#zstraps

[bizarrelittlemew]

oooo for gif requests: olu being adorable on board the red flag (im thinking specifically about him tossing the scroll and his little kicky feets when he and zheng are kissing, but he is a literal angel so there are probably more)

thank you for the request 💗 angel Olu is here!

and here's a bonus:

[baggnshield]

💌👉👈

Hey JP hey ❤️ The number one thing I hear from friends who are fic writers is when you've left them a comment. I kid you not, they squeal and sob. it's a joyous occasion in general when writers hear from their favourite readers (which, to all my friends, is YOU), but they genuinely lose their mind 😭 (and I'm not active in discord servers so this is based off of first hand accounts ❤️)

And OHMYGOD the effort you put in into letting artists know how much you love them is just so so earnest and heartfelt. The quiet attention to detail, picking up on things we put there and kinda knew no one would notice but you do! Because you just care so so much and it's impossible to not feel that even through the screen, even oceans apart. It takes a truly special kind of person to make artists lose their goddamn mind and I feel like you're 100% the ride or die for art guy.

Fandom, any fandom, is generally a difficult space to navigate through when you are making stuff all the time or going through a slump. I think you make it easier, better somehow, by paying attention and knowing what the author/artist meant when they shared something, and articulating and understanding. I think you see artists through their work but also in their work, and beyond it 🥹 and that is just so irreplaceable.

Anytime I think of you, I go "yeah that's the person who keeps the fandom alive". I hope you never get bored of this show because I genuinely do not know what we would do without your presence 🥹

[xoxoemynn]

i just noticed your (new?) blog title and i am going to CRY 😭😭😭

Awwww. Come hang out with me in the blanket fort, friend!!

And yeah, I made it my blog title the day DJenks made his announcement. It was the first quote that came to mind, at least once the initial devastation passed. Max may have tried to kill us, but we still have SO much life left in us. This is just the dawn of a new era for us, and I know there's still plenty of greatness in store.

Long may we roam. 💕

[natjennie]

hey!! same name!!!!

i keep seeing your ofmd posts come up in the mutualcule and i always get excited bc i so rarely meet another jennie with an ie and also bc your url is perfect and i’m jealous of it 😁🤍

[bizarrelittlemew]

IDA do you have any advice or pointers for gif-making? yours are always so high quality with such great colors! i just started trying to make gifs and i feel like I'm constantly struggling with the export settings trying to make it look decent without being a gigantic file 😭

hiii and thank you so much 💗💗💗

I'm not really sure what to say since I've mostly learned by trial and error, so I guess the biggest piece of advice would be practice!!

I'm sure there are loads of gif tutorials out there and I may make my own one day but here are some tips I can give related to quality (I use Photoshop so these are probably specific to that):

The higher quality video you have to begin with, the easier it will be to make the gifs look great. I go for 1080p or higher (if possible)

When you import video frames to layers, be aware of duplicate frames as they will make the gif look choppy, it's a framerate issue - I use a very simple video editing software to cut out the scenes I want to gif, but if you have a more advanced one, you should be able to adjust the framerate so PS won't create duplicate frames. idk I'm not an expert on this exact thing I just delete the duplicates manually

For tumblr posts, the full width is 540px, half is 268px, go for these to avoid tumblr compressing the gifs

I usually set the frame time delay between 0.06-0.09 seconds since always prefer them a bit slower, which allows for seeing more detail. I check the speed by going into File -> Export -> Save for Web (Legacy) and clicking the Preview, because just playing the gif in PS will usually have lag

After wrangling frames, cropping and resizing etc., I convert to video timeline and convert all the frames to one Smart Object before sharpening and coloring. I use Smart Sharpen and Gaussian Blur filters with different settings, making copies of the smart layer and playing around with the opacity settings (I have this process recorded/automated as an action, but often have to adjust afterwards based on the clip). There are many different ways to do this and probably some tutorials too.

As for coloring, I don't use any automated processes, but just play around with adjustment and color fill layers. A gif with my usual sharpening and relatively simple coloring may have layers looking like this:

I think this is where the practice mostly comes in, because you'll discover new things with every gif you make. it's also the most fun part for me :) again, there are a lot of tutorials out there, and some scenes require more adjustments than others (especially dark scenes). really, Selective Color and Curves may be the most important adjustment layers (to me at least lmao)

As for file size, these are my usual export settings:

reducing the number of colors will always reduce the file size, but I'd usually rather trim the length (or split it into two gifs) or the image size (cropping a bit more off the height). Going for 40-80 frames is usually reasonable, and you can do more for very static gifs or smaller image sizes!

I hope some of this is useful, good luck and happy giffing 💗💗💗

[bizarrelittlemew]

Get attacked!! 💜✨🌈SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING🌈✨💜

[baggnshield]

i know you are hitting the limit on moot boards but can i put in a request for one when tumblr lets you 🥺🫶

Mutuals send me 🫶 to get a moodboard

[baggnshield]

sunny d and georg and a liiiijtle bit of hiii 💕

JP my beloved 😭 sending all of these right back to you!