GIFfing The General

I quite enjoyed the episode entitled “The General.” And given that I’ve been seriously delinquent in keeping up with my GIFfing, I’ve decided to remedy the situation by making a few.

“Speed Learning,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

“Escape, or Bust,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

I all but leapt into my computer screen as soon as I saw the toy bank “pass collector” in this episode. These little mechanical toys were such a fun thing when I was a kid, and there’s no way I could pass up the opportunity to capture this in digital form. Riding the Subway would have been so much more fun if the TTC had these when I was going to school.

“Proceed to Pass,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

Henchmen back in the sixties were oh so gullible. I mean, who in their right mind — and on guard duty — is going to walk blindly down a hallway towards a suspicious beckoning hand?   This guy, apparently.

“Come here, Buddy,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

So, I guess the Henchman won’t Be Seeing Him.

“He Wasn’t Seeing Him …” animated GIF by @aforgrave

Poor Number Six. Guys in overalls with white constructions helmets and white boots and gloves seem to have been a thing back in the sixties. The henchmen in James Bond, Matt Helm, and Godzilla all had them…

“Pool Old Chap,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

The ammeter attached to The General wound up displaying some bizarre units by the time I was finished. Again, another GIF-eye-tis compulsion. In the drive to make this GIF work as dramatically as possible, I eventually crafted some extra settings and introduced the final twitch in the needle before she blows … I also added a drop shadow to the needle in photoshop to hopefully achieve increased realism.

“Danger ds106,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

Because of the number of frames in the Explosion of the General GIF, I chose to decrease the file size by reducing it to 32 colours and decreasing the final dimensions. I scaled the image size up a bit in WordPress to compensate. As I look at it now in the browser (which tends to display the timings more quickly than Photoshop does) I might go back and adjust some of the frame delays — but I have other GIFs to do first. 

“Explosion of The General,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

OOPS! Sorry — I’m not yet done with this post, but accidentally pushed the Publish button. More GIFs and commentary on the episode to follow.