Chromo Valdez: Portrait of a Gif Artist
I just posted some of the work of Chromo Valdez to Cross Connect and in my discussion for the bio they said some interesting things that I want to share. (Chromo Valdez is not this person’s real name and they prefer to remain anonymous).
As I post the work of more artists I am seeing emerging the profile of a gif artist. By that I mean, they don’t do it for money but because they love the form and feel compelled to work in it.
Chromo Valdez has never been to art school, delivers household appliances for a living and travels around the world as a musician. My first contact with Chromo Valdez was when they were in Italy playing a concert. The following is from our discussion.
Why do you make gifs? Why do you make glitch gifs?
I love the repetition and the idea of miniature, moving artworks. Sometime in 2012 I saw a Buzzfeed article talking about glitch and datamoshing art. In that article they featured gifs from the Tumblr site http://glitchgifs.tumblr.com/ and I became instantly fascinated! I decided then and there that “I want to do this”.
What tools do you use?
In the beginning I started editing the image text in Text Editor and then assembling the frames in an online gif maker. Along the way I experimented with simple ways to alter / destroy images using the limited features of a photo editor. Eventually I discovered an app called Pixel Drifter [now discontinued] and that’s what I use exclusively these days.
Anything else you want to share?
To make glitch gifs is a meditative process for me. There’s a lot of clicking and changing of parameters in the app which sounds anything but soothing but it’s actually relaxing and, as I work frame by frame, I won’t see the end result until it’s animated which is still exciting to me!
Cool and different
