At this point, I can successfully run one of my scripts that creates an animated GIF, whereas I couldn't earlier today.

Nice work !!

I noticed that SP stopped providing the GD module after the 5.38.x releases - though libgd is still being provided.
That seems odd, so I've taken the liberty of opening https://github.com/StrawberryPerl/Perl-Dist-Strawberry/issues/285, where I've linked to pryrt's post.
Hopefully, SP will, in future, again include a serviceable GD module in vendor/lib.

Cheers,
Rob