This is by no means a masterpiece, but it’s simple and straightforward. I’ll be honest, I feel like I understand how to make GIFs and had done so before this unit so I wasn’t as patient as I probably should have been. I’m probably trying to run before I’ve learned how to walk, #DS106 Gods please forgive me ?. I did learn however to make stop motion GIFs today which was pretty exciting. I look the latest image on GIFfight and was inspired by this fancy entry.
So I made this particular gif from scratch using Gimp. I’m doing it for the Double Gif Bonanza. It’s not exactly the assignment but I liked this picture more.
I stumbled into it and I think I can replicate the process. It’s not quite right but I’m not sure how to fix it yet. It’s a work in progress. I have this picture of Hafthor Bjornsson right after he broke a legendary strength record. By legendary I literally mean from Norse legend.
So I tried to add a mjolnir tattoo to his torso after he ripped open his shirt. He’s known as Thor, God of Thunder, very powerful etc. etc. I love tattoos as well so I thought it would be a fun way to learn this. And actually there’s some story telling element to it as well. I think I’m also inferring that he does indeed have the strength of Thor.
Fun it was not, but I think I did learn something. I grew and I will continue to learn and perfect my skills. But I have to say that for just stumbling around, I didn’t do too badly.
So here is the first one I made. Pretty annoying.
Here is my slightly more refined one:
What I would like to try to do is get the full mjolnir from the top one without the white background so it looks like a real tattoo. But as you can tell it lost some of its detail in the animation. The layers and images on their own look fine. It’s only when it gets animated does it look worse.
Moving on,
Here’s a link to my post on Gardner Campbell. I feel happy that he took the time to read my post and I’m glad to see that I’m on the right track. You can see my post here .
And the Tweet he sent me here:
@LarabieDan Oh my yes. Bingo. Thanks! #ds106
— Gardner Campbell (@GardnerCampbell) June 16, 2015
Also I did some daily creates which you can find here.
So things are coming along. It’s very challenging. Yesterday I could not, for love or money, get a gif made and this morning I was able to figure it out. I can see my brain making new neural pathways. It’s interesting but also very frustrating.
“Oh Sheep! This is gonna look bad.” – The directors cut.  (Created by Rochelle Lockridge  for the JCVD #GIFFight)
My latest round of creativity induced OCD started with a new GIFFight challenge from Michael B Smith (@mbransons)
New #GIFFIGHT!!! #JCVD style. http://t.co/j0c0ibFD0Q @ryanseslow @abelincolnjr @generalhowe @twoodwar @johnjohnston
— Michael B Smith (@mbransons) March 1, 2014
There’s also a DS106 Animated GIF Assignment 1190 for any of the GIFFight projects to post to.
After downloading 1.1GB of short .mov clips of Jean-Claude Van Damme from Funny or Die JCVD Make My Movie Challenge there was no turning back.  I was riding the dopamine wave.  There were some new learnings and tricky bits with the Adobe Elements software I was using that I’ve included below in the process portion of this post.
My first GIFs used downloaded images from the Tate Collectives which I had been introduced to through a previous GIFFight Challenge. Animate the crap out of 1840′s Tate Artworks as part of the Tate Museum 1840′s GIF Party. (There’s also a DS106 Animated GIF assignment 1248 for this too.)
Two of my Tate 1840′s GIF Party entries:
JCVD Erupts With Mt. Vesuvius
Vesuvius In Eruption from the Tate Collectives
JCVD To The Rescue. “I’ll protect you.”
Past and Present No. 1Â from the Tate Collectives
Wanting to celebrate John Johnston’s hitting 106 likes on his JJGifs Tumblr site I searched through his posts and found a GIF of sheep running past that I thought would work well. Due to Tumblr size restrictions I was forced to shorten the “directors cut” version you see at the top of this post.  I just thought having him shooting the place up then realizing it was just sheep passing by added another layer of absurdity. The shortened version below is still funny watching JCVD slink away with the sheep though.
“Oh Sheep! This is gonna look bad.” Shorter version due to Tumblr size restrictions
The GIFaChrome corporation recently posted that Colin’s new body guard, Jean-Claude Van Damme may need to tone down his enthusiasm somewhat. Â He’s going to scare everybody off…. not just the bad guys.
JCVD is the new bodyguard for Colin the Dog (@GIFaDog). The GIFaChrome mascot.
A crazed Jean-Claude Van Damme freaked out on Twitter. His overactive testosterone levels blinded him to the fact that DS106 doesn’t need protecting from @clhendricksbc.
Jean-Claude freaks out over @clhendricksbc Twitter thumb.
Remember the DS106 Headless ’13 Riff-a-GIF spontaneous collaboration Riffs Sprouting Up Overnight? Which started out as a doctored photo of my grandson “DJ at Stonehenge“, Glad Jean-Claude wasn’t in the picture back then “protecting us”.
Stonehenge under attack – “Run for your lives! I’ll cover you!”
I’m thinking it would be helpful if I were to create a screen cast tutorial for this process. Â Like I said above, it’s a little tricky and has taken a fair bit of effort on my part to learn how to do it. Future project……
Going one step further, so that I or others (or me 
) could use the JCVD transparent images for their projects I produced a GIF and accompanying layered PSD file.
Well, everybody was doing sparkle clothes for this GIFfight, so I decided to do sparkle heads.
“GIFfight Trek Transporter” animatedGIF by @iamTalkyTina
If you know Star Trek, then you know who the sparkle-heads are.
Plus, as one of my 2014 Non-Resolutions, I am not wasting time making GIFs work for Tumblr. MBS probably knows how he can post this to the GIFfight tumblr in a nice big size without me making it a small one.
Gif Fight means a page where you can find every two weeks an inspiration for an animated gif. The “fight” may mean that it is a challenge to compare yourself to other participants’ creations. Still, the challenge which was designed for the headless ds106 course of 2013 makes it difficult to think about a fight. I found this, two mannequins already peacefully side by side.
Only for me it seemed they have difficulties to get in touch. With my gif version I tried to help them with this.
I drew leaves on different layers which twine around the neighbouring arms of the mannequins.
Then I took an animated gif of a bunch of pink roses, which I found in the web.
One rose I copied to my tendril layers.
After this I animated the arms of the mannequins, the way that they finally get in touch. After the arms have gotten in touch, I added the animated bouquet as a result of their new relation, which may mean creating together is better than fighting.
For the appropriate assignment idea of the ds106 assignment bank you can click here.
Headless Over Heals In Love [Tumblr Link]
I’m joining the GIF FIght again. Â This time we were given a pair of stark white mannequins to work with. I like to give some time to thinking about my projects before I start them. I had a couple of ideas in mind that would use existing GIFs that I could riff off of like Alan Levine’s (@Cogdog) blue caterpillar. It didn’t work here, but I’m going to use it someday. I then tested out what it would take to move the arms to have them hold hands. Â It could be done, but with more work than I had time for. My daughter is getting married on Saturday and if I wanted to complete this DS106 Headless13 Week 2 AnimatedGIFAssignment1190 I needed to get it done now.
I then had the idea of giving this lovely headless couple pumping hearts. Â I tried my luck over at Microsoft Clip Art, but again nothing seemed to work. Â A Google image search on animated heart and GIF was fruitful and led me to a whole bunch of free heart GIFs at: Â http://www.picgifs.com/graphics/hearts/
Using Adobe Photoshop CS5
I opened the animated heart GIFs which show up with all of the layers intact.To complete the process I uploaded my completed GIF to my Tumblr account, wrote up this blog post, and posted to Twitter and our DS106 Google plus community.
Well, here we are. Week two.
Down With Dull Blog Post Titles! #ds106 means using every opportunity you have to be creative pic.twitter.com/jmpnyuFaqN
— ds106 is #4life (@ds106) September 3, 2013
All I am gonna say about this stuff I have seen about the gif fight and the “Down With Dull Blog Post Titles!” follows.
O BLOG! my blog! our fearful creation is done;
The site has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The first post is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady sidebar, the monitor grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of 404 errors
Where on the deck my Theme lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Blog! my blog! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Blog! Most beautiful blog!
This footer beneath your Welcome to the World
It is some dream that on the computer,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Blog does not answer, It’s frozen solid and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The site is anchor’d safe and sound, its creation closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
On the screen my theme lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
That was a slight revision of some Walt Whitman you know.
I have no clue what made me make the are below. I was going to add some lines about ds106 being “sexier” than the rest. But then I thought better.
I’m all about subtly in gifs lately. This one I call “Exercise in the clone tool” because that’s 99% of what I used here.
See if you can find all the animations 
THIS is the source picture for making a GIFFight! GIF. Good luck!
WELL! Have I every been busy! Not making GIFs (as I guess you may have figured), but living my life again, free and out of that silly box and away from that @Puppetmaster106 and his minion @AneuwegCentSix. More on that tomorrow.
In the meantime, another #GIFFight! is upon us! So today’s challenge is to respond to the latest image on the GIFFight tumbler site, 80s Toy Smackdown, which will be based on the prompt image shown to the left: #ds106 entries in response to the GIFFight! prompts fall into the Animated GIF Assignment 1190, “GIF Fight!”Â
Well, you might ask yourself, “What in the name of all that is GIF-able am I to do with that?”
Well, that is your challenge.
Here is what I made out of it. What will you do?
“Superman Puppet Theatre” animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina
Well, I had to do the following things.
Plus, because Tumblr only works with GIFs that are a maximum of 500 pixels wide, I made a 500 pixel version that is (so far fighting with Tumblr to get posted) so that it will show correctly in the GIF Fight! tumblr page. Maybe this link to the 500 pixel version will work.
So now it is time for you to enter the GIF Fight! Remember it is NOT a hurting fight. It is a nice fight for Friends with fun and GIFs. Make some good Art GIFs bub for your internal GIF Chi. Keep your GIF Chi strong!
Well, bye!
My giffify Darth Vader: attempt 2. I’m calling it “Thus spake, Vaderthustra” gif. Vader only talks to himself. My first attempt, I called “Vader’s Flipped Classroom”, but now it gets more serious when a shaft of light from the stars serves up his own talking head.
