Just before shooting this electrifying glance at a breakfasting Agent Cooper, young Audrey Horne delivered this priceless line,
Sometimes I get so flushed, it’s interesting. Do your palms ever itch?
Archive for the ‘magicmacguffin’ Category
Femme Fatale
Friday, July 13th, 2012Tornado, Revisited
Friday, July 13th, 2012On 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)
DS106 Confidential 2012-07-13 09:46:00
Friday, July 13th, 2012OUTSOURCED MEMES, ROGUE HOLOGRAMS, AND “DISAPPEARING” CAMPERS: CAMP MAGIC MACGUFFIN CONTINUES TO UNRAVEL!!!
In this first of a three-part series, DS106Confidential editor Red Beets unveils key aspects of the mystery behind “Camp” Magic Macguffin.
First, I need to address certain questions regarding Confidential’s involvement in this increasingly sordid story. While names can’t be named at this point suffice it to say that we were brought into this affair by a very highly-placed and highly-regarded member of the DTLT and DS106 family. I will only use his source nickname “the normal one.” He expressed great concern about the direction DS106 has taken this summer and he asked Confidential to “look into” some activities he felt were “highly irregular.” We agreed.
Now, the story behind the character CVI felt would become the MagicMacguffin icon, a character that would represent the joy and uninhibted pleasures of a camp MM summer – Slide Guy. The rise and fall of Slide Guy has been covered in these pages. We now bring you the truth behind the meme.
The Slide Guy meme was created in a studio in Mumbai, India. Yes – he was outsourced! Confidential had the opportunity to talk to the actor who portrays Slide Guy, Raj Patel, a figure well known to followers of the Bollywood film industry. Raj is shown below in a shot from his latest film Mumbai Story.
“It was just another meme job, I’ve done several. They pay well and don’t require a great deal of work.” Raj stated.
Had he heard of CVI or MagicMacguffin?
“No, my agent deals with all that.”
What about the socks?
“Well, that was kind of weird. For some reason they insisted I wear these really…uh…strange, I guess is the word, socks. I questioned it, but the director said it was an absolute, some big guy in the company paying for the meme had a thing about big, bulky white socks and I had to wear them or they’d get someone else. Is it a fetish thing? I don’t judge – but they did mail the socks back to the client, I do know that.”
What about the scandals involving the Slide Guy meme? Is he worried or concerned?
“Not really, once it leaves the studio I don’t think about it anymore. I have a very busy shooting schedule so I don’t try to keep up with any of the memes I’ve done. Some summer camp wanted to interview me as Slide Guy, but, come on, it’s a meme, I mean get a life people. I heard they hired someone to imitate me for the interview, but the guy started reading haikus and spouting some philosophy of ‘the joy of sliding’, give me a break.”
Coming up in this series: An interview with the real Alan Levine. How the hologram image was created, how it went rogue, and why Alan is suing CVI! Also – How the recent power outage “erased” so many of the Magic Macguffin “campers”, and Martha Burtis – What Happened?
In the Morgue
Friday, July 13th, 2012
One of my main goals in assembling animated GIFs is to make the loop appear as seamless as possible. To do that in this scene of Agent Cooper after he retrieved a foreign object from beneath Laura Palmer’s fingernail, it was necessary to use layer masking to isolate a single frame of his magnifying glass because the small amount of movement during the two second clip left an undesirable jump.
Because this GIF contains 16 frames with such minimal masking, the file size is 705 kb. Three parameters could have been tweaked to have made the file size smaller. One would have been to have captured fewer frames through either a lower capture rate or shorter clip length. Another would have been to crop some of the original image. The image could also have been rescaled to smaller image size proportions. Done individually or in combination, any of the tweaks above would have significantly lowered the overall impact and quality of the image. This is why I’m less concerned with file size on this recent series of Twin Peaks GIFs than I was with earlier experiments.
I still haven’t tried to manually optimize the colors as was suggested by Mark a while back. But I’m inclined to believe the GIMP does this automatically.
I think I’m going to keep working on this for a while. I’m not sure if there is any grand scheme to recent efforts. As long as it remains fun and brings such personal satisfaction, I see no reason to stop.
Yesterday afternoon, I hosted the “Mysteries on the…
Friday, July 13th, 2012
Yesterday afternoon, I hosted the “Mysteries on the Mountain” radio panel to discuss the strange happening at Camp Magic MacGuffin. I was joined by Alan, Zazzy, Joe Beets, Uncle Hector, and Slide Guy! for about an hour of conversation.
Unfortunately, I forgot to start recording until about 7 minutes into the show. Some other things have been said about the show, but I think it turned out great. Don’t you? After all, we did solve the mystery of who has been breaking into Zazzy’s foot locker!
Greetings from the Overlook Hotel
Friday, July 13th, 2012Inspired 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!
What Makes Me Laugh
Friday, July 13th, 2012This clip always makes me laugh because growing up playing soccer and now coaching some rec soccer some of the stuff is not to far off. This movie really made me laugh because so many people take youth soccer far to serious and this movie basically makes fun of all of that. Also I haven’t really found a Will Ferrell movie i didn’t think was funny. And also its not really highlighted in this clip but the rivalry between Robert Duvall and Mike Ditka is hilarious in this movie.
My Story, Bike Ride From Hell
Friday, July 13th, 2012We 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.
Screenshot1 © by katherinekd101
screenshot2 © by katherinekd101
This is the final product!
Here comes the Big Boss!
Thursday, July 12th, 2012This loved this assignment. I found it was a little harder fitting movie to song. Yet, it is simply placing the videos together and editing them to fit the music. I used iMovie, it makes everything so easy.
I really love cartoons. It is something of a guilty pleasure, but this assignment made this cartoon fan very happy and excited. I hold those that make AMV’s in very high regard and never thought that I would ever make one myself. I also really love this song. It never fails to make me smile or sing along. It is simply a classic that everyone should know. The two cartoons that I used are two that I fell completely in love with for many reasons.
Working At the…
Thursday, July 12th, 2012I chose to do the song visualization assignment because I do it all the time. Maybe not in video format, but any song I hear, I get mental images of a story. This assignment was in the bag from the moment I saw it. I just had to pick a song from a very extensive list. Yet, as it always does, I found the right song to incorporate into the project. This assignment was fairly easy. I collected images together in iMovie and added the song. The hardest part of this movie was editing how the song match up to the images and how transitions or movement affected the video.
Not only do I like this song because it is upbeat and catchy, but it also has earned its place in my quirky family. Every time we see a car wash, either passing by or going through, I crank this song loud and sing along. It seems like the appropriate thing to do in the situation. It helps that my mother and sister join in. I have always had a love for the automated car washes that spew pretty foamy colors on your car. It is a bubble paradise and a whole lot of fun to watch when it gets rinsed off. Yet, there is also something therapeutic about hand-washing a car (I enjoy the job of vacuuming out the car, especially if it is extra-dirty). Being able to unplug from the fast-paced daily flow of life and being able to find joy in something do small is something that everyone should be able to do.
