From the course: Creating Cinemagraphs and Plotagraphs

Core features of a plotagraph image

From the course: Creating Cinemagraphs and Plotagraphs

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Core features of a plotagraph image

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- A plotagraph is a more recent development in the cinemagraph movement and it is a file format invented by the folks over at Plotagraph Pro, named after its creator Troy Plota. A plotagraph typically starts as a photograph. Troy was a professional photographer and, for years, he created a lot of dynamic advertisements for his clients. He showed a lot of work for magazines and billboards and he wanted to create interesting, engaging content that brought his photos to life. This means that different type of content can be used. I've used plotagraphs to animate historical photos, things where no video was available. And a lot of artists are using it to animate their paintings or other types of content. A cinemagraph typically relies upon video and you take a freeze-frame of the video and erase away, or mask, to reveal parts of motion. However, a plotagraph starts with a static image. But, using things like particle systems, you can animate parts of the photo, putting water or clouds into motion, making fire appear to boil and smoke, all sorts of great things that add different types of motion. Now the different art forms are, of course, beneficial, depending upon where you start. But the plotagraph movement is really about trying to broaden the reach here. Rather than saying, if you want dynamic content, you have to start with video, now you can turn to things like advertisements and movie posters. You can find other content that you can animate and actually bring to life in new and interesting ways. Now, with plotagraph, it is a service that is available a few different ways. We're going to talk about it later. Now many folks using the higher-end professional service will pay a bit of money, just like you'll see with Cinemagraph Pro from Flixel. These are platforms that are designed for professional users. But both have other alternatives that are less expensive and we're going to explore these techniques, of course, using Adobe tools as well. All right, now that you understand the two major delivery formats, let's talk a little bit about the movement itself and where the creativity is going.

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