For my first Visual Assignment I chose the “Make An Album Cover“. I’ve done this before on some other blog of mine but, I enjoy the random elements to this assingment.
Gathering the pieces
The first step is picking the band name via the random page function in wikipedia. I landed on a page about the Carex nudata, which is apparently a species of true sedge.
Lastly, the hardest part, finding an image on the Explore Page of Flickr that had a creative commons license on it. By the third roll I lucked out with this one:
Credit to Michael Lamberty for the original photo
Also does anyone know what good practice in when remixing someones photo when they put their name at the bottom of the photo? Is it ok to delete that? Or should I maintain that as a way to connect back to the original source? Deleting is probably ok as long as I give credit somewhere, right?
The Creation
So the first thing I notice is the nice open space at the top of the image. A good spot to put some sort of text, right? I chose to place the band name there and stick with the kind of italics I associate with scientific naming of things.
I also noticed the brightness of the flowers might be a good place to drop some text. So after typing it in and playing with a bit of transformation in Gimp I got it to look mostly the way I wanted it to. I liked the combination of the word “closed” and the strike-through at first. I’m still not sure if I love it but, I think it works.
Once the text was placed I wondered what would happen if not only the far background was blurred but all the image surrounding the flower. As I began playing I noticed it made the flower pop and seem almost surreal. It lost a bit of its flower look when it became disconnected from the rest of the image but, I think I like the fact that it became this lone, weirdly shaped object. If I was a bit more daring I think I would have blurred the background even further to really isolate the flower.
Overall, I like the way this one came out. I imagine this band would be some kind of folksy, alt-rock kind of band. You know, a hipster kind of group that would think a scientific name was clever for a band.
I find these 3d wiggle stereoscopy animated gifs really fascinating, so I tried it.
I took a lot of pictures down at Lake MacGuffin this past weekend, so I found some shots that looked like they would work.
If you haven’t seen them before, here’s the basic idea. You take 2 shots of a subject from slightly different position or angle and then make them into an animated gif. If done right, you get a 3d-like effect.
If they’re not wigglin’, click on the image to get it going.
For the bird gif, I put the two images into separate layers in Gimp. I made one of them 50% opaque while I worked so I could see them both superimposed. Then I used the move tool, the scale tool and the rotate tool to try to get the main body of the bird matched up in both layers. Then I set the opacity back to 100% and cropped the whole thing so that both layers were the same size and shape. I saved it as an animated gif and set the interval to about 150ms. I used the same general technique for the other one as well.
Here’s a few links with some more examples and explanations of the effect.
Party with The Monkey House. We’re rocking it. We will discuss throwing a dance party on DS106radio or perhaps in Minecraft when we get to the audio section of our course. So stay tuned to The Monkey House folks!
I spent some time visiting the blogs of fellow campers this afternoon. I stumbled across the Troll Quotes assignment on Marcey’s Blog and knew that I had to do this one. I decided to use a handful of pop divas. Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Cyndi Lauper look out! Here’s the result:
I found an image of Madonna by searching Google Images. The quote is supposedly from Lady Gaga. I haven’t heard Lady Gaga say this, nor have I read it in print, but it came up in a Google search, so it must be true.
I imported the Madonna pic into Adobe Fireworks. I then added the text and green stroke effect. All of this was added using Fireworks too.
Today I mashed up the Daily Create with the “An Album Cover”Mission: DS106visual assignment. Last time I attempted the cover, I ditched some of the random elements (the name of the album, the album art), so – after catching fellow campers’ work – I wanted to design a more random cover in the spirit of the assignment.
So here is the cover for List of Women’s Football Clubs in Spain’s new album, I am not mad.
I am not mad by List of Women's Football Clubs in Spain
I captured a square screen shot from the original image and dragged it into Acorn. I cut out the dog. Then I applied a green monochrome filter to the rest of the image and adjusted its saturation and brightness. I picked green because of the lush vibrancy of the original photo.Then I pasted the dog back in, blurred it, and bulged its head. I wanted to isolate and transform the dog from the rest of the image to create some ambiguity about the album’s title and its speaker or subject.
I inserted the text thinking about this week’s photo tips encouraging the use of a 9-square grid for arrangement elements in an image. If the boy and the dog make up the skewed squares on either side of the image, I hope the lettering fits into the squished middle squares in a complementary way.
So! Campers have started to explore the MineCraft incarnation of Camp Magic MacGuffin in droves! Last Friday evening, a good number of folks showed up simultaneously within the virtual space, and by Tuesday evening, the area surrounding the Camp Centre had been transformed with a whole slew of new construction. With a multiples of folks now working here and there, the opportunities for group photos start to occur. Of course, why settle for a static pose when you can go for the ubiquitous simultaneous-on-the-count-of-three-everybody-jump shot. Three images (one repeated, then looped) to produce a little animation.
Giulia, Shannon, and Ben on the Beach at Camp Magic MacGuffin on Tuesday evening
Of course this becomes more difficult with an increased number of people.
Not only was the co-ordination of the jumping a bit less synchronized with five, but the rapid capture of screenshots using the native MineCraft screen capture (F2 key on PC, FN+F2 on Mac) introduced a whole slew of filenames superimposed on the successive images, which I had to edit out. But the result was worth it.
INSERT 5-PERSON ANIMATED GIF HERE (revised image to come … )
After getting switched to Creative Mode (to avoid the MineCraft Monsters), folks have been getting the basics of manoeuvring and flying down. @timmmmyboy, @mburtis, and @leelzebub have been particularly helpful and responsive in getting new arrivals out of danger (Survival Mode) and flying around.
After getting oriented, most folks are getting together with their bunkmates and working to build their bunk houses. The Camp Centre has taken a few hits as Creepers continue to roam and blow stuff up, but everyone seems to be pitching in to make repairs.
After seeing that Bunkhouse Five (The DigiOuijas) was casting a nasty shadow on the centre camp at high noon (causing the night-creatures to come out at mid-day), @timmmmyboy graciously removed and relocated Bunkhouse Five and introduced a shadow-free transparent floor at the same time! Tuesday evening he spent a good chunk of time working to get his piston-elevator system working. I had a chance to test it out — and while we both encountered a bug or two …
You Moved Too Quickly (Hacking?)" by aforgrave, on Flickr
… it did manage to transport my MineCraft self up to the top of the world.
"Top of the World" by aforgrave, on Flickr
@BenjaminHarwood and @GiuliaForsythe chose a location for Bunkhouse Two (The Wäscälly Wäbbits) and did some serious digging in, both in terms of into-the-cliff-burrowing, and front-entrance garden planting. They also spent time working on a Pirates of the Caribbean boat attraction, and I had an opportunity to experiment with MineCraft TNT at their site while trying to create an exit for the trapped boats. Check out the proud Wabbits in front of their collaborative digs.
"Two Wäscälly Wäbbits" by aforgrave, on Flickr"
@shauser and I returned to the site of the new BIG HUGE GIANT tree for Bunkhouse One (The Monkey House), and spent some time working to make it bigger and more tree-like. – It’s getting there. But we also had some fun when we managed tofall out of the world while visiting Ben and Giulia.
aforgave fell out of the world
<aforgrave> did you cover up that hole?
<shauser> yup, planted that sapling where you fell through
<aforgrave> how deep is the dirt?
<shauser> like three deep? should it go deeper?
<aforgrave> tree?
<shauser> i don’t know, i had a sapling on hand so i planted it
<shauser> in memory of you!
<shauser> but you didn’t really die
aforgave fell out of the world
shauser fell out of the world
<aforgrave> yes — unless we want to make it really thin and let others follow!
<shauser> haha yes lets fix
In fact, the experience was so enjoyable, we enjoyed it a couple more times:
aforgave fell out of the world
shauser fell out of the world
aforgave fell out of the world
shauser fell out of the world
We then repaired the original hole at the Wabbits site, but not wanting to say goodbye to the fun, we built an amusement ride for all to enjoy at the Camp Magic MacGuffin beach — The Fell Out the World Fun Ride. Enjoy, everyone!
"'Fall Out the World'Fun Ride" by aforgrave, on Flickr
Shannon and Tim and I also took a little excursion to try to find some of the sights I encountered during my Lost in the MineCraft Wilderness Expedition, and some more work was completed on The Monkey House tree house, but those details will remain for a later post …
Skincraft: A MineCraft Skin Editor
See? I made a Gumby skin for my MineCraft dude
Why settle for some off-the-shelf Steve skin, when you can Create Some Art and make your own with this handy skin editor?
The editor gives you a tiny little .png file. This is what I uploaded to my profile at minecraft.net to skin my dude as Gumby …
Who would you like to be in MineCraft? What key features do you need to capture to make your character’s skin instantly recognizable and unique?
Use the embedded editor below. Just click Play. Make some MineCraft Skincraft art!
I get lost in all the Visual Assignments, and this isn’t an alternate movie ending or an un-scene but rather an alternate take on a scene based on the expression on her face – I’m not sure what it is, but I felt it had to be done.
First, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The title of the article is now the name of your band. Next, go here: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 Go to the bottom of the page. The last four to five words of the last quote are the title of your first album Lastly, go here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Select the 3rd image. It is the picture for your album cover. Manipulate the picture, resize it, add some other color, whatever. Do the same with the band name and album title, put them over top. However you wanna do it. Make it look cool.
After being introduced to the Dactyloceras lucina – a species of moth of the Brahmaeidae family found in central and west Africa – I went a little further with the image search, consulting Flickr’s the Commons under the search tag for Interesting and found my base layer, which I then uploaded into pixlr.com, an online photo editor that let me add text and diffuse the picture to give it the grainy/painting effect.
Other than not creating a square image – as I believe is one of the requirements – I also think I could have done a better job capturing the essence of my randomly generated quotation, which I’ll share in full here as a fond greeting to my camp and bunkmates, but also an acknowledgment of Camp Macguffin’s initial honeymoon period (I mean, not in Bunk X, but for the other campers):
The only thing that lasts longer than a friend’s love is the stupidity that keeps us from knowing any better.
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.....
