A Girl Makes Gifs

A couple of months ago, I had to look for an alternative to the KMPlayer because it couldn’t open a certain type of files (also because the last KMPlayer update was really bad). I found PotPlayer, and I am very happy with it! It opens files other players are unable to, and it never had any bugs. The commands on PotPlayer are very similar to KMPlayer, it is very easy to get used to it.

You can download PotPlayer from here. 

Ok now the tutorial:

Open your video in PotPlayer. Find the scene you wish to gif, press pause. Now open the frame capturing window.

Over the past decade, I have gone through a lot of ups and downs with the way I create my gifs but just recently, with the help of multiple tutorials, I have found a way to make gifs that I am proud to post. So to celebrate my birthday I have decided to share how I make my gifs with you all ^-^. enjoy. p.s. this tutorial is very image-heavy as I cover everything.

I am so bored that I will be making multiple posts that deal with 1. finding quality videos + clipping, 2. how to make a gif, 3. coloring a gif, and 4. saving gif.

Disclaimer!! These tips and tricks are things I’ve learned over the years. There are different ways to make gifs! I’ll be explaining to you MY way of making a gif from selecting a video to saving your gif. I’m not an expert in giffing lol but I hope this helps you :D

What you need:

VLC 

Your clip

Today’s post deals with how to choose a good quality video and clipping.

TIPS

1. I recommend using 1080p to 4k (Blu ray) for videos, anything less—in my opinion— will lower the quality of the gif. I don’t even suggest 720p but if you absolutely want/have to…720p will work! There are different ways of downloading shows/films. You can torrent* ( x or x or x ), use youtube (use x to dl youtube videos), and twitter (search “logoless shows/movies”)**.

*NOTE: If you want to download a video using a torrent USE A VPN TO COVER YOUR TRACKS. *cough downloading shows/films is i*lle*gal cough*. You’ll also need a torrent application to download a torrent. I use deluge (BitTorrent works too).

**NOTE: most logoless accounts on twitter are private so you’ll have to ask for permission. They also use MEGA links but MEGA has a bandwidth limit when it comes to download something. So you might want to get the membership? It’s $5 for a month. There’s also ways to get past the bandwidth limit but I haven’t really tried them, sorry!

2. Make sure that however you save your video, you save it at the highest quality!! High quality means the file size (MB) of the video might be large so have memory on your computer (external hard drives are always handy)! If you’re downloading a film (~1-3hr films), they’re usually 2-10 gb in 1080p. If you’re downloading a film in 4k (blu ray) it’ll probably be ~30+ gb which is huge but the quality of the video will be gorgeous lol. 

3. Another thing, try to save your video in .mp4, the most common format to storing videos! I’ve tried to upload a .mkv clip and photoshop did not recognize it*. I had to convert the .mkv clip to .mp4 but that causes the video to lose quality. So just keep in mind.

*NOTE: Photoshop does NOT recognize matroska (.mkv) files! Even if you can play it on VLC. You must convert the .mkv file to .mp4!!

CLIPPING YOUR VIDEO

Now if you have a short clip, you can probably upload straight to photoshop (which I’ll show you in part 2). In this case, I’ll be showing you how to clip a specific scene in a film (Captain America: The Winter Soldier). I’ll be using VLC (download here), a multimedia player that works with most file types. If you have a Mac, you can use QuickTime Player, I just prefer VLC. (I think you can trim a video with Windows Media Player but you might need a plugin?)

Open up your video in VLC. If it’s a full length film/show, go to the scene you want to clip then move the cursor a couple seconds before the scene you want to clip. For example, I’ll be clipping the scene in CATWS where the winter soldier says “who the hell is bucky?” so, I have it paused just before that scene. VLC sometimes records on a delay which is why I recommend you start recording a couple of seconds before your scene.

Now, in order to record: go to the top left —> click ‘playback’ —> click ‘record’

If you have your video paused go ahead and click play. There’s going to be a check right next to ‘record’. That means you’re recording a clip!

To stop recording, go back to ‘playback’ and click record again. The check mark should be gone. Your video should be save under the ‘video’ or ‘movies’ folder of your computer!

Congrats, you’ve got your video!  

GIFFING 101 - YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE ON HOW TO GIF

I have gotten many, many asks before about how I gif and I finally decided to make a tutorial. This is going to be very long, very image heavy and with a lot of details and examples. I mean it, I’m going through every, single aspect of giffing that I can possibly think of. From start to finish. And please read the disclaimer at the very start.

* I use a macbook pro but this should probably work on windows too!

I hate doing this but if this helped and you want to, please consider donating to my ko-fi or if you want, commission a theme or page from me at @amaanat <3

tutorial under cut, I hope it helps!

a gif tutorial by blakehelps

Hello lovelies! Many months ago I was asked to make a gif tutorial, and not as many months ago, I went ahead and recorded that tutorial! A lack of time has kept me from publishing the tutorial until now, as I’ve finally finished and typed out a written version to go along with the video. So above is a detailed video tutorial of how I make gifs (and, specifically, how I made the gif underneath), and below is a less detailed companion tutorial to go along with it. I hope you guys find this useful, and if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to send me an ask/im!

Here is the one I made.

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much! And sorry in advance if I go overboard with this. Hahaha. And if I do, feel free to ignore me and only do the ones of these you want:)

I’ve actually done a few screenshot Dark Angel things that aren’t the greatest. So if you wanted to remake some of those as gifs, I wouldn’t mind at all. https://oveliagirlhaditright.tumblr.com/post/188483190012/i-know-brainiac-is-arguably-the-most-hated, https://oveliagirlhaditright.tumblr.com/post/186108463327/i-saw-alec-saying-the-move-your-furniture-thing.

And then some other ideas I had… uhh. It’d be cute–if you wanted to, I mean–if you gifed all the times Max and Logan held hands, or almost kissed… Or to do a comparison gifset between when Max says in the finale season of season one (And Jesus Brought a Casserole) “I’d kiss you, but I have to keep my head in the game”, with her in season two saying to Logan (Proof of Purchase): “Thanks, Logan. I’d hug you, but-”

Max kind of posing with the pool stick and smiling after Logan says he’s at Crash to see her in Fugheddaboutit is really cute. And so is the scene in Harbor Lights when they’re just smiling at each other when Max is in the hospital bed. Or when Max is telling Logan, in Gill Girl, how she wants this story to have a happy ending… and you can just tell he knows–without her saying it–that she wants the merepeople to have a happy ending, since they can’t right now. And before that in Gill Girl, when Logan is calling Max… and then hears her ringtone in his apartment, and then sees her coming in with a mermaid slung over her shoulder as she says “I’ll hit you back later!” That was funny. 

Logan’s speech about how it never mattered to him what Max was in Love Among the Runes is good, as is the whole scene when he’s sticking up for the transgenics that they do have souls, in Dawg Day Afternoon. And if you wanted to do a “Logan character development” post you could, in comparing Haven (”How can I even think of having a good time, when the man who orchestrated the shootings was a cop… and he not only got away with it, but got promoted for it, too?!”) with Proof of Purchase (”Well, you can only fight corruption for son long before you have to kick back and relax.”)

You could also do Max character development ones if you wanted! Like, in the Pilot when she’s telling Logan that people are looking to kill her, put her in a cage, or turn her into a science experiment or all three… and that she’s gotten by through keeping her head down and wants to keep it that way, and not help people… with the season two finale (Freak Nation), where she’s saying “Where will you go? I can’t force anyone to stay. But I’m tired of running, hiding, and being afraid. Aren’t you tired of running? Of being in being in darkness? Don’t you want to feel the sun on your face? It’s time to make a stand, right here and right now. They created us, and it’s time that they owned up to that instead of trying to sweep us away like garbage” and that sort of thing. Or how in the Pilot (even though she’s partially lying here) when she tells Logan that she doesn’t blame herself at all for what happened to him, and that it’s on him “one-hundred percent”. But then in Meow she and Original Cindy have this conversation: Cindy: The truth is, you love Logan. Max: We’re not even like that, and the fact is we both would have been better off if we’d never even meet. Cindy: Please. Max: He has to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair because of me. Cindy: I didn’t see you on TV, pulling no trigger. Max: Yeah, but I could’ve protected him and I didn’t and that’s on me “one-hundred percent”.

I also love how Max and Logan give each other a piece that the other was missing: Logan suggesting that Max choose a birthday (C.R.E.A.M), and then her giving him back his mother’s locket in Art Attack. Or also how I think it was in Max going to the wedding with Logan in Art Attack, that she finally chose a last name for herself “Guevara”, and then began using it from then on out.

I once did a screenshot post (that I’ve since deleted), of Charlie telling Case the “storybook” version of Tinga’s life (this happens in Hit A Sista Back) that she’d told Charlie and Case (that neither of them had any idea was real at first), paired with Max incredulously saying to Bling about Logan in 411 on the DL, “I’ll go over and read him a bedtime story.” And then after that, I put Charlie telling Max and Logan in Hit A Sista Back, how he didn’t regret any of the time that he had with Tinga… and he’s essentially telling Max and Logan to get together there… and you can kind of tell by the way they’re looking at each other, that maybe they want this “bedtime story” for themselves, too. And if you wanted to remake this, you totally could:)

I also did another post in the past, that you could remake… Where Max says to Logan in C.R.E.A.M, that she’s surprised a high-minded, leftist, idealist like him would be okay with her greasing the enemies… and then paired it with her saying (in Prodigy) that she isn’t as high-minded as Logan is, with the idea that life is good and murder is bad, so she should have just let Lydecker go for that reason.

The scene where Original Cindy is talking to Max about Diamond at the end of Shorties in Love is really good overall, and is speaking of both the Max/Logan and Original Cindy/Diamond relationships, that could be cool to see gifed:)

You could also do a Max and Original Cindy comparison, where Max has to touch Logan’s hand through glass in Proof of Purchase and Original Cindy has to do that with Diamond in Shorties in Love.

Speaking of, any Original Cindy content–like with her and Max–would be awesome. I personally love the scene where they’re dunking the guy in the hot tub in Art Attack, being such a team, to get information out of him.

Gifs of Max being smart and a badass would also be great.

And just anything with Tinga, Brin, Syl, Jace, Jondy, and Mia would make me so happy.

You could even do a gifset that explains where the name of the show comes from: “Forever eyes, dark. Somebody’s angel” (the poem Logan made for Max in Shorties in Love) and Art Attack. Guy that Max Saves from Jumping Off a Building: “You’re the messenger, right?” Max: “Yeah?” Guy: “Well, I’ve never been much of a believer before… but you personally coming here to straighten me out like this. Thank you”. Max, smiling: “I’ll see about getting you that package back” (he thought she was an angel).

So these are just some of the crazy Dark Angel ideas I have. Feel free to use any or none of them. And thank you so much again:) And if you need me to try and explain any of this better, I can.

Edit: You could also gif what I believe is the closest we ever got to Max and Logan saying they were together in this series (aside from the times they told each other “I love you”, I mean. Or at least started to say it). Max saying angrily in “Boo” after Rafer insinuated Logan was her ex: “He’s not my ex! …I mean, we’re not like that.” And then Mia asking Logan in “Fugheddaboutit”: “You’re Max’s boyfriend, right?” And him saying, “Something like that.” You could also maybe have fun gifing all the times they said the ridiculous “we’re not like that” line, and then prove how untrue that was. LOL.

Edit 2: I also loved the scenes we got that showed how much Max and Logan knew each other, and that they got to know each other even moreso in scenes we didn’t see. Like when Max is sad in one episode (though I don’t remember which one it is), that he sold a painting his grandmother had given him, I think, to try and find a cure for the Virus (and we hadn’t known that painting was from his grandmother before this). Or when in Gill Girl, Max knows so much about people in Logan’s family–like Bitsy–and is talking about them with him, even though the audience had never heard of them before. Or in Some Assembly Required, when Logan knew how much Zack being alive would mean to Max and is gently and somewhat excitedly telling her, “You’re brother’s alive, Max.” …And really, just how kind Logan was to Zack actually says a lot about his love for Max, since Zack was always cruel to him (and I say this as a Zack Stan).

Edit 3: You could also do a Space Needle journey: Max on the Space Needle in the Pilot, Max asking Logan about going on the Space Needle in Heat, but him refusing since he’s scared of heights… Them almost going together at the end of Rising, but not for some reason… And then them finally getting there on Jesus Brought a Casserole together, and then Logan alone on the Space Needle at the end of And Jesus Brought a Casserole–echoing what Max said in the Pilot. Also, speaking of Max and Logan being on top of buildings: Max being on top of Logan’s penthouse in the Pilot, and Logan being on top of it in She Ain’t Heavy (as it seems he finally got over his fear of heights).

Please tag me at either #hmwgifs or #userhails if you have any more ideas.

hello and welcome on my tutorial to make vibrant gifs!

reminder: this absolutely isnt the only or the “best” way to color gifs, the aim of this tutorial is for YOU to try and get familiarized with the different types of layers! experimenting is the key to get better, and i hope you’ll have fun with it! <3