MONTREAL — Marie-Chantal ("KinkyMarie"), an erotic GIF-maker whose NSFW Tumblr content landed her full-time work with adult film studios like Girlsway.com, Blacked.com and Tushy.com, was interviewed by Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals on the Mic Network.
GIF images are often used to repeat video clips of 2-4 seconds in length over and over. They populate the comments sections of mainstream news articles and fill entire Tumblr pages, given their small file size and the comedic value of repeating human foibles nonstop.
Everything from clumsy stumbles to classic movie scenes can be captured in the uniquely impactful graphics interchange format. Even popular social media platforms like Vine, Snapchat and Instagram encourage constant video clip sharing.
The clip phenomenon has impacted adult entertainment sites as well, where users are sometimes offered the ability to create custom clips that can be shared with other members. Similarly, porn-related GIFs have become so ubiquitous that TechCrunch reported more than 11 percent of Tumblr's GIF-heavy accounts in 2013 focused on sex content.
After taking a multimedia production course, KinkyMarie learned the basics of programs like After Effects and Photoshop.
"I started making [porn] GIFs as a way of sharing moments I liked from the scenes I was watching," KinkyMarie told Mic. "Tumblr being one of the best place to find porn GIFs, I started my first blog on it."
She soon gained 50,000 followers and an expanding fanbase eager to share her content.
"With my GIFs circulating, I caught the attention of a few porn companies that liked what I was doing and wanted more of it," she said.
Now, she's a full-time "giffer" for adult film studios like Girlsway and Blacked. KinkyMarie says she can summarize an entire porn scene with about 10 GIFs.
"For me, the 'how they got to fucking' is more important than the actual fucking," she explained. "I try to always include moments that are out of the ordinary or shot from an angle that you don't see often."
One of her most popular GIFs is a POV shot of Jelena Jensen sitting on Adriana Chechik's face in Girlsway's lesbian horror story movie "The Turning: Part Three."
"If [GIFs] are good, they can captivate your attention for a while," said Greg Lansky, chief creative officer of Strike3 Holdings, which oversees Blacked and Tushy. "Next thing you know, you're watching the thing on loop. It's that sweet spot of a few seconds of something special."