I made an animated smiley in honor of our awesome DU Mods:

[Richard Steele]

Not the greatest work of art, I admit...but I just learned
how to make animated .gifs YESTERDAY, so I'm pretty happy
with it overall. And I'm already thinking of ways to improve
it

Just thought I'd share.

Richard

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. I like it!

[BrotherBuzz]

2. So it's true, the Mods do have a hot tub!

Cool beans.

[Fran Kubelik]

3. awesome!

Love it!

[KitchenWitch]

4. I love it!

[grannylib]

5. Very nice! I like it a lot!

[TZ]

6. Hi Richard

Very nice...hope you doing okay..

[Richard Steele]

12. Yeah, I'm doing OK.

I took a break from my other projects for a few days,
and have just been puttering around with stuff like this.

It's very therapeutic.

Richard

[Elidor]

7. Freaking awesome

I think you've found your true calling. K&R.

[uppityperson]

8. very good, thank you for the laugh. I sure needed it. Good smiley

[Guava Jelly]

9. If you could have them sliding in to a Toilet.

That would perfectly describe GD:p this season.
And It would be funny as hell
Oh and Great Job!

[Greyskye]

10. Dude!

Nice!

[Deja Q]

11. Nice!

But I second that toilet motion!

[maddezmom]

13. cool and at the end of the pole

is the mod tub, right?

[Richard Steele]

15. That's the general idea.

I need to add some water splashes as he jumps out
to make it clearer that it's a tub, I think...
That's one of the changes I'm considering for the next version.

[maddezmom]

19. looks good as is but if you can figure out the splash thingy

it would be even better.

[Richard Steele]

20. I also want to...

...make it look like he grabs the fire helmet off of a rack or something,
instead of just having it magically appear as he slides down the pole.

And probably have them sitting quietly for a second at the beginning,
then have some sort of alarm go off to spur our hero into action.

[ScreamingMeemie]

22. And little bottles of beer. Don't foget the beer.

The mods are horrible when it comes to drinking on the job. They need to.

[Richard Steele]

25. Oh, definitely! How did I forget the beer?

That's just gotta be in version 1.1!

[DS1]

14. Very nice

[SeattleGirl]

16. That is so cool!

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. That made me laugh out loud...

The hot tub sure has gotten a lot nicer.

[Kerrytravelers]

18. Dude, that is freakin' hysterical. Job well done!

[Starbucks Anarchist]

21. Nice!

You really learned how to do this yesterday? That's really good for a first try.

[Richard Steele]

24. Well, it's actually my fourth try...

The first one didn't work; #2 and #3 were successful but much simpler:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[greatauntoftriplets]

23. Thank you, Dick.

It's always nice to be appreciated.

[Call Me Wesley]

26. Great job!

Thank you!

[Puglover]

27. At the risk of sounding gushy.

That is adorable. Thanks Dick.

[Radio_Lady]

28. Good job! Where did you learn how to do this?

I'm stuck at a totally amateur level -- have been thinking about going back to a college to learn HTML and animation techniques.

But, then, again, I've overscheduled even now!

Drat!

Cordially,

Radio Lady in Oregon

[Richard Steele]

30. I learned it from the internets: googled "animated gif + tutorial"....

...and a whole bunch of instructional web pages popped up.

The real surprise was learning that the copy of PhotoShop
I've been using for years was already set up to make these
things- there's a separate "gif animation" program called
ImageReady that's built into it. Imagine my surprise!
(I should really find the manual and read it sometime- who
knows what else might be in there?)

It doesn't work quite the same as frame-by-frame film animation,
but it's similar, and easy to learn. The Tutorial I used
was barely a page long, not counting the pictures, and I
managed to produce a successful "fistbump" smiley on my
second try:

[Radio_Lady]

31. You do good work, dicksteele. Nice fistbump --

Hey, are you the Man of Steele?

Cordially,

Radio Lady in Oregon

[applegrove]

29. It is cute.