I was asked to put together a demonstration on how I did the analog selection effect in the first gif of my Final Girl set which mostly involved elaborate keyframe work and was like a living hell. This will be a much more simplified version for comprehensive ease, but still very wordy.
This tutorial is for intermediate/experienced level gifmakers who are already familiar with gif-making, keyframes, and layer masks, and this will serve more as a guide than anything.
If you are not comfortably experienced with the above, this may be difficult to follow because I won't be elaborating on every detail, but if you're still interested in recreating something like this regardless, I suggest checking out the below tutorials first:
Giffing 101: A Comprehensive Guide by redbelles
Clipping masks vs. layer masks by kal-kestis on usergif
Shapes and putting gifs inside them by nobie
Create your canvas, make your shapes and align them in the positions you want them to be in. Then get the gifs you plan on filling your shapes with created on standby.
Things to keep in mind before starting:
1. Many of you may have already learned through experience that photoshop has a tendency to create duplicate frames when you are working with multiple gifs on one canvas. It typically occurs when you don't have the same number of frames in all the gifs that you're combining onto your canvas, or rather, your clips are not perfectly aligned. OR when you are working with keyframes, but this time we will have an exception to that rule for what're doing so I won't be discussing the 0.03-interval rule here but if you're curious, it's fully explained this this tutorial by nik on usergif.
To be on the safe side, load in the same number of frames for all gifs. I usually just load in however many frames for each, and then I trim the clips on both ends to be the same, but they have to be exact. If even a single integer is out of place in timeline, you could still risk getting duplicate frames at the end.
2. When making an edit like this, you have to consider the amount of time you have from start to end to make the transitions and rationally plan them out in the space you have available. The more shapes you use, the more frames your gifs will need to be composed of.
3. If you're trying to get the same effect as in my Final Girl edit, where the black & white is default, and the color phases in and out, my goal here is for the color to be visible for at least 10-15 frames each gif, so with 3 gifs, I figured around 65-70 frames would be a good range.
For my first gif, I intentionally loaded in my gamble of 68 frames. For the other two, I loaded in all that was capped in the folders, moved the clips into the positions I wanted them to be in, put them in their designated layer masks, and then trimmed the clips on both sides to match the initial 68-frame clip.
❗️Remember that they have to be exactly aligned like this and all other trimmed off clips deleted before you start your key-framing❗️
Next you wanna make a group for each gif (highlighted in yellow for visibility) to put your coloring adjustments into with a layer mask for their designated shapes, which should look like this in your layers, and like the below in timeline once aligned with the rest of the clips.
I also just tucked the shape layers into the coloring groups to clean it up. But if you plan on creating frames for the gifs, I suggest you move those layers to the bottom and keep them until the end when they can be used for borders, but if not you can make new shapes later.
Assign a black & white gradient map to each gif with a clipping mask on top of your coloring groups.
Now lets say you're not pleased with the outcome of the black & white like for mine, it desperately needs brighting and contrast.
Add your brighting adjustments as needed, and give every adjustment its corresponding layer mask like below.
Next, duplicate both your gif layer and your coloring group, then select both duplicates, as well as your new b&w color adjustments and convert them into a smart object together.
You should now have your original gif + original coloring group, and one single black & white gif on top.
Do this with the rest of the gifs! If you want, you can also combine your original gif and coloring group into a smart object so you have one colored gif, and one black & white counterpart for each.
Now we add the key frames!
You're going to be adding opacity keyframes to your black and white gif layers only. Decide which gif you want the color reveal to start with, and what your reveal pattern is going to be.
I chose to reveal the color of my first gif 11 marks in, which means I need to add a key frame at the 10th mark as well. This is because we don't want a literal "fade-out" effect, we want the change to be immediate. The first key should be at 100% opacity, and the second at 0%. You shouldn't have to worry about duplicate frames upon conversion because all keyframes will only be 1 integer apart.
Once you've decided where your next reveal will start on your second gif of choice, repeat the process.
Then you have to add more 2 more key frames to the prior gif to transition it back into black & white. This needs to occur simultaneously as the next gif transitions into color. Where one starts, another ends, and where one ends, another starts, etc.
Follow this process until you have 2 pairs of keyframes on all your gifs (your final gif should only have 1 pair). Whether you want the transitions to be evenly spaced is your choice and I think it looks cleaner that way. For my final girl set, I was trying to simulate an analog effect similar to making a player selection in an old video game so they were placed methodically to be "jumpy". But play with the keyframe intervals between each gif to get them to look the way you want.
Your keyframes should look like this in the end for reference:
Circling back to adding borders, it's the same keyframe process, but on new shape layers on 0% fill +stroke to serve as the border (if you deleted your shapes earlier). Try adding an "outer glow" blending option to make the border more prominent. Then, make sure the opacity keyframes on the shapes align with the keyframes on the gifs.
If you have any further questions on something not elaborated enough on, my dms are open!
