#halbarryislife

Sorry for the wait, I had to write some Charles so I could have something good to give you :)

“No, I’m afraid not, but he did send you a mask to use.” The Sandman raised up a gas mask shaped to bare resemblance to the cartoon mouse.

He could soon see the silhouette of Richard Black or- as he better recognized him in this moment- The Shade. The moon shone against the black crystal ball at the end of his cane. His pupils held a reflective glow on his otherwise gray face.

Inside Charles' office Hootie sat perched up on his desk. She cooed gently into the darkness as grey knuckles ran gently through the feathers on her back. Others would not have seen the man petting her, but Charles could see him clearly.

Never a bother! I’m always happy to help when and where I can.

I briefly touched on all of this in my FAQ but I really, truly do live by these steps when I gif, so I feel it bears repeating here as well, and with a little more detail.

Always, always work with HD footage. 4K (2160p) isn’t necessary, but I would say that 1080p definitely is. I think you can get away with giffing 720p if you absolutely need to, but the bigger your gif, the more necessary it becomes to work with footage that’s both high quality and high definition. Screen recording is fine—it’s something I used to do myself, though I’ve since stepped away from it—but you get the very most out of any given footage by clipping videos directly from a download or through screencapping.

Be sure to size your gifs correctly. It’s not as noticeable on mobile/the app, maybe, but on desktop under-sizing or over-sizing will take away from the quality of the gif. Your gifs might look blurry, pixelated, extra grainy, or even a combination of those things. For reference, here are the official sizes for photosets:

Sharpening is key. I’d even go a step farther and call it more important than sizing; sizing alone doesn’t get you very far in the “crisp and clear” department, though I’d caution that there is such a thing as oversharpening. Personally, I prefer to add Gaussian Blur to soften things up, but below are all the different methods of sharpening.

(You can find my sharpening settings and process here.)

Use the best possible Save for Web settings. I mean “best” in the most general sense of settings that are optimal, but also best suited for you and your gifs specifically. Like most other things, some of it comes down to personal preference: selective vs adaptive, pattern vs diffusion, which to pair together.

Where Pattern places pixels in a grid, Diffusion results in an effect that’s more randomized. And as per the Adobe site:

[Selective] creates a color table that favors broad areas of color and the preservation of web colors. This color table usually produces images with the greatest color integrity.

[Adaptive] creates a custom color table by sampling colors from the spectrum appearing most commonly in the image. For example, an image with only shades of green and blue produces a color table made primarily of greens and blues. Most images concentrate colors in particular areas of the spectrum.

Examples of each different setting under the cut.

firstly apologies for getting to my messages so late - i've been away and the internet has been so bad that i gave up trying to open my inbox.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.                                 - pablo nerudo, sonnet xvii

Sleep!Sanders’ personal Instagram 💤

not a bother at all :D oh hm boardwalk gangster by tim newark should be on the big rec list in my sidebar, that’s the big one for charlie. american mafia by thomas reppetto should be on the list too, which gives a decent overview of the era and has some info on charlie specifically.