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.
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.
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.
So, I guess the Henchman won’t Be Seeing Him.
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…
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.
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.
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.
I’m glad I stayed up late to see the finished post and additional GIFs! I think you really should leap into your computer screen; you could accomplish so much more wizardry from inside the System!
That last one, the explosion of The General, is really great. Within a GIF you have action, color, destruction, fear, anger, surprise, and (perhaps) death. Amazing!
The Danger Meter pulled me in. I need to go back and re-absofb the fuller episode. Sometimes things take on greater importance once you know where the episode winds up.
Well, it is always fun to see GIFs. Because GIFs are #4life. Plus, #ds106. And True Friends.
I like the hand puppet one. Where the man goes to see what it is. Silly.
Thank you, Tina.
It is nice that you dropped by to see the GIFs.