It’s been interesting to see what effects I can get to enhance a moving image. It wasn’t quite ‘caught’ mid action as this scalextrix train was evidently on the move in the pic (the idea was to freeze the face behind it instead). But by adding intelligent blur and asking the software to enhance the horizontal lines, the effect of the train is softened to a streak, and given a kind of painted quality.
(2 star visual assignment for ds106)
It was great fun making my own demotivating poster using these instructions and it appealed to my cynical side.
I thought that the photo I took of the archer at a medieval reenactment might come in handy at some point and here we are, the perfect metaphor. The second line was more of a challenge – I guess it’s all about adding to the headline in a clever way, not sure if I achieved that, but it’s suitably demotivating anyway!
(2 star visual assignment for ds106)
It’s a big file, but big is beautiful in this case. Feast your eyes on this animated magazine cover which is a more literal interpretation of the June 1975 issue of the classic Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine (more of a fanzine, really) featuring the scene from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) that is famous for the first of Ray Harryhausen’s legendary animated skeletons. You can see the original cover below, which interestingly has a few things wrong if you want to get literal. Namely, the color of Sinbad’s pants, the orientation of the fight, and the fact that the skeleton hadn’t lost its sheild just yet. This was a total blast to do, and I am working on a fullblown tutorial, but I must have spent four or five hours on it already, so I will simply leave it here to animate into eternity.
This challenge is about placing members of your family in a world that’s too big for them. I chose to place my mum next to some daffodils. The two photos were taken metres apart within seconds, but in this photo they juxtapose well.
I used this video from Serif’s own bank of tutorials to help me with this technique, which was new to me.
The greatest challenges – and how to overcome them – are:
1. Choosing a good image of your subjects – the cleaner the background, the easier it will be to remove them from it. I made the mistake of choosing a pic of my mum in front of a historic house!
2. Fine tuning those virtual scissors - again, choosing a nice simple image is key, but also be sure to use the ‘zoom’ tool when you’re extracting people from your original scene as even the smallest bits of background will show up in your new creation
3. Is it a fitting tribute? - as you choose your images, it’s wise to consider your subject’s expression, their body language and what they’re wearing… before you place a beautifully cut out skier on a lush green meadow….
Thanks for the challenge, ds106!
(2 stars in the visual assignments category)
I promise, I was not slacking this week. It was just that…well, no excuses, I was slacking at DS106/Magic MacGuffin this week, entirely. The week, though, was very productive in non-DS106 ways.
This week I managed to get two of the assigned five Daily Creates finished. I am holding out hope but with a Brinner Party to get ready for Saturday night, I can make no promises other than I’ll have DS106 Radio to keep me company.
Daily Create #1 – Make a monochrome photo.
I took this picture of my daughter’s bathroom sculpture and I’ve been trying to find ways to use her inspiration to jumpstart my week of storytelling.
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| The toothbrush in front is the “introducer” who announces you as you enter the comb/toothpaste/toothbrush tower. |
Daily Create #2 – Tell a story about your most random job.
This was a ripper of a job and this is only part of the story. Oh the things I could tell you. Like the time when one of my crew tried out the invisible fence and almost passed out or the time when I slipped on an muddy incline during a rain storm and fell only to find out from my boss that was my fault. None the less, here’s the story.
So, those are my two of five creates. I’ll try to slip in one or two more this weekend. The brinner party might provide some storytelling materials.
Task for digital storytelling course DS106 was to transform a photo into a drawing.
Here’s the original – I chose a photo that meant something to me (this is a friend’s baby) and that had plenty of light and dark areas.
Using Serif PhotoPlus (don’t ask, it came with my computer), I wanted to see if you could represent the curve of skin as effectively through digital shading as you can with a pencil…. I tried this two ways: firstly, by using the pencil draw quick-fix tool under the Artistic menu. It didn’t work out that well, as you can see:
I then followed J-rabbit’s excellent tutorial which got me much close to the effect I was hoping for….
It needs a little more grainyness, and perhaps some more dark areas to really show the potential of the shading, but overall I think this is a good start. Thanks J-Rabbit!
I didn’t know about the Say It Like the Peanut Butter assignment until I noticed kag0715′s awesomely frightening first animated GIF come through the ds106 stream.
The assignment requires us to create an animated GIF from our favorite or least favorite film – the clip should be one which captures the essence of the scene with a minimal amount of movement. I chose to go with a moment in my favorite scene from my favorite movie: The You’re All Right scene from Repoman.
The brilliant YouTube Downloader plugin for the Chrome browser was used to grab the clip. With this plugin installed, videos on YouTube can be downloaded with a single click of a button that automagically appears below the player.
The next step was to trim the segment of the clip I wanted to use in MPEG StreamClip – I chose 8 frames per second for the 1.2 second clip. This produced a half dozen or so png files which were opened in GIMP as layers.
Using the Filters > Animation menu choice, which I just learned about today from Alan, I was able to narrow my choice down to three frames. As there was a bit of distracting camera movement causing Otto to jitter back and forth, I decided to use Jim’s layer masking technique to animate just the beer pouring out of the can. Everything but the beer has been removed from the two topmost layers except for the bear stream. This allows the still frame from the bottom layer to show for the entire loop.
After cropping and resizing (scaling) the image, I saved it as a GIF and set the delay rate to 160 ms.
I’m pleased and surprised that the entire file weighs in at 70 kb. My next step will be to turn it into a tga texture file and take into Second Life to sell at Scottlo’s Animated GIF Emporium. The price, as with all other items, will be 106 Linden dollars – or two for twice the price.
A lot of folks are doing some really fun album covers, so what the hell. Let me get in on the create too.
Here’s what you need to know:
Band name: Galeophobia
Wikipedia does not have an entry for Galeophobia, so if you have some time to kill perhaps you could fill that Wikipedia void. Wiktionary says that Galeophobia is (1) a fear of cats and (2) a fear of sharks. I have no idea how sharks and cats are related. There is also another term for the fear of cats. It’s called ailurophobia. But all of this is boring. Back to the fun stuff.
Album title: Part of Your Essential Being
I didn’t have a specific photo editor in mind. I knew I wanted to use something I’ve never used before. I did a search for web photo editor and selected Befunky, because it was kind of near the top and I am not discerning. It’s an easy tool to use though the font choices are limited. There are lots of photo effects though. I also like the fact that the tools can be used without registering as a user.
I’m pretty sure that Galeophobia is a metal band, so I selected some gothic fonts and made them as hard to read as possible, which is what metal bands are wont to do. I did the “Galeophobia” first and applied my changes. I wanted to change the positioning of the band name after applying said changes, but was unable to figure out how to do that without redoing the image. I then added the album title, played around the with coloring, and called it a day. Here it is:
First go
I was having fun though and I had some time to kill before graduation, so I decided to do another cover. Fun times!
another album cover, because a band has to have choices.
I’m really worried about our brother Scottlo. It seems he has drunk some weird potion and is mesmerized by some beach front pixel property in Second Life, some place called Conoway Cay or something like that. Over here in Camp Magic Macguffin, we are hacking out a whole new world inside Minecraft, and poor Scottlo is in some sort of trance of the SL Sirens.
Therefore, we are planning a Minecraft Scottlo Extradiction Strikeforce (MSES), and I made a few epxloratoary forays into that oversexed virtual world to check things out:
I even kindly left him a few toys to play with, because in his broadcasts he seems to lonely.
But can you believe it? Scottlo just tossed them in the trash. What happened to my friend of old? Cannot you see how all those SL furries and crazy sales people high on Linden dollars have corrupted him?
Since Scottlo has been eager to set up his ability to broadcast live to a Google hangout from Conoway Cay, as part of the MSES plan, I am seeing if we can do the same from Minecraft (or “Minesweeper” as Scottlo calls us). I am understanding the audio set up thanks to the tutorial; I gave it a try tonight but had trouble getting Google Hangout to let me switch the audio input source (it needs to be Sounflower 2CH from Ladiocast).. but I think it was because I need to set that before boosting up Ladiocast.
Anyhow, I wanted to do at least a basic broadcast from Camp Magic Macguffin in Minecraft, from my new doghouse there:
WE ARE COMING TO YOU SCOTTLO! Rescue operation is in ready state, and we hope to parachute in very soon.
Sorry, but camp is over! Head over to ds106
The Campfires have all been put out.
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
