Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

So here's the video I was trying to turn into an animated LJ icon:

(And a direct link just in case the embed doesn't work for somebody.)

Note that YouTube scaled it up from the original 144x176 pixels that my phone stored. (Blame the resolution and the odd compression artifacts on the phone being designed primarily as a phone, not as a tiny camcorder -- I don't think it was ever meant to shoot video for display at this size.)

And here's what I've been able to squeeze into the file size limits for an icon so far -- with the timing tweaked by redaxe to be very close to what I had in mind:

The icon version is smaller than the full 100x100 pixels allowed, with fewer frames than I would have liked for a smooth animation, and I had to trim a lot of frames before and after the yawn so it loses the "oh, just a picture of a cat -- wait, it's moving" effect at the start and turns into one of those annoying constant-motion images. If I can figure out how to set different delay times for different frames, I'll try to put the long pause back in at the start that way. [Thanks, redaxe.]

So I guess the image embedded in this entry is subject to improvement and may no longer match this text if I'm successful. And, uh, if any of y'all with real Photoshop/ImageMagick/GIMP/etc. chops wanna show off how much better at this you are than I am, I'll happily make the original 3GP file or the separated JPEG frames available for you to play with -- all the more so if you think you can describe what you do well enough for me to learn from.