gifs acting as emoticons, are all the rage these days so Mhairi and I decided, why not get in on the action? Sounds like fun right?
We toasted to the whole brilliant idea, giving ourselves verbal high fives and then I was off and running.
Figured I’d just whip a few of them out that afternoon and be off to the rest of my to do list. How hard could it be right?
Yeah it was kinda hard. The next thing I knew I was literally swimming in choices on the web of different ways to go about making an animated gif using video.
I was definitely not the eagle, more like a chicken with my head cut off, as I jumped back and forth from one tutorial to the other. Some apps had audio, some had the ability for captions, some you could only use via a social media site. None had everything.
For a moment there I was shocked. Nothing seemed to be the exact tool that I wanted. Can I really not figure this out. A whole day and 1/2 was chewed up and I still didn’t have the results I wanted.
I got down right pissed when I realized that, even though there were plenty of apps that made it is easy to make gifs (like Make a Gif – which allows you to create gifs straight from your youtube videos) the only way to accomplish what I really wanted (which was to brand these gifs in a certain way) I was gonna have to go back to the drawing board and make them myself in premiere.
This was gonna take so much longer than I had planned on. Why me?
But I got over it. Decided to just dive on in there and do it.
And the next thing you know I couldn’t stop myself. I had a treasure trove of new gifs to share. It was totally worth the effort as it was gonna be so much fun!
Which leads me to…
Industry Tip #26
Branded, shareable gifs are a win win in the game of promotion because they offer a fun way for your fans to express themselves, while still promoting yourself as well.
And without further ado, I leave with the good news that all these gifs are yours to use as you wish. If you want to tweet them or upload them to a blog, all you have to do is click on them individually, and then right click on them to save as to your computer, then you upload them whenever and where ever you want.
Or if you want to use them on facebook then simply click on the one you want and then copy the url that appears above on your browser window, then paste the URL into your FB post and you got it.
We can’t wait to see the gifs spread out into the world. Happy sharing!
Although next time I might make Mhairi do it on her own.
With a cat. 🙂
