During the three years we were in production on Rock That Uke, and well before the existence of our website, RTU producer and co-director Bill Robertson embarked on the peculiar hobby of taking historic images of ukulele players and making small animated .gif files out of them--or, as he called them, "tiny ukers." As production progressed, he expanded the activity to living ukulele players. Eventually, the tiny ukers were incorporated into the website's design and became a winning aspect of its look. But the truth is, Bill made them because...well...um...because he was compelled. The urge would come and go. Times of stress during the production of RTU would often lead to highly prolific "tiny uker" output. Exactly what motivated Bill's decisions regarding which images he would choose to "tiny uker-ize" remains a mystery. Bill himself will only say that the activity "relaxed him."

Then finally the night when "relaxation" turned to addiction. One night, in the final days of post production, Bill woke up in a fevered sweat, screaming and slapping himself all over his body, wailing "They're everywhere! They're everywhere! They're crawling all over me! Can't you see them?! Can't you see them??!!

And we all knew it was time for Bill to stop.

The collection below is not intended as a definitive gallery of the greatest ukuleleists now or in history. It is merely, and quite literally, the animated graphic image file of one man's psyche over the course of three years.