The hipster craze just reached a whole new level, with a colourful crank-wind camera capable of snapping animated GIFs. It's called Otto.

Otto is currently a project on crowdfunding website Kickstarter. It just launched yesterday and has already reached a third of its $60,000 goal. That's likely because it eliminates all the software and hardware complexities of making a GIF and streamlines everything into a single dedicated camera with a Raspberry Pi microcomputer and retro-looking case.

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Although it looks like an old disposable camera of sorts, it doesn't have a typical shutter button. It has a little crank handle that you turn to record or keep still to pause. When finished, turn the crank back a notch to stop recording. All of your clips will sync to Otto's app in an animated GIF format. The app will also let you apply dozens of "interactive modes" aka filters and overlays. There's one called Shades that actually puts sunglasses on your face.

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As for the technical side of things, the team behind Otto listed the following specs: "Image capture is done though an f/2.0 35mm equivalent optical glass lens onto an Omnivision OV5647 5 megapixel 1/4-inch 1.4µm backside illuminated pixel CMOS sensor, capable of images up to 2592x1944px, HD video up to 1080p30 / 720p60, and VGA 640x480 at 90 frames per second."

The camera is hackable too, both in terms of hardware and software. In fact, there's an SDK available and a Micro USB port. Watch the Kickstarter video below for more information, or you can check out the gallery below for a closer look. Oh, and if you want to be one of the first to get your hands on Otto, you'll have to pledge $199. That price isn't too cool, but the camera certainly looks like it is.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/meet-otto-the-hackable-gif-camera/widget/video.html