jumpin’ GIFs

December 3rd, 2014 | Uncategorized

For some time now I have been puzzling over a vexing problem: how to draw a jumping jack. You can usually find a way to convey a sense of movement in a drawing. But I just couldn’t seem to capture a jumping jack in a single image.

jumping jacks composite sketch

Even with lots of overlapping outlines of limbs, and motion lines, it’s impossible. I kept trying to figure it out, making a video of myself and analyzing the different positions. Then drawing them separately and combining them in a flip book. But I didn’t have enough drawings and my pages weren’t on thick enough paper. Then it occurred to me to put them in a GIF generator.

Jumping jacks!

 

17 Responses to “jumpin’ GIFs”

  1. B says:

    Cool. The first image reminds me of the Vitruvian man

  2. Kate L says:

    When I was working as an emergency substitute teacher in the local school district, one day in the Smallville Metropolitan Mall I happened to meet two girls whose grade school gym class I had been a substitute coach for. I told them to give me jumping jacks, and they started doing jumping jacks right there on the mall concourse! I had to tell them to stop. I didn’t know that I had such authority.

  3. Kate L says:

    Here is a photo from today’s Moo U student newspaper showing students laying down in the Student Union to protest police brutality. Also, driving to my office on the campus just now to send this, I saw more young people standing in the dark in Triangle Park across the street from campus, holding signs and chanting, “No Peace, No Justice!”. Are these kids great, or what?

  4. Alison, I just watched this clips about Hayao Myiyazaki animating the last image of his final film, and thought of you might be interested.

    http://geektyrant.com/news/watch-hayao-miyazaki-animate-the-last-shot-of-his-final-film

  5. Minnie says:

    That animation captures it! Only it brings me back to suffering through gym class in third grade, contemplating the cruel and jarring pointlessness of having to do jumping jacks. Since then I have earned that jumping strengthens young bones – though perhaps running does, too?

  6. hairball_of_hope says:

    re: Rolling Stone article “…I have to man up…” said she. Hmmm, I know that is supposed to be gender-inclusive, but it just seems like an off-tune note from a powerful dyke who uses language like music. Any ideas from the edamame gallery for a female-centric substitute? (No peanuts for this crowd of galleristas!)

    On a slightly related note, AB’s observation that whining was a significant part of her persona reminded me of this morning’s broadcast of On Being. Krista Tippett interviewed trans professor Joy Levin, who remarked that her pre-trans persona was a variant of Descartes’ maxim – “I kvetch, therefore I am.”

    (… goes back to her sniffling self, “I sneeze, therefore I am.”)

  7. Kate L says:

    Minnie (#6) Yeah, and the nuns who taught me in grade school always told us kids that suffering made us spiritually better people. I think I must have attended Our Lady of Perpetual Hardship catholic school.

  8. Kate L says:

    hairball (#7) Hey, I resemble that remark (middle paragraph).

    Btw, for those of you who didn’t watch the television machine last night, the Colbert Report ended exactly as I always thought it would, with Stephen defeating death and becoming immortal, after which he rode away on a flying sleigh with his fellow immortals, Santa, Abraham Lincoln and Alex Trebek.

  9. Kate L says:

    Kate L. continues to wander the darkened halls of holiday cyberspace, with only the omnipresence of Mentor for company.

    The Pope’s recent apparent pronouncement about pets going to paradise reminds me of the time when my older sister got me to help her baptize the family dog and cat at the kitchen sink*. At the time, I wondered if the nuns who taught us at school would approve of what we were doing, but I see, now, that my sister was on solid theological footing.

    * – No animals were harmed during this baptism. Catholics do not practice whole-body immersion, but simply make the sign of the cross on the subject’s forehead with a handful of the water (usually from a baptismal font).

  10. Lauren says:

    O was too late to the Venice post to write this — is it wrong to post this here? I don’t really understand commenting etiquette. Anyhoo, now that you’ve been to Venice, you might enjoy reading Mary McCarthy’s Venice Observed. Probably you already know about it, but just in case you don’t — it’s great!

  11. Kate L says:

    Lauren (#11) I don’t think that there are time limits in DTWOF blogspace. It is a place beyond mere mortal concepts of time and space. Btw, Vermont now has a governor.

  12. Kate L says:

    Golly (as we say on the High Plains), I hate to monopolize the DTWOF blog space, but something just came across the internet machine news wires that I think my fellow DTWOF blog space denizens will be in interested in knowing. One of the great losses to the humanities from the destruction of the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt was the loss of many of the poems of the ancient Greek poet, Sappho of Lesbos. Only a few of her poems survived the fire, but the number known to survive to the present day has just increased!
    http://www.livescience.com/49543-sappho-new-poems-discovery.html
    One poem is about unrequited love. Another is about the accomplishments of her brother, a gifted athlete.
    This discovery is at least as monumental as undiscovered Shakespeare plays turning up (anybody know where a copy of The Duke of Denmark is?), or lost episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (I wish).

  13. shadocat says:

    Kate-I’ve been waiting a long time for some new comments, so I was happy to see yours! Cool to read about the newly discovered Sappho poems—wonder if we’re creating anything equal to them today. Also hoping we’re not going to get hit by the big asteroid tomorrow—okay, I’m sure we’re not, right?

  14. Kate L says:

    Nope, it will be so far out that you’ll need binoculars to even see it. The ATWOF (Asteroid To Watch Out For) is the one known as Apophis. At an estimated 1,000 ft. wide, it could do regional damage and it’s on an orbit that brings it near Earth every seven years. However, the first chance of Apophis striking Earth is on Friday, April 13th, 2029 (a 1 in 40,000 chance, but it will be closer than geosynchronous communications satellites, and will be visible to the naked eye). However, that close approach will determine if Apophis has any real chance of striking Earth during its next orbit on Easter Sunday, 2036.

  15. Kate L says:

    … the odds are it won’t hit in 2036, either. We probably won’t see a really major impact for a long, long time (not in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of our remote descendents). On the other hand, smaller impacts that burst apart in the upper atmosphere (like Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908 or Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013) happen about once every century.

  16. Kate L says:

    As shadocat (#14) was saying, asteroid 2004 (year of its discovery) BL86 flew past Earth last night. At 745,000 miles (1.2 million km), it was too far away to be a threat, but it was close enough to get a radar return. Turns out 2004 BL86 is about as big as Apophis (1,000 ft. or 325 m long) and it has a moon that’s 230 feet or 70 m long! Back in the 80’s, my brother the astronomer told me that his study of light curve intensity from asteroids suggested that some of them had moons. He was right!