As a sort of gap-filler between RavenholmVille and the next mapping competition, I have decided to run a little Animated Gif competition.
There has been a resurgence in animated GIFs (the proper name is cinemagraphs) recently after some very artistic ones were created. Check out FastcoDesign and Hongkiat for more examples.
Viewers to my recent Twitch broadcast may have seen the one I created as the pre-stream image and I also created this one from an Episode Two background map.
Entrants must create an imaginative and subtle image that I will try and use in various places around the site, although I make no guarantee of that. I will try and create a page with all the entries, but again, I don’t guarantee it.
Please make your images as big as possible in terms of dimensions, as that gives me more possibilities for using them on the site.
They must be from any Half-Life game, i.e. Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Half-Life 2, Lost Coast, HL2: Episode One and HL2: Episode Two. No entries for other games, including Portal and Portal 2 will be considered.
Closing date for entries is 10:00 AM GMT Monday 19th May 2014 -that’s about 3 weeks.
Send you entries to me directly, [email protected] or host them somewhere and send me the link or post the link as a comment (remember, all comments with links are held in a queue – please do not try to subvert that process).
Winner will receive a $5 Steam game or something else if anybody wants to donate a prize.
As always, if you have any questions, just ask. Oh, and please tell as many people as possible, including tweeting, FB updates, Messages in bottles, carrier pigeons, smoke signals and graffiti.
This post will self-destruct on 20th May 2014.
Do the images have to be from the official maps or can we make them from custom maps created ad hoc for the GIF (so no stealing from other people’s maps – don’t worry!)? Of course these maps would not stray too much away from the official levels, it’s just that they would allow for more creative GIFs.
Okay.
How bout gif for HL2: DM? hehe and I can offer a gifted version of it as a prize.
Sure, HL2:DM is fine too.
Sounds pretty cool, I’ll try to have a go at making a couple. Subtle is the key, eh?
Have a feeling yours *might* have a headcrab in it somewhere.
;)) me 2
Can anyone point me to a good guide as to how to make animated GIF’s?
There are a ton of gif tutorials out there, and also a few decent cinemagraph tutorials. Here’s a good one that helped me: http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-make-a-cool-cinemagraph-image-in-photoshop
Also using a gif means being stuck with 256 colors, so pick your image carefully. Try to avoid gradients (which I did not in my Water Hazard picture, and you can see how striated the sky looks).
Well, not completely happy with it but I’m moving on to make hopefully another one. From Water Hazard:
http://imgur.com/UqtRW3W