I am hoping to keep up with the Daily Create this class. As part of Camp MagicMacMuffin the task is:
Introduce Yourselves via this Wednesday’s Daily Create. Each week, you will be asked to complete a few of our daily assignment challenges at http://tdc.ds106.us/. We will ask that you do the video one on Wednesday (5/23); use it as an introduction and a chance to tell a story. How you do video is up to you; it can be done from your mobile device, or directly into the web cam using a site like YouTube.
I think that daily creates should not be posted to blogs to stop choking up the main ds106feed, but as this is an intro and a new blog that I’ve set up especially for DS106 I am going to post it here anyway.
In the quest to bring animated GIFs into Second Life, I decided to turn a clip from my recent machinima into a GIF with the hope of being able to bring it back in to Second Life as a texture file.
Earlier I mentioned an idea to create a gallery or museum devoted to the animated GIF. The idea was to use Peregrine’s nifty web-based texture creator to generate the files and scripts. But I quickly realized that it would reject most GIF files for being too large (though I don’t know if that is based on file size or image proportions). So I wanted to try to find the sweet spot for creating a GIF file with a small file size footprint that will also work in Peregrine’s texture generator.
I intend to say more about the process of generating these texture files in a subsequent post after I take this animated version of the Scorphonic Radio Selector back in to Second Life. For now, I’d just like to leave a few notes and links for myself so I don’t have to reanimate the reel the next time I want to do one of these.
Once again, I used MPEG Streamclip to grab a short portion of the video file. For the sake of smoothness in the animation, I wanted to the excerpt have the reels in roughly the same position in the first and final frame. As you’ll note, there are four little circles on each real so that would require a one-quarter rotation to serve my purpose. This accounted for a roughly 6 second clip.
I used the recommended 8 frames per second capture when saving the frames as individual PNG files. That meant roughly 48 files to be imported as layers in the GIMP. I knew the sucker would be way to big but I wanted to work through the entire process before tweaking things. I cropped the image to the dimensions you see in the animation (197×343) as the entire scene wasn’t required.
48 frames and 1.5 mb
The GIF file was saved and weighed in at 1.5 mb. This is way to big.
From there it was a question of deleting frames. Checking frame by frame, I noticed that frame 6 and frame 48 matched up perfectly. Counting by six, I kept frames 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, and 42 and deleted the rest. When these 8 frames were exported as a GIF, the file size was 254 kb. The playback was good but there was a repeated jitter. It turns out this is because when 6 and 48 played in sequence the result was a brief pause. So I deleted 6 and was almost satisfied with the result.
256 kb – jumping clouds
I wasn’t too keen on the clouds jumping round with time through the six frames. So I decided I needed to use layer masking. The only problem is that I couldn’t remember how to do it. Fortunately, another tutorial from Jim quickly reminded me how to do it.
As the end of the tl;dr post approaches, I must confess that this whole project seems a bit daft to me. But I think I have an obtainable objective in mind. I appreciate the chance to share the little steps and bits of learning that occur along the way. Up next, I need to see how the texture and script work in SL.
Hi all – Jerry here, just wanting to say hi to all the other campers at Maj McGuff.
I’m looking forward to some time this summer spent “creating.” I spend most of my days fixing problems, trying to anticipate problems, or reacting to problems that don’t get fixed the first try. There is some creativity in that job, but not necessarily the kind you might consider “fun.”
As a former member of DTLT, I’m always interested in what they are up to, and have been really impressed by the DS106 course, and how it has opened them up to a giant wave of creative thought, about not just digital story telling, but it oozes and spills into their other activities as well.
Simply put, i want some of that spillover in my own day to day. By restarting the fun creative process, I’m hoping it will cause me to change the way I’m thinking about the things I’m doing every day.
I’m also looking forward to reengaging with some online tools that will be part of the online creative process. The past few years have lead me to tools that help me do the daily work, but again, I could use more fun – this is the ticket.
Looking forward to seeing you all around camp – it is going to be a great time!
Given that my mine is currently overrun with a variety of creatures and is imperfectly defended, I have been working on the higher reaches of the space, having protected myself by breaking the access via the construction bridge from below. My current goal is to close in the sky-high view panorama window, thereby sealing the mine from unintended external access. However, fascinated as I was by the colours of the setting sun, I waited far too long to vacate the recently-installed construction scaffold on the outside window. Before I knew it, it was too dark to make my way off the perilous structure and back to the security of my nearby mining hut. I was able to create gaps in the scaffold at either end (it was still attached to the sheer cliff face), and resolved myself to wait out the rising of the sun.
That I am still here to tell this tale the next morning is the shortened conclusion to the experience. However, the cold from the high altitude (snow is prevalent), the grunts and cries of nearby monsters, the darkness of the night, the onset of drowsiness (normally, I pass the night by sleeping), and my vertigo-fueled apprehension of falling made for a very traumatic ordeal.
Still Alive the Next Morning after the "Harrowing Night"
First week of camp and we’re already telling our stories. Today’s daily create was to tell a family legend to our other campers. My family, like most, is a little nuts and filled with crazy stories. I flip-flopped between the secret ingredient my Granddad used in his BBQ sauce (spit, by the way) and this one…Hector.
I won’t rehash the story…you get to watch it.
I will, however, add to the legend of Hector by telling a tale about my cousin Matt. At some point in the legend of Hector, Matt and my Uncle Jerry were in the basement near the double doors and when it came time to leave Matt’s shirt got caught on my Uncle’s belt buckle. He bolted up the stairs thinking that Hector had reached out to grab him. I laugh about this now but, make no mistake, Hector scared the daylights out of all the grandchildren more than once.
Resources used:
iMovie ’11
Flickr Image
MacPro
Blue Snowball Microphone
The delightfully deranged creativity of my grandmother
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.....
