I must have been blind when I took this photo at the recent Apple Store Markville opening (slideshow). I didn’t notice @jimgroom doing a dance-webcast (a popular Apple Store pastime for teens at one time) off to the side until I got home and developed my memory card.
“Jim Groom at the Apple Store” animated GIF by aforgrave
You can clearly see the MacBook open on the counter in front of him, and Jim dancing in glorious ds106 abandon.
Shared in response to @iamTalkyTina‘s August 2013 Animated GIF Challenge #2: based on @johnjohnston‘s Animated GIF Assignment 1001: Dancing Jim All Over the World.
Such a fun guy! Go, Jim, go!
—————————-
Jim Groom, Upgraded
(August 3rd)
Well. So this morning’s Twitter brought a little snippet of information that adds a nice feature to projects like this. John Johnston (@johnjohnston, on Twitter) (over the sea) has a technique of attaching an audio file to his animated GIFs that he documented this morning in response to this dancing Jim Groom assignment. And given that Christina commented that Jim was dancing to music that only he could hear, it seems only fitting that I add the music that Jim must certainly have been listening to as an experiment in applying John’s technique.
While I was at it, I edited the Photoshop file in two ways to produce a GIF upgrade to my original from yesterday
- I used the eraser tool to remove some of the residual black outline that existed around Jim in the template GIF — it was making Jim look a little bit pixel-ly and unnatural, stopping him from completely fitting into the resolution of the photo.
- I stepped up the speed of Jim’s dancing by decreasing the frame interval — but I also introduced a couple of hiccup’s into his movement, to make it seem a bit more manic.
As a result, here is the newly modified GIF, complete with click-on-the-GIF code to start and stop Jim’s dancing music.
“Jim Groom at the Apple Store (upgraded)” animated GIF by aforgrave (click GIF for music)
The original MIDI file, “She’s a Maniac” was sourced from MIDI Files S-Z.
Jim is celebrating an amazing, untidy gif he has produced on the MacBook, in front of the noses of the blue-shirted arbiters of taste. His ninja skills render him invisible.
John — I just tried your adding-music-to-GIF technique, and it works wonderfully! Look at Jim go now! Amazing!
And he’s dancing to music only he can hear. Or else the blue-shirted boring-ies think the music is too uncool. I bet the guy next to Jim is dancing in his head because who can resist the power of the dancing Groom?
There we go, Christina! Now we can hear the music that Jim is listening to. Just click on the GIF (the second one) and the manic song “She’s a Maniac” will accompany Jim’s manic dance moves. Ha!
An excellent upgrade. Now he’s really a maniac, for sure. The hiccups are just icing on the cake. Such great work, and thanks for posting how to add the music to the GIF!