These gifs were created as an exercise in expressing themes of gentrification to prepare me for my upcoming book project. The gifs were done in three parts, the first gifs, the second and third gifs, and the fourth and fifth gifs, with a critique occurring between each part.
My first gif was a comparison between gentrified areas of Austin and Houston, most noticeably shown by the smaller, older, buildings and homes in front of the skyline of their respective cities as a means to show that gentrification is not an isolated event. At the time of making the gif I had become particularly enamored by kinetic type, and used this project to experiment with it, this yielding the emphasis on text that the following gifs lack.
The second gif was a little bit more experimental. I drew the compass idea from the first gif to expand on the previous idea, turning it from “gentrification is not isolated,” to “Everywhere you turn, there is gentrification,” as a statement to say that gentrification needs to paid attention to for what it is, the displacement of local people, rather than embraced for the growth that it brings at the expense of others. The two images in the gif are again, images of Austin and Houston. I found this gif the most difficult of all of them to create, as the size difference between the images and having to rotate them at the same rate as the compass’ needle proved to be somewhat time consuming in order to align the images in a way that wouldn’t create blank spaces in the composition. I had to remake this gif to the best of my ability because I was unable to locate the original, and I think that the new gif shows a notable improvement in my after effects skills.
The third gif was the trickiest in terms of execution. I wanted to make a statement about smaller homes being replaced by larger, more expensive ones, but time constraints as a result of spending too much time on detailing the homes, and complications trying to morph one home into the other in After Effects forced me to be more economical with my animation and the ideas. Had I redone this animation, I would have simplified the homes to make them easier to morph, and perhaps added more homes to convey how entire communities can be destroyed by gentrification.
The fourth and fifth gifs are a point where I stopped trying to make intricate gifs, having learned from my previous experience, and began to focus more on executing a simple yet effective message. I put restraints on myself, only using black and white and simple shapes to create these gifs, and I found that these limitations helped me create what I, and my classmates as evidenced from the critique believe are my two most successful gifs of this project. The fourth gif is a statement about how gentrification closes in on families, ones who often do not have the means to move anywhere else and remain trapped in the middle of the rising property taxes and destruction of their community, while the fifth gif is about how entire communities are brought down by the influx of new businesses that encroach upon the already developed community.