Ask Z S

ZS, if you were in a film, who would play you? (Sorry, I always ask this, but it is a question I like.)

M in Oxford

Hoos,

T is right, there's a silent "R" in there too. I used to post under my full name here when I just started out a few years ago. But then I realized I wanted to talk about fartz and stuff, so I made it a bit more anonymous. Also, I kind of like how Z and S are mirror images of each other. 2ZS5

Hurting,

I know about them, but I haven't listened to them! Do you have a specific album/song/youtube I could start with?

Tehresa,

You know about Karl Malone, don't you? You can just tell me - do you know about me and Karl Malone?
Please c+p and then underline: Yes or No

Roxy,
yeah I know I took forever. I saw this thread last night, but it was Valentine's Day and that first question was a real humdinger, and I couldn't find a way to say to my gf "I'm sorry, but I have to go type out a short history of my childhood really quick"!

ZS,

where did you learn the trade of gif animation? will you give us your secrets?

lol,
kevin

Caek,

Oh man...I think Roxy probably has an answer for this. She would say Michael Cera, but I guess he's a big star now so that kind of feels like saying "yeah, Sylvester Stallone would play me". Actually, shit, Frank Stallone would play me!

Kevin,

I can definitely tell you where it started from, at least. I was hanging out with a good friend of mine when I lived in Chicago. He's a graphic designer and general photoshop whiz. He nonchalantly grabbed my computer and created this in just 2 minutes or so:

http://i40.tinypic.com/1198qqt.jpg

I watched him as he did it, and he made it look so easy. I always thought Photoshop stuff was something I couldn't even attempt without some training, but I realized that a lot of it just selecting stuff with a lasso with different feather settings, moving stuff around, and blending edges together.

I think the trickiest part of animations is to make them small enough. I try to impose a 250K limit on everything that I do, which means that there is usually some combination of reducing the number of total layers/frames and the image size. I suppose that this restraint is really stupid, actually, because bandwidth and storage are always increasing. I mean, in 10 years, the 250K limit I had will be like a 5 1/4" floppy disk.

I mean, as outdated as having to use a 5 1/4" floppy disk.

zs,

i am not sure what you are insinuating. i really just wanna know your thoughts on karl malone?

http://i38.tinypic.com/21x6jd.jpg

I think Karl Malone is on some n/l shit!

no logo

lol karl

zs:

http://rs477.rapidshare.com/files/145434297/zs_-_bump.mp3

Hurting:

wow, that is not at all what I was expecting, but in a good way!

I knew this would be great.

Yeah. It's actually less rawkus than some of their other stuff, but it's my favorite of what I've heard.

LOL I spelled it rawkus like the soundbombing label.

I MEANT "ASK ZS"

I MEANT "YEAH IT IS NOT WHAT YOU WERE EXPECTING BUT IN A GOOD WAY"

TO ZS, i.e. XPOST

LET'S NOT FIGHT LOL

OK :)

Hurting, that song definitely whet my whistle. I'll be listening to them more in the coming week.

http://i39.tinypic.com/10s674n.gif

"And, finally, the votes are in and Entertainment Weekly has chosen its Funniest Man Alive. And who is the Funniest Man Alive? You guessed it -- Frank Stallone!"

http://i39.tinypic.com/xbxu79.jpg

Dear Z S,

What is your favorite meal?

Signed,
Roxy

Dear Z S,

With thanks,

(caek, I think whatever you enclosed in that envelope got lost in the mail)

Z S,

What are your opinions on this cake?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/primrosehill/Michelle_D.jpg

Sincerely,
Roxy
[encl.]

That was no envelope. It was a with compliments slip.

Roxy,

Any answer I can give you has to be prefaced with my belief that my tastebuds may be totally, irreversibly broken. I don't know how it happened, but there you go. I feel like I only experience the 45th-55th percentile of taste satisfaction. Nothing really tastes that bad, but very there are very few meals that I actually get excited about eating, either.

That said, and maybe this is a boring answer, but my favorite meal is definitely a sushi feast, with eel, salmon and shrimp rolls, vegetable tempura, Hot and Sour soup, a few individual Tamago, and if I'm feeling really saucy, some sashimi. That is one of the few meals that gets me to the 80th percentile.

Caek,

I'm going to take your bodyless message as a suggestion that I should fill the space with a weird anecdote that relates to you.

Two nights ago I nearly wrote you an ILX mail asking you for help with forming an equation for a dynamic model I'm working on. I had a variable that kept track of annual wind energy electricity generation additions. I wanted to have it so that it had a rough S shape, so that there were steadily rising additions for the next 20-30 years, and then a gradual leveling off at some point. (it's a bit more complicated than that, but that sums it up.) You're one of ILX's resident math/physics experts, so I thought you'd be a good person to ask. But then I had second thoughts, because I realized it's really lame to receive what amounts to "help with homework" in an email from a relative stranger. So I made an appointment with one of my professors instead. So little do you know, but you dodged a "homework help" bullet the other night.

Roxy,

I need to know what's going on underneath the table. Dude/cake has this look on his face like "I'm not wearing any pants". I also wonder how long this cake is going to last without rotting, if it stays unrefrigerated.

[encl: the information you requested]

Z S,

Nothing is going on beneath the table. This cake has been printed with a photograph of this young man's face.

Yours,
Roxy

No way! That's awesome. I even considered that maybe the dude wasn't real, but it looks too good! I say, then, that this is one of the greatest cakes of all time.

They should've left the cake blank and projected on it that guy's face moving his lips from an old film projecter in the next room.

I promise not to fill this thread with this sort of nonsense, but

http://www.barrylutz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/blubblub.gif

Dang
http://www.barrylutz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/blubblub.gif

omgomgomg

good times!

p.s. arctan(x) might have worked after some shifting around
http://www.mapleprimes.com/files/8001_asymptote%202%20arctan(x).jpg

Aw, thanks anyway caek, that would have worked too, actually.

how awesome would it be if Z S turned out to be Zadie Smith?

HE'S A SHE!!!

Glancing through that thread, some people would think it was awesome, and others would suggest ban me off ILX!

it's tru isn't it

Caek,

A second opinion:

http://storage.myheritagefiles.com/R/storage/site1/files/77/03/62/770362_1294302486b994k5674p21.JPG

interesting if true

such an awesomely lollable site in its consistently off-tm-ness

Dear ZS,
Could you find an appropriate picture of noted jazz musician Victor Wooten (GIS should yield easy results), modify it so that he appears to be wearing ICP makeup and then post the finished product both here and on:
DOES ANYONE IN THIS BITCH LIKE ICP
to thus create a Victor Woot Wooten Juggalo.

I will totally understand if this is too much work for too little lolz, but it's been bothering me for awhile now. Don't know why.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/ZachRScott/wootenicped.jpg

You are a special person.

http://i.imgur.com/v8xZX.jpg

m bison, i bet we would!

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1gzuayKlO1qbvr04o1_500.gif

seems like a chill wave

. . .

rad! i gotta figure out how to do that..

it all starts when a butterfly flaps its wings just once

hey zs i think its sort of unnecessary how all of ilx feels they must inform you of every other gif site but i really want to make sure you're aware of this gif site:

http://fluxmachine.tumblr.com/

http://i.imgur.com/Q5YKq.gif

http://i.imgur.com/AhO6C.gif

whoa, that second one is amazing!

Z S,

Is it bad and wrong to pronounce "gif" with a hard g? Do you have strong feelings on the matter?

Respectfully,
RVW

Z S has gone on th erecord regarding this!!

http://www.marketplace.org/2014/02/19/business/conference-calls-best-and-worst

The first CD I bought was the Village People's Greatest Hits

nice recovery

oops, just saw this!

i kind of tried to play up my preference for the hard G on that segment for entertainment value, but my true answer is that the only strong feeling i have is that i get a little annoyed with people who strong feelings on it! not world-ending annoyed or anything, but every once in a while you'll run into someone who is very passionate about it one way or the other and things get very awkward.

search is not letting me or i cant remember the rt keywords to bring up for your animate a photo thread...

lets say i need/want a gif of my face slowly morphing back and forth w a baby white tiger, i trust if i give u the two images this is w/in your purview? lmk :)

search is not letting me or i cant remember the rt keywords to bring up for your animate a photo thread...
"drunkenly animate" usually works, although i too have been having trouble with certain searches recently!

lets say i need/want a gif of my face slowly morphing back and forth w a baby white tiger, i trust if i give u the two images this is w/in your purview? lmk :)

yeah i could give it a shot! a lot of it depends on the source material and how similar they look. if things don't line-up very well sometimes it can be a hard to do and takes a lot of time to fix. but yeah, go ahead and post 'em! i'm headed out for an evening of fun and excitement but can look at it tonight or tomorrow morning.

word thx ! yea no rush, i will post.. they sorta match up which is why it'd even been suggested to me

http://i67.tinypic.com/16hm0ya.jpg

http://i68.tinypic.com/jgkxhf.jpg

super big sry

i am on it

things went a little haywire but
http://68.media.tumblr.com/27653951644281a328444ae44eb2b0f9/tumblr_odu9w9KhJ31qdmmiqo1_500.gif

http://67.media.tumblr.com/75718b7b42a95475a1944daacb4930c9/tumblr_odu9w9KhJ31qdmmiqo2_r1_500.gif

http://67.media.tumblr.com/82fb1a9cd85f6e2e24e183a018eeaaa7/tumblr_odu9w9KhJ31qdmmiqo3_r1_500.gif

agh, i'm sorry. i just read your original request and realized what i was supposed to do. sorry, trivia night beers, i have ruined everything! hold on a sec!

soberer version

http://i.imgur.com/DDjvPYt.gif

haha these are great, cheers

fantastic stuff!

can this type of animation skill be learned or is it rly rly difficult? if not too difficult can you recommend a website or some software to get me started?

Be great if there was some way of using animated gifs on your passport or driver's licence.

niels, i used the animation timeline feature of photoshop, exclusively, for make gifs for the first 6 years or so. mostly just using still images and playing around with them (like in the ones for j crunch above). over the last 2-3 years, though, i've been using more and more video clips, manipulating them in final cut pro and sometimes dumping them back into photoshop for finetuning. i don't think learning how to do it is really difficult, but it just takes tons of practice. i think most people could probably make much better gifs than i can if they put the same amount of hours into as i have. most people like to go outside and have friends and stuff, though, so that's usually a dealbreaker for practice time

i don't really have any good recommendations for tutorials, sorry! i'm mostly self-taught, to my detriment because there are a lot of extremely basic things you can do in photoshop that i'm completely clueless about. i also don't think too many gifmakers use photoshop as their primary software - even within the adobe suite, after effects is much more frequently used, i think.

the biggest breakthrough for me, early on, was learning how to manipulate the position and opacity of layers within the photoshop animation timeline, so that for each frame you can make adjustments to where each layer is and how transparent they are. knowing how to do that alone is like half the battle. i could have sworn a few years ago i posted a how to make an animated gif tutorial thread, but i can't manage to find it. regardless, i did a really bad job with it and made it too complicated, so it probably wouldn't be much use anyway!

Cool, thanks!

I never really advanced from MS Paint and always thought Photoshop looked really really difficult... but hey, if I can use it to make gifs like that... maybe I'll give it a go!

?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw7ky2EWgAAo6HG.jpg:large

you know sometimes i just can't TAKE donna's shit

she is a major league ass; good4u

Z S
Zi St
Zig Sta
Zigg Star
Ziggy Stard
Ziggy Stardu
Ziggy Stardus
Ziggy Stardust

i was always jealous of my partner's initials. they're pleasing. but Z S, and Ziggy Stardust? this is making me feel great! I thought 25 and ZS was decent, but having this Bowie connection is something else

plus, the song five years? and my lifelong obsession with remembering things in five year increments (weird story)? that can't be a coincidence.

Omg i knew Bowie wasn't dead and was KM all along

Chemtrails brought him back

not only that, but the cover is just a (misleading) still from a video, which has been newly uncovered:

https://i.imgur.com/SoDYFKn.gif