ds106 — Camp Magic MacGuffin

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Saturday, July 14th, 2012

I love editing images, through different sources of photo editing programs. The most simple one, in my opinion, is iPhoto. I usually edit pictures for my own personal use and play around with colors to see the different results.

I’m familiar with iPhoto. Using it for this Screen Capturing assignment seemed ideal. I took a simple image that was taken two weeks ago in Lake Tahoe. I thought it would be perfect to mess around with in terms of darks and lights, bolds, colors, tones, temperatures, highlights, and cropping.

Here is the story of how I edited a simple photo through iPhoto…

I used Quick Time to record audio and the my desktop. I can’t figure out how to record an actual movie that has audio included. Instead, I layered a recording of my desktop and the audio. I did this through iMovie.
First, I imported the movie itself.

Second, I layed the audio through iMovie.

Third, I added music for a fun touch. I had the music playing very softly through out the entire tutorial.

Fourth, since this is coming towards the end of Video Week, I wanted to explore the different options iMovie has to offer. I set my movie up in a “scrapbook” format. This means the introduction is placed in a scrapbook setting. I thought it was fun and also looked neat!

Storytelling1 © by katherinekd101

This is a screen shot of a recording of the my desktop as I work on the image through iPhoto.

Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Capturing iPhoto

Day 2: No Human Artifacts Daily Create Challenge

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

So it’s the second day of the Daily Create Seven Day Challenge, another photo assignment to take a photo of a natural scene without any human artifacts. It should make you think about how big or small natural areas are… and also, a question of even natural looking areas, aren’t they affected by human activity?

Today we photos from 31 participants, down a few from yesterday….

Again we had a good showing and attempts at isolating parts of our worlds that do not explicitly show signs of human imprints. My favorites included:

UMW studen Chanda capture this stunning interplay of two bees on an (?echinacea) flower.

Melanie’s “Trolls vs Unicorns” really flips the assignment inside out, its not pure nature, but again, not impacted by humans.

Ashely’s solitary tree speaks to me, isolation, determination, separation, yeah.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by aforgrave
Andy must have gotten down on his belly to take this low angle shot, and it works to look like a mountain range.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by puptoes74
I was excited to see my friend Shelley join in, but was wondering where there were bears in Norfolk, VA, but she explained she was working on her Photoshop skills. Darn good if you ask me.

A majestic aspen grove from Wes Fryer.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by malynmawby
As Malwyn shows, you cannot go wrong with mimic of forms….

I like the idea here if merging two photos in the way that makes the look like prints on a table

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by dkuropatwa
Darren creates a kind of surreal spooky place with the soft focs and low angle. A great photo IMHO.

Okay, we lost a few people from Day 1… are you in this #4week?

Posted in Blog Pile, dailycreate, ds106, magicmacguffin | Comments Off on Day 2: No Human Artifacts Daily Create Challenge

Using Keynote to Make a Movie

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

I never intended for this to take as long as it did… those are turning out to be famous last words here in my summer of ds106.

As explained in the video description, The Daily Create #187 said:

Make a video of what is playing on channel 106 on your cable (or make it up).

Rather than completely make it up, I was inspired by a tweet I received this morning about a video posted to YouTube by CGP Grey

I have been wanting to make a video that explains something and this one was great! I wondered if Keynote could be used to create the bulk of a video like that so I tried it out with this one.

It’s not perfect and for some reason I couldn’t add any photos when I exported it to iMovie but I liked some parts of it (particularly the rotating ds106). It was an interesting experiment that was far more time-consuming than anticipated. Maybe it should be worth some visualassignment points!

How I Did It

1. Created slideshow with Keynote

The actions proved to be useful for video.
Don’t forget that you can order animations by opening the drawer.

2. Exported to QuickTime

3. Imported to iMovie

4. Split in a few places

5. Added beginning of CGP Grey’s video about The Difference between the UK, Great Britain and England

6. Added iLife sound effects, Hallelujah chorus and text

Posted in bunk5, Camp Magic MacGuffin, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, tdc187, VisualAssignments | Comments Off on Using Keynote to Make a Movie

"I Am No Man"

Friday, July 13th, 2012

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Dunechaser

I am back at Camp Magic MacGuffin after I was absent last week. This is the second week of video and it took me a couple of days to go through last week’s materials and pluck up the courage to use Windows Movie Maker for the very first time.

The assignment I chose is Return to the Silent Era. The goal is to take a scene from a modern movie and render it in the style of the silent era.

I chose one of my favourite scenes from LOTR - the one in which Eowyn kills the witch king. I had just watched Return of the King for the thousandth time and it struck me that this scene would look good in black and white. I was lucky enough to find a clip that already had subtitles, which made my task of turning it into a silent movie much easier.

I was surprised at how intuitive Windows Movie Maker is. I had wanted to learn how to mash and edit videos for some time, but had always put it off. I was afraid it would be too hard. I have only made this one clip so far and the task was relatively simple. I just added two effects (“black and white” and “old film”) and I added some Bach. I didn’t remove the original audio, but I muted it instead.

Here is my clip:

I Am No Man – Return To the Silent Era from Natasa Bozic Grojic on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: ds106, VideoAssignments, VideoAssignments376

Tags: DS106,, VideoAssignments,, VideoAssignments376
Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, VideoAssignments, VideoAssignments376 | Comments Off on "I Am No Man"

The Hardest 4 Icon Challenge Yet

Friday, July 13th, 2012

I’ve been following Jim Groom’s “Name that 80s movie” 4 icon challenge series, and while he promised that they would become more difficult, I think the many summers I spent glued to the TV watching HBO for hours on end gives me an unfair advantage (I totally nailed the Flash Gordon one). I thought I’d try to up the “name that obscure movie” difficulty level, and while it was entertaining for myself to put together the following 4 icon challenge (I learned how to make a parchment-like background in Adobe Illustrator), I’m not sure if I did actually come up with something that will stump anybody….at least not anyone who is halfway decent with Google searching. Think you can name the this movie?

I continue to fiddle with the 4 icon challenge concept, this time blending both icons and actual images, one of those images laying over another. It’s not that I think it adds to the piece any, I’m just having some fun as I mess around with trying to visually represent the major elements of the story.

If you haven’t read any of my previous posts about the 4 icon challenge, you can check out how visually summarizing a movie, book, or other story is both really easy using tech, and is a great way for students to summarize major story elements, while having a bit of fun.

image credits:

vitruvian man - http://thenounproject.com/noun/vitruvian-man/#icon-No2532
gold brick - http://www.officialpsds.com/Gold-Bricks-PSD31100.html
mask – http://www.denbigharmysurplus.co.uk/army-stores/balaclava004.jpg
cup – http://thenounproject.com/noun/coffee/#icon-No16

Posted in 4 icon challenge, adobe, Art, bunk5, counselor, DesignAssignments, DesignAssignments358, digital storytelling, ds106, Illustrator, Language Arts, magicmacguffin, multimedia, openonline | Comments Off on The Hardest 4 Icon Challenge Yet

Tornado, Revisited

Friday, July 13th, 2012

On Wednesday, @cogdog issued a seven-day-challenge for The Daily Create, and the prompt for Day One (June 11th), was TDC185: Draw a Tornado. Given that my drawing tools at hand were somewhat limited, I elected to “draw” the requisite tornado using a stylus on my iPhone, and used a photo from the day as my background and ink source. This is the original photo, taken using the Pano app on the phone.

Original PANO photograph (before Tornado)

To introduce the tornado, I used the clone tool within the iRetouch app, borrowing sections of the existing clouds for paint, trying to introduce swirls (not too successful with that), and saving my work periodically. When it was done, I posted it to Flickr and tagged it with the required tdc185 so it would be added to the assignment page along with the others.

@DoremiGirl was a bit taken aback by what I had “drawn,” …

@aforgrave wait, you drew that?!

— Yoon Soo Lim (@DoremiGirl) July 12, 2012

… but I’m comfortable with the artistic license offered by these sorts of daily challenges. Although am keen to continue to develop my actual drawing skills (for real, with paper and pencils), this was the result for the day.

It wasn’t until I was offloading my photos from the last two days that I came across the successive “saves” of the process, and realized that they might collectively make a nice animated GIF. As it would turn out, Photoshop CS6 has a Timeline feature where an Animation feature stood in CS3, so it took me a few minutes to get that sorted out (good learning!). I added in some hand-made “in-between” frames, and here is the result. (Sorry if it doesn’t represent the proper stages of formation of a tornado — these actually represent the stages I took in drawing this tornado!!

Tornado: TDC185 (animated GIF)

Posted in @DoremiGirl, alan levine, Animated Gif, bunk1, cogdog, ds106, imaginages, magicmacguffin, openonline, Seven-Day-Challenge, something made, tdc185, The Daily Create, TheDailyCreate, tornado, Yoon Soo Lim | Comments Off on Tornado, Revisited

Greetings from the Overlook Hotel

Friday, July 13th, 2012

Inspired by the work of the Breakfast Club edition of ds106 on their design assignments today (more on that anon), I took a shot at the Postcards from Magical Places assignment—3 stars! I spent the afternoon showing them how to do one of these in Photoshop, and while I was showing them a few things I got the idea of a postcard from the Overlook Hotel, and while I didn’t have the time to do it during class, I promised myself I would write a postcard from Danny Torrance to Mr. Halloran. This was very fun!

Posted in bunkx, DesignAssignments, DesignAssignments363, digital storytelling, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on Greetings from the Overlook Hotel

My Story, Bike Ride From Hell

Friday, July 13th, 2012

We had the option to talk about a story that was sad, happy, or something that could happen on a daily basis. I chose the story of my bike accident. It is the only time in my life I have been to hospital for myself. I was still young and didn’t realize how serious the accident could have been. I know if I didn’t wear a helmet I would be paralyzed to this day and have a completely different life from the one I have now.

It was a tradition in our family to go on a nice bike ride every Sunday evening when the weather became pleasant. It felt like any other Sunday to me, but thats how it always feels before an accident. I turned the sharp curb, going around 25 MPH feeling on top of the world. BOOM. My bike and face go right into a drunk mans chest, as he was roller blading in my lane. I don’t remember the pain. I just remember feeling my clothes be soaked in blood as I watched the man lay on his side looking like he was in complete agony.

I was first put in ambulance then put into a helicopter and flown to Childrens Hospital. I stayed there for several days not remembering the majority of it. Trying to open my left eye was one of the most physically demanding moments I’ve had. It was sealed shut and completely black from bruising. Any light that would flood through my eye lids was agonizing. After a few months my eye was completely healed from the bruising and broken veins in my eyes. However, my left eye is now slightly smaller then the right.

This is my story…

How did I put it all together?

I filmed this through QuickTime and uploading it into iMovie. Then I used sounds from www.freesound.org the sounds of crickets chirping and sirens were both from this site.

I then put in three different songs that I thought went along with the words on the notecards. I used fade in and fade out techniques to make the transition from each sound. I included a title and credits. The music I used is copyrighted, need to always give credit! Obviously the songs were too long to use for the entire clip. So I used a the audio trimmer to cut down the part of the song I wanted for each segment of the video.

This is a screen shot of trimming music down, to the length that I want it.

This is the final product!

Posted in bunk4, ds106, magicmacguffin, umwsum12, VideoAssignments VideoAssignments501 | Comments Off on My Story, Bike Ride From Hell

Jaws Alternative Book Cover

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

I have a ton of awesome design work to show off from the Breakfast Club edition of ds106 (a.k.a the K12 edition ), but I want to take a quick moment and feature two alternative book cover assignments done by Anna. She had an idea for an alternative book cover for Peter Benchley’s Jaws, and frankly I think it is brilliant!

And as any gambler knows, keep going when you are on a roll, her next creation was a literal cover fro R.L Stine’s Goosebumps.

Brilliant! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What is immediately apparent to me is that they’re having fun doing it, and that’s a vision Tom Woodward has both articulated and embodied for years. What’s exciting to me is that ds106 has become a manifestation of that fun in my own teaching and learning like no other experience I’ve been part of before. I’ll do a more comprehensive post about the awesome design work they churned out today, but for know enjoy the genius!

Posted in bunkx, designassigmnments366, DesignAssignments, digital storytelling, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on Jaws Alternative Book Cover