A long, long time ago in a galaxy quite close to here- it was this column actually- we brought you the first two original Star Wars instalments redone in GIF form on MS Paint by a genius with a lot of time and the kind of dedication that inspired the building of the Death Star.

Check out A new hope here and Empire strikes back here

Part of those links was a promise that the third and final instalment would follow soon, and here (albeit almost a year later ) is the fruit of that promise:

The creator- FoldsFive (otherwise known as part-time pixel-masher David Court) offered the following response on Digg when the A New Hope GIF found its way back into the collective Geek consciousness that calls itself the Internet:

Sometimes I find myself amazed by the internet. How something I made an age ago can suddenly pick up interest again. It was something I made for fun (as an experiment to see whether I could do it, more than anything) for a site (www.b3ta.com) that wouldn’t post anything bigger than 250k. I did it all from memory, so the stuff about my incorrect lightsabre colours couldn’t interest me less. (and jesus wept, people accuse ME of not having a life for making it). At the end of the day doing that stuff donkeys years ago ended up earning me enough money to pay the deposit for my house and got me a thank you letter from Lucasfilm and put me on their christmas card list.

Now that is an impressive reward, and it shows the value of those hundreds of hours web content creators dedicate to their nerdy endeavours.