Monday, October 27, 2014

An animated guide to breathing displays the awesome power of GIF animation

If you've ever been to tumblr, then you know what a GIF is. The acronym stands for "graphics interchange format" and was first introduced to the world by CompuServe in 1987. All you really need to know about GIF's are the words "animated image." I presently have two friends that design their own GIF's in Blender (an open-source free software downloadable on the internet). Both have had exhibits at UMOCA here in Salt Lake City (UMOCA stands for "Utah Museum of Contemporary Art"). They have thousands of fans on Tumblr and have even been contacted by the likes of Miley Cyrus for custom-designed GIF's to play in the background of their stage shows.

However, what designer Eleanor Lutz does with GIF's is pretty darn amazing. Rather than splashes of color, Ms. Lutz uses GIF's to teach people science. Her latest work is what io9 calls "a mesmerizing look a the weird and wonderful ways that animals breathe." Cool right? I kind of sort of knew how humans breathed. But grasshoppers? No idea. Below is her illustration of three species she picked.
Click to EMBIGGEN

15 comments:

  1. You didn't know how grasshoppers breathed?! I'm Shocked. ;) Actually, their tracheal system is a limiting factor in their growth and development and one of the main reasons why insects will never grow to be Starship-Troopers big.

    Cool gifs indeed. :)

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  2. Incredible. They way birds breathe is fascinating. I've always wondered what made them able to breathe at such high elevations. Makes sense. now.

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  3. Very interesting. It's amazing what a computer can do in the right hands.

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  4. One day all teaching will be done by gifs. PE will be a lot more relaxing.

    mood

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  5. Pretty darn cool. Would have got my attention when I was in school. Neat interactive way to get a point across quickly.

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  6. That is very cool.

    Love Mood's comment about PE.

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  7. It is amazing to see how grasshoppers breath. the whole chart is quite educating.

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  8. very complex for what you'd think a grasshopper would be

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  9. Animation like this is great because with some topics I need to see what's going on--then again, I think that if a lot of quantum mechanics and other physics stuff were put into animation, I still wouldn't understand much.

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