Month: July 2015

Fairytale Writing -DS106 All the Way!

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puffintransblog

village-jim-grooms_John Fairytale Writing – DS106 All the Way – AKA “We can’t all be @JimGroom” Thanks to all who share and contribute for making my DS106 world real. I hope you enjoy the Fairy Tale of the journey so far. I created this while hanging out in my bungalow in the Village for the Bovine FairyTale Festival (hoping it counts for credits in both!)

Well – the week to stretch some skills has come a little heavier than others. Writing. Writing a fairy tale. I am much more verbose online than in person – but it usually is in trying to have an asynchronous discussion or going through steps in training – not stories and not fiction.

I have enjoyed the reading of the resources so abundantly provided by NanaLou. But I tend to enjoy the moment of the story and not diving in and trying to pull  it apart and figure out the meanings and inferences. Hans Christian Anderson – well, I have always loved Danny Kaye and I remember the movie as a kid – but the dark and sad stories do become a little depressing when you don’t have the slapstick and singing to go along with them.

Rocky and Bullwinkle were a childhood favorite – so Fractured FairyTales high on my list. My Dad also had a teasing and dry sense of humor – so it was something we shared and I would listen to his stories. I was a fine arts specialist at the elementary level when is was in the classroom as one of my early career assignments. I would collaborate with classroom generalists as they would teach the writing and I would connect the fine arts in lessons. Students were guided in steps to story writing by taking things they knew or happened in their own lives and changing them up to fit a story. A theme along with a book was often retelling The Three Little Pigs from the wolf’s point of view. So I decided to use things that have happened in the last 6 months and follow the pattern of a fairy tale – so my version of a fractured tale – combining different things that may or may not be considered as being connected.

I was surprised the drafts came quickly. After reviewing – I think the Elves and the Shoemaker may be the format behind the DS106 and the Ed Administrator.

After recent weeks with design, visuals, audio, video – it seemed sort of plain and not too exciting to just have black and white words on a page.

I decided it was time to push my audio -not the editing part – but the part about not using my voice for recording. I have a few different mics – but haven’t been happy with the sound. Plus, I have to find a way that I don’t think anyone is listening when I am doing it – sort of like dancing – I can have lots of fun if I don’t think anyone is looking.

I used iRecorder – an app on my iPad – went down in the basement to my laundry room and closed the door. With the script on my ironing board – so I was standing – I hit record and read. The app then connects over wifi to my computer and transfers the file – pretty slick!

In Audacity I just cleaned up some gaps and breaths – not too much editing or effects. I found some piano music on Jamendo to add to the background and left it at that. No sound effects at this time.

In March of 2015 – Rochelle Lockridge had assembled the work of a radio collaboration on the NOIR theme. She presented it in a FlipBook. I was fascinated by the Flipbook format and have decided it will be a good way to assemble my family stories in a better way by allowing different media and narratives to be included – better than endless slideshows with music or audio. The format will give the chance to weave the stories together as our life actually unfolds. I opted for the buy – Rochelle’s reasoning of pros and cons made sense for what I needed. In order to start making use of my investment I thought the fairytale might be a good learning project.

A PDF is created first (at top of the post) – so that happened. I thought I was going to tackle inDesign – but after an hour gave that up! I will come back to that on another project. I opened iBooks and created there first and exported as the PDF.  This also had me look at font, layout and some graphics – so stayed in line with design week – even though that is in the Village.

This is okay – but the audio and GIF and some other things don’t come through. It is a way to distribute the writing.

I imported into FlipPDF Pro and began exploring. I found how to add the audio and video, get the GIF to be running. Then came exporting. I don’t want the $9.99/month subscription for hosting. @RockyLou22 embeds her flipbooks in her websites and had a way to share it with others. I spent about an hour with the directions – they don’t offer much because they really want you to upload to their pay site. After little success – I put it aside. I will go back and solve it, but wanted to get this post done while it was still a fresh memory. I will connect with @RockyLou22 for some hints when things slow down a little.

For Apple devices – it is in iBook form – even this is not smooth  or clean. It comes in Google and you have to ignore the screen and download – and then open in ibooks

 

click to download as iBook
click to download as iBook

I need to get the FlipBook version working…..maybe as the night goes on it will come. 🙂

 

 

 

Episode Book Cover – Hammer Into Anvil

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village-jim-grooms_John

Prisoner Episode Book Cover

Design Assignment for Week 4

Out of the two choices of the “to do” assignments – I chose the book cover recreating  the aesthetic of Spacesick .

My first thought was the Dance of the Dead episode and having multiple skeletons, a sample was too close to that content and swaying me in replicating instead of creating.

While the look and feel is replicated – the process did require using design components to create. Space, form, size, color, place, text.

I used PhotoShop as my tool.

  • Paper size canvas – black

  • Brush – Sponge edges highlight then go back in with background color to soften and break up

  • add Gaussian Blur – minimal

  • Use Blur tool – large and draw dark into light colors

  • Add rectangles for heading – fill with color

  • Find camera icon and copy paste into file – Use SKEW to lengthen lens part

  • Add Text Fields with Helvetica fonts Bold and Regular

  • Find copyright free, free icons of hammer and anvil

  • Open in new file and use color replacement tool to add color to each

  • Scale

  • Rotate

  • Copy and paste into new layer in first file – place

  • Duplicate hammer layer to make multiples to set in pattern

  • change opacity for each layer going back

  • cut out shadow of hammer – SKEW, Rotate, Scale,

  • Add Title and tag line

  • Futz around

  • Export as jpeg

  • I am also going to import to my iPad and use some photo apps to add some noise to the finished product to see what that does to age or make it look used. If they turn out  – I will add them to this post.

Updated:

I used an app called Snapseed. Adds effects. The part I don’t like is the randomness and just flipping from one effect to another. There really isn’t a way for you to create or control it – or get back to one you may have liked. It is take it when you see it. It does easily add some aging. I used the Grunge filter.

Added a filter

#2 in General a Puffin?? Info in Shadows

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village-jim-grooms_John puffintransblog I started reviewing the footage from the General to find information on what might have been saved when things blew up. I think it was a plan from the start – who to trust?

Looking at the video – I was able to slow it down enough and see the shadows – look at #2 as his shadow reveals!! and there seems to be some invisible fairytale puffins in the room as well.

Truth in the shadows

Background process:

  • Clipped out frame from The General video
  • Imported into Photoshop
  • Deleted background within circle cut out
  • Used Eliptical marquee tool and rounded out edges of cut out to make it smoother
  • selected with quick select tool
  • Select>Modify>Contract 2 pixels
  • Modify>Refine edge>smooth and contrast
  • Cleaned up #2 with Select>Modify>Contract>Refine Edges
  • Added gray background layer to fill hole
  • Used Rochelle Lockridge”s find of the aristocrat puffin – selected and filled with one color of gray and added noise to create shadow – copied and added to working file
  • Used Transform>Perspective to create shadow
  • Added layers with fairy puffins and lowered opacity
  • Exported and saved as jpeg

AND THEN  – my own mind’s critic kicks in! Needed the context of #6 and the setting! So added it in. 🙂 just went back and instead of erasing all in the circle – I lowered the opacity after cutting it out and then futzed with making it fit in the circle.

Truth in Shadows 2

Penny Farthings and Puffins Everywhere

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village-jim-grooms_John  puffintransblog  Penny Farthings  – It is like when you get a new vehicle or a new addition to your life – you begin to see them everywhere when you had thought they were unique.

So goes the Penny Farthing. Since summer of Prisoner106 has started I am seeing the dang things everywhere!

Cathy Jo Nelson – who I follow on Flickr and some ed tech groups posted this picture recently.

Let's go ride a bike...

We were out at a consignment shop we like to browse thru and again!

Then my husband and I are watching American Pickers on TV and they are looking and buying a penny farthing!

Then as I was watching “The General” I kept the stream running when it was over to watch the credits and the Penny Farthing was there again.

Needless to say – this called out GIF to me. Add to it, Rochelle Lockwood created another puffin with a Prisoner106 theme. Puffins are showing up as much as penny farthings and gnomes…..

I downloaded the end of the General, used MPEG Steamclip and trimmed to capture the penny farthing. It turned out to be 450 frames! Wow! At first I thought I was going to have to take each and figure out how to remove the text credits. After going through the clips I found there were at least 1 text free frame between each credit change. So I went through all 450 and came up with about 20 frames – much more manageable.

  • Loaded them as a stack into Photo shop.
  • rearranged layers so they were in the right order of building the penny farthing
  • Created frame animation in timeline
  • set timings to .2 seconds and a little longer at the end to smooth it out.
  • exported for web as GIF


Next was adding the puffin. I duplicated the file and then added the puffins by merging them into a layer. I added the aristocrat puffin as a new layer and chose add new layers to all frames. Worked on some timings again then exported. I also did a little color change. Because of the tones it did not give a dramatic effect but I tried 8 and 16 colors which give it a different look.

I wanted to have the princess puffin flying through the frames – but truth be told – I was tired and not up for the steps at the time….but it may come yet.

Village Architecture Mishaps

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village-jim-grooms_John I was out walking on my way to a bungalow design session for #7. I was a little concerned as I don’t know who #7 is or what his history is in the village. After taking the hidden shots of different signs in the Village I have been a little on edge not knowing who is a friend, who is a guardian, who is a warder – or if friends have gone to a different side. Perhaps this is how isolation happens? I need to work on making sure it doesn’t overcome – so I walked faster and looked up instead of down to not cause attention and to see what was around.

Being that I look for design, form and function I started looking at the architecture. In assimilation I was taken around and all looked so perfect and maintained. Being out on my own, I found other areas where things were not always perfect. Could these have been experiments or just buildings added on to multiple times?

Take a look – The first is a huge structure – not sure who resides in it.

The second was a dead-end I turned into when trying to find #7’s bungalow. You would think #7 would be right next to #6 – but resident numbers don’t always seem to go in order.

Process:  Photos were created as an attempt at VisualAssignments954 where you are to take multiple photos of buildings and splice then together to make a new structure. There were no submissions to this assignment, but it sounded a fit for Summer2015 in Prisoner and in Burgeron106. Using a photo editor – I chose Photoshop. The utterly fantastical portfolio of work created by Jim Kazanjian, was inspirational – but not attainable in these first runs – but do make me want to explore more and try. 

The time sucker is finding photos – lots of looking at photos, licenses and rights, quality, parts of buildings, perspective. Color was not an issue as turning them black and white when finished pulls it together. 

I wasn’t sure on canvas size either. Doing this again I think I would start with a large canvas to allow for adding and providing enough white space for environment to be added effectively. I was constrained by what I had started.

You need to be in the mood for lots of manipulations. My strength is not perspective – which seems to be critical. Looking and using flips of pictures helps. The Warp feature in Photoshop became more useful than scale and skew or perspective.

It was fun and I certainly think I would do again. The discussion boards for the artist argue over if this is art, is it photography etc. Nothing I was really interested in getting involved with as an opinion. It is what it is. 

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