Ahh! So glad to hear it inspired you! Mission accomplished. :)
I saw your channel awhile back - you're doing such a great job with your videos (I think it was the plant collection one). They're very pretty and I need to watch more of them!
For GIFs... I use adobe suite. You render it in premiere pro then turn it into a gif in photoshop. That's just one of many ways though. I would recommend gyazo if you ever wanna make gifs out of things that are playing on your screen! It's really useful for stuff like that.