Nice animated Gif work there!

Reinder · Post by **Reinder** » Sat Mar 30, 2002 8:23 am

... the only drawback being that at 700 kB it was a bit on the hefty side for slow dialups (and for Keenspace - you just cost them an arm and a leg:)).
I decided to try and optimise the graphic a little with the GIMP, only to fail spectacularly! 700 kB it was, and 700 kBK it was going to be. Then I looked in the title bar for the image window, and saw that the image was RGB! I didn't know RGB gifs were possible. How did you make that, and how did you get those web browsers to swallow it?

Fugli Troll · Post by **Fugli Troll** » Sat Mar 30, 2002 9:58 am

I didn't know RGB gifs were possible. How did you make that, and how did you get those web browsers to swallow it?

All computer monitor files are technically RGB... But I'm not sure entirely how it keeps the full data structure that you're lookng at other than to say the image is dithered to simulate a wider color palette than one normally associates with gifs (max 256 RGB colors).

Since I use a mac, I keep my original strips in pict format. When I use standard gif animation software to convert the orignal files, it gives the high contrast look. You've seen it before, with the choppy and sudden changes in color that look like a weather map. The file size is then closer to 400K. Instead, I made this gif using a software package called "GraphicConverter" (Sorry, it's shareware only for macs). I asked it to dither the result when it converted the images and placed them in the animated gif format, and it kept more of the original data structure than I expected, but made a 700K+ file.

The realy odd thing is that when I tried loading this already made gif into "GifBuilder" it wanted to convert it into the 400K size file, but the resulting image seemed to find the original image data and it looked like I had never dithered it in the first place. There is something about the file structure created by GraphicConverter that allows a great deal of the original data to remain intact. I wish I could tell you more.

Sorry about the file size... I wanted to do the multi frame image for a bit of a change. I try to keep the comic strip files around 100K or less, but I also want the clearest images possible since grainy images sort of destroy my intended "look." I'll try not to make a habbit of doing things so large.

As for keenspace, I'm running their advertising banners on all pages except my sidebar menu, and I hope the advertisements work for them. I do things like this to experiment a little with thie web comic genre in my own element, but in the long run I guess we all hope that by doing something a little different every now and again we'll draw a few more readers in. The more readers, the more advertising for Keenspace. Again, this was a one shot file... at least for now. Hey, it has 7 times the data that i normally generate for one panel... it was a bit work intensive there.

Thanx for the note. I'm glad that someone noticed.

Next strip is for April Fools Day, It's about 99K.

Reinder · Post by **Reinder** » Sun Mar 31, 2002 7:49 am

Well, gifs should be indexed. I can't save a gif in RGB mode with the software I use. But if browsers can handle it, then I don't see any problem.

As for the image size: Keenspot's Gav once did the math for us showing that one ad pays for about 70 Kb worth of HTML and images. He won't come knocking at your door demanding to get paid for the overage (indeed, all of Keenspace is insignificant compared to the bandwidth gobbled up by Keenspot), but don't make a habit of it:) On the other hand, as I said, the effect is very nice. Perhaps Flash would be a better choice for this kind of animation?

Fugli Troll · Post by **Fugli Troll** » Mon Apr 01, 2002 4:57 am

Unfortunately I don't have any flash capable development type software. It's a money issue, and I don't do it enough to make it worth the purchase.

I could make the claim that viewers come to look around and get more advertisements as they go from page to page... but I have a lot more graphics on those pages too, so I guess the arguement would get diluted in the extra band width elsewhere.

Sigh...

Reinder · Post by **Reinder** » Mon Apr 01, 2002 7:12 am

Well, don't let it worry you too much (that wasn't my intent, by the way). The Keen team consider Keenspace as a whole to be an insignificant part of their bandwidth consumption. I think as a matter of principle, we should optimise as much as we can, but if we still come out with the occasional big image, it's not such a big problem.

People who create 200Kb Jpegs of black and white graphics, though, need to be given a clue.

Fugli Troll · Post by **Fugli Troll** » Mon Apr 01, 2002 7:16 am

Thanx... I do try to keep the file sizes down... mostly to keep loading time as short as possible. It's a constant battle trying to balance size with clarity. I don't do gif much on this site because of the color limitations.