magicmacguffin — Camp Magic MacGuffin

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Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

In looking for a film to fit into the I Can Read Movies assignment, I decided would start by repurposing my initial Monkey House vector graphic and work with Terry Gilliam’s 1995 film, 12 Monkeys. Like Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil, the film is set in a dystopian future, but also introduces the wrinkle of time travel. Visually stunning and mind-bending, the film is worth viewing if you haven’t seen it.

I decided to work at extending my skills using Illustrator by trying to recreate the graphics template from the original book series. While that was easily doable, the further task of “aging” the book put a bit of a crimp in my timeline. I tried following the Photoshop tutorial by MOME, but struggled to get the right textures, and so, in the interests of time, I sought out some aged paper textures on the Internet, and eventually settled on Old_Scroll_Texture_II_by_Isthar_art, going back to Illustrator to get a partial effect. Unfortunately, of necessity, the layering put the effect under the text, so the text and images on the cover don’t really look aged to match the paper. However, as I was getting ready to post this, I decided to go back and try the tutorial once more, and managed to figure it out in Photoshop. Maybe I was sleepy the first time!

So here are two versions. First the Illustrator-only version, and second, the fiddled-with brushes-in-Photoshop version.

“I Can Read Movies: 12 Monkeys” by aforgrave, on Flickr

However, in doing a bit of research into the movie, I came across an amazing antecedent for the film, discovering that Gilliam’s film was actually a re-make/re-imaging of a quirky black and white still-motion sci-fi film from 1962 by Chris Marker, entitled La Jetée.

Searching online revealed a section of the film. Check it out.

Cool, eh? If there isn’t already a ds106 video assignment focusing on telling a narrative like this using using still images, there should be. This film produces a wonderful result. It’s reminiscent of the missing sections of Frank Capra’s 1937 Lost Horizon that have been replaced with existing promotion stills (to accompany the remaining audio track). It’s an eerie effect. And quite dramatic. It creates an interesting space for you to fill in some gaps on your own. Maybe I’ll aim for something like that when we get to video…

Now, as an add-in bonus, while searching for existing images for 12 Monkeys, I found this:

Brad Pitt from 12 Monkeys as an animated GIF (not mine!)

I’ve been looking for a film to explore the cinematic animated GIF assignment, Say It Like Peanut Butter. Perhaps I’ll take a further look into 12 Monkeys…

And, if that weren’t sufficient monkey-related input for summer reflection, my copy of our Camp Magic MacGuffin Monkey House name inspiration arrived recently in the mail.

“Summer Reading for Monkeys” by aforgrave, on Flickr

Read on, Monkeys and campers! Read on!!

Posted in 12 Monkeys, Animated Gif, bunk1, Camp Magic MacGuffin, Chris Marker, DesignAssignments, DesignAssignments55, ds106, imaginages, Kurt Vonnegut, La Jetée, magicmacguffin, openonline, Terry Gilliam, The Monkey House, Welcome to the Monkey House | Comments Off on Reading A Monkey Movie

Back from the void

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

Super Secrete Base

As many of you may already have known, my other persona is Max Power (Super Evil Genius Number One). I have been working diligently creating my Super Secrete Island Fortress of Unpleasantness (located at the lovely Aogashima Island off of Japan). Me and my minions have been working our butts off on this for a few years and now is 90 percent operational. We are experiencing some growing pains with the Geo Thermal Energy Power Generator. That’s right, we may be evil but we care about the environment just like everyone else. When it becomes fully operational, it will power the most destructive laser ever known to mankind. Hopefully by summer’s end we will be able to destroy the Amazon Rainforest unless our ransom from the World Government has been met. A shout out to the minions on this one! I couldn’t have gone this far without you. Even though you constantly remind me in the Suggestion Box that you don’t like your orange jump suits. So what you stand out like a sore thumb in combat situations. You look sharp wearing them, that count’s more then concealment in my book.

Ciao for now.

Posted in bunk5, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, the Daily | Comments Off on Back from the void

Jumping the Shark

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

After some discussion about whether a certain conference has “jumped the shark,” I was inspired to create an animated GIF of Fonzie’s legendary water skiing jump over an ostensibly man-eating shark in a 1977 episode of Happy Days, which, to some observers, signaled the beginning of the venerable sit-com’s steady decline and which inspired the very useful notion of “jumping the shark.” Here’s my first stab:

This is a big file, around 5MBs so not necessarily all that useful and it’s long. I felt the shark was essential and I didn’t really want to re-edit Happy Days so I included a fairly long portion of the jump sequence. In playing around with individual shots from the water skiing scene, I came up with this version where Fonzie skis and skis on forever, unconcerned with sharks or his show’s hearty embrace of the absurd and implausible, like the idea that someone “cool” would water-ski in a bomber jacket:

After I shared these on Twitter, the inimitable Scott Leslie, with whom I had the aforementioned discussion about that certain conference (which I’m not convicted has shark-jumped, fwiw), created two shorter versions from my original:

So there you have it: an iconic TV moment ad infinitum and some collaborative GIF-ing. DS106 4 life, bucko!

UPDATE:

Michael Branson Smith added this to the mix: “Megaladon eats the idiom . . . never ‘jump the shark!’”

Posted in bunk2, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on Jumping the Shark

Go Tom Go

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Jumping into the ds106 audio, assignments, I wanted to take on ones that had few takers so far- and I remain stumped why Suess It was not given some ds106 attention:

Take a Dr. Suess book, or perhaps the Berenstain Bears, or one of your own favorites, and read it to us. Give me your best Yertle the Turtle, or Lorax, or Mama Bear and have fun!

Now just reading a book to me is not really doing ds106 in the “bring us your A Game” style- that would be just following the task literally. I think it should be done in an over the top (or under the bottom fashion). The choice of a book for me was easy, not juts because of my regular inclination to do something dog related, but because truly, Go Do Go was my all time favorite Seuss book as a kid. My copy was covered in crayon sketches (the clean one above was given to me as an adult, and I have kept the crayons away).

I do not have my copy with me, so I read as much from the book as Amazon had on their peek inside.

So here is my wobbly imitation of Tom Waits reading this book

The background music is from the internet archive- a live recording of Hillbilly Jazz in Nashville (1975). This was recorded directly into Audacity, with the music imported. I like using the envelope tool to vary the levels of music to have it fade in and out, and drop under the spoken voice.

(click for full size)

Go Tom Go!

Posted in AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments562, Blog Pile, ds106, magicmacguffin | Comments Off on Go Tom Go

Bobbie and Me

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

SongStory — MISSION: DS106

My memories fade over time, but sometimes there is a song that can take me back to a place that revives the memories of my past. The song allows me to remember things I thought I had forgotten. So, for an assignment, pick a song that does that for you, and tell some stories about what you remember… …In the assignment you might want to mix your voice over parts of the song, give an intro, tell the story first and play the song, break up the song with the story – lots of options. But nothing too long – my attention span is short. These would be great to post on ds106 radio.

About two minutes, hopefully not too long.

bobbie and me

Posted in Assignment, AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments75, bunk2, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on Bobbie and Me

Did You Get My Postcard Mom?

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

I’m late with my ds106 design stuff, but you will not catch me saying I am sorry.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

I did assemble this for the Postcards from Magical Places assignment, which we had our UMW students with a requirement that the image come from Minecraft.

Design the front and back of a postcard that might be sent from the location of a movie or a work of fiction. Both sides of the cards must be created as graphics.

The fornt should use graphic design elements that provide a sense of place or use the classic motifs of old postcards (“Greetings from ______”)_, both pictures and text. The back of the post card should contain a stamp and postmark that fits with the theme of the movie, as well as an addressee and a message that fits the plot as well.

The inspiration was a fanfiaction assignment created by a UMW student in Spring Semester 2011- see the excellent set of LOTR cards at http://cupofchai.umwblogs.org/2010/11/22/fanfiction/

During our first camp fire hangout in Minecraft, I played with putting my new dog skin in the fire, and this seemed to work well as a camp prank of hot dogs. I started out in GIMP but got frustrated with the inability to do some effects on text, and with a loaned copy of PhotoShop, I did this image with rather simple edits, some text warp for the post mark.

Posted in DesignAssignments, DesignAssignments363, ds106, Magic MacGuffin, magicmacguffin | Comments Off on Did You Get My Postcard Mom?

ISTE 2012

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

For the fourth year I am headed to ISTE just after the end of the school year. This year it will be extra fun because the whole family is headed to San Diego. We’ve got plans for Legoland and the San Diego Zoo set already. I’m hoping to be at Social Edcon on Saturday and I’ll definitely be at the opening stuff for ISTE on Sunday.

On Monday at 4:15 I’m copresenting about teachinghistory.org and we have a poster session about the site at 1:00 on Tuesday.

If there is something I shouldn’t miss, let me know! Mostly I expect I’ll be in the bloggers’ cafe quite a bit.

Posted in bunk4, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on ISTE 2012

Behind Door Four…Design and More!

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

Hi Mom, Hi Dad!

(**yes, I know they will REALLY see this! I’ve shared my web address with them!)

Week 4 at Camp MacGuffin was Design Week! Learned lots and accomplished a lot, but still lagged by a day or so. So here’s an overview of what the last week held for me in ds106:

I started by researching Creative Commons and copyright. Although I already knew a lot about copyrights, from my time spent as a department manager and copyright manager at Kinko’s…although that was many moons ago now. Creative Commons (CC) was new territory for me and I found it exciting! I chose to license my photos and other image work on Flickr, as well as my this website and its contents, under a the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license, so that others can share, use, and alter my works, as long as they credit me for the contribution and do not use the work for any commercial purposes. I was a little late blogging about CC in Copyrights, Creative Commons, & Immortality mostly because I was hung up on creating the CC promotional poster and I wanted to incorporate it into the CC post, instead of posting it separately. I spent WAY too much time trying to figure out how to make the background of the logo transparent, but I finally figured it out and I think it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

This week’s theme was design. After researching and refreshing my artistic knowledge of design concepts, I went on a Design Safari, scouting for real-world examples of the different design elements. I published the examples and an explanation of each concept individually. I mainly did this so I could feel like I was making SOME progress without waiting until the end of the week to do one comprehensive post. Fallout in Fredericksburg shows symbolism in design and Domineering Downtown Dwelling is an example of dominance. I found these two as I reviewed the dozens of images from my photo shoot excursion to Fredericksburg a week or so ago. Mother Nature’s Mountain Rhythm and Memorial Minimalism in Design showcases rhythm and minimalism respectively. These images were both captured in the Virginia mountains, at two different scenic overlook stops along I-64 on Friday.

Two of our Design Assignments for the week were given to us. Okay, it was a choice to pick 2 out of 3 on a list, but I discarded one, because, well…Minecraft is kinda my worst nightmare. I spent a week or more fumbling around, unable to even move my little guy around. After some help from the oh-so-patient and helpful Martha, I finally got enough of a hang out it to move around, place blocks/items, and blow things up, but flying is dangerous! I got hung in a tree once and several times, I’ve gone flying and can’t get down! I even solicited assistance from my 13-soon-to-be-14-year old son, Austin, who was just THRILLED to know he could teach ME something. Almost. I think I know enough to participate when necessary now. I’m just NOT a virtual world kinda girl!

Anyway, back to the Design Assignments. In addition to the CC poster from Copyrights, Creative Commons, & Immortality, which was one of the mandatory design assignment choices, I reviewed another ds106 assignment from DS106 Inspire in Designer Breakfast with a Berry Splash. After getting the required ones out of the way, I went to work looking for the additional ones I’d do this week. I settled on Apocalypse Anyone?, The Big Picture Captioned Courtesy of Maroon 5, and my absolute favorite assignment yet…What People Think I Do as a Proposal Manager! I shared this with Facebook as well as my colleagues at work and it was a HUGE hit! Now I’m entertaining Alan’s suggestion that I get it printed on a die, so I can roll it and let fate decide which side of me they’ll get that day!

The Design Safari sorta replaced The Daily Creates this week. I didn’t get any time to devote to Daily Creates, much to my disappointment. Maybe I can circle back and do some of the ones I missed out on! Or, maybe…the Camp MacGuffin Directors will give us a “freestyle” week to focus on the types of art we enjoy most! Hint, hint…?

I’m having a lot of fun figuring out the capabilities of this blogging thing. This week I figured out how to link text to other sites ALL BY MYSELF! So, please, feel free to click around and see where it takes you!

I’m not looking forward to the next 2 weeks, as we explore audio assignments and radio, but maybe I’ll find some fun in there somewhere.

Until next week…

**Update: I can’t believe I forgot to mention that I MADE CAMPER OF THE WEEK! Much to my surprise I might add! Check out the badge on the right corner of my blog!

Posted in bunk2, ds106, ds106 Reflections, magicmacguffin, umwsum12, Weekly Recaps, weeklyletter | Comments Off on Behind Door Four…Design and More!

I just happened to be here.

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

I mentioned it yesterday and couldn’t sleep last night for thoughts of GIFing Hal Hartley’s Trust. This was easier in Schizopolis in many ways, because Hartleys films are already focused on faces and moments. But, oh… the faces, the moments. In the kitchen this morning, in between coffee and rinsing a quart of hair gel off of Annika, I watched the last 3 minutes of the film and bawled. Schizopolis was our Saturday night party film, the “OMG you have to see this!” film, even though most people passed out or lost interest before the dentist-transmigration.

Trust came on after that, and always ended in tears. My conscious (but always denied) attempt to live in the stilted Hartley language was certainly a contributor to many of friendship disintegrating fights in college. It’s an old film – almost as old now as The Conversation was when I first saw Trust in 1998.

Even as the fashion ages into comedy, there emotional core will shift and grow with you. Here’s my attempt to do some meager justice to this in a handful of frame grabs.

The lines and music under that last GIF add everything.

“Why have you done this?”

“Done what?”

“Put up wth me like this.”

“Somebody had to.”

“But why you?”

“I just happened to be here.”

That’s pop song strength – lines that can grow with you from bleak reflection on relationships into a tear-wrenching reflection on the arbitrary unconditional love of parenthood. They just happened to be there, and I needed them.

Posted in bunk1, Camp Magic MacGuffin, ds106, GIF, magicmacguffin, openonline, Schizopolis, trust, VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments3 | Comments Off on I just happened to be here.

DS106 Design Assignment: I Can Read Movies

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

I chose one of my favorite movies for the I Can Read Movies design assignment, Groundhog Day from 1993. It is one of those movies that I can flip to on TV and start watching it from any point and still enjoy it. Usually, I notice some little thing that I had never seen before. The amount of thought that went into its production is just amazing – how did they think of so many little things?

I think I thought of it for this assignment because it had so many repeating elements in its theme, it fit naturally into the I Can Read Movies book cover style. I chose the groundhog element because it is one constant from each day, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to produce with my limited artistic abilities. I looked for a CC licensed line art groundhog to use, but could only find ones that I would either have to pay for or were not licensed to be used other than in their original state. Then I started searching for pictures and found the one below by John Kratz which allowed me to use and remix it however I wished. Perfect!

I dropped the image into SketchBookX on my iPad so I could finger-sketch the outline over the image as a new layer, resulting in the repeated groundhog graphic. The alarm clock was just a “Stencil” font surrounded by a rounded edged rectangle.

I chose the same “Share Alike” Creative Commons license as the groundhog image, seemed like the right thing to do.

Here is the final product: