Month: April 2015

Giffing it on down the line

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As the #noir106 has wrapped up, it is time to get back on track and figure out this #4life path I have started upon.

One thing I have noticed is that when you are #4life finishing a unit doesn’t mean it is checked off and done. You go back and you go deeper. DS106 is units – not weeks. You do and create in an ongoing state as new inspirations and collaborations come about. So you jump from design to video to audio to design to video and so forth.

Thanks to Rochelle Lockridge, I am embarking on Flipbooks for family stories. I love the ability to join many media and make it a complete story that someone can go through in any way they choose. I was hitting a wall thinking I was going to create videos to music for the last 80 years of family history!!!

This approach also gives me the opportunity to develop and create different media to include. Sound, video, design, photos, and more. It does have the potential for ongoing art creation and getting better at in each media. It also allows one to meet others on the path as they start or continue.

As Spring 2015 UMW has been winding down I have begun to uncover some #ds106 open course people through Mariana Funes #ds106 news. There are a few working on things and the stuff is cosmic! The news feature has helped more than the RSS feed. There are too many spam and other things in the feed that  make it difficult to follow. What I still can’t figure out is why the general open course participants don’t TWEET when they create? All the connections, feedback and connections that are lost. Tweet dammit! Use the hashtag – let the world know you are creating. It’s not going to bring in lots of traffic – but may bring you a person or two that will make a difference in your growth and work.

Now – what I have worked on besides planning my flip book is GIFs. After a few it finally hit me – DOH! these are not slide shows – so now I am on the path of trying to figure out how to make one picture be a story through some short animation. Below are the creations so far and what I am building upon. Still a long way to go especially when I look at John Johnston’s curation of ds106 TV Gifs!  

YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!      http://johnjohnston.info/ds106giftv/#

I have used Photoshop, MPEG Steamclip and my own photos. A tutorial that was helpful was making smoke on YouTube. http://photoshop-tutorials.wonderhowto.com/how-to/create-smoking-gun-using-adobe-photoshop-cs4-357542/ It helped in making smoke as well as showing me how to use other features in PS.

I also found that using my Google Drive is a good way to share the GIFs and be able to embed them in WordPress…..here are some of my recent attempts.


Still some learning and some polishing to do – as well as making sure they are a picture story. One creation at a time!

Here are previous GIF creations – I decided to create a category for them under ds106 Assignments.

A break from digital….Hummingbird

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Hummingbird

April 16-18 Blog Hop:

Hello to the LYA2015 Blog Hop Participants! The blog hop is attached to this post -but if you click on the links below you will see the other posts specific to LYA2015. Also feel free to explore the digital art created for ds106 throughout the blog..

First Postcard!
Card 2 Shipyard!
Cards from Swap!
Humming Bird!
Getting Ready for Liberate Your Art 2015

A friend I have made thru a 365 Photo group connected me with LYA. She participated last year. It sounded easy enough to do and I love mail. I took some photos of my paintings and had cards made up at Costco. Kate’s instructions seemed clear and simple and off the cards went.

I am one to believe that the “new wealth” of society is sharing. The more you share, the more you grow, the more your life gets richer. It is also about creating. Innovation in work and creation for personal pleasure and accomplishment feeds the soul. This swap built on that and returns 10 fold.

It has been great to see everyone’s work and truly inspiring and good for the soul! DS106 is an open online course that focuses on making art and using digital tools. I love creating, I love sharing!, and I chase shiny objects so I really have not settled into one genre or type of art. Hope you enjoy and thank you for your sharing – it is wonderful! You make the world a better place.

Thanks most of all to Kate for making this possible.!

My post for ds106 follows:

Took the afternoon to do non-digital art today. A group (community) activity which is socialization and fun. Not my usual style or subject matter but it was 3 hours that went by quickly.

In #ds106 style:

  1. Canvas and paint
  2. Work in layers
    1. Background work from light to dark in quick X brush strokes.
  3. Dry with hair dryer
  4. Paint in leaves of flower
  5. Block in flower shape with white – triangle and circle.
  6. Fill in with purples
  7. Block in hummingbird with white. Put in spine, circle for head.
  8. Add wings – from neck straight ling up and flowing curve.
  9. Second wing just behind.
  10. Fill in with color
  11. Add tail feathers
  12. Add beak and eye
  13. Futz and putz until you like it or give up!
  14. Sign it.

Adult beverages encouraged while doing – however this was an afternoon session and I was on my own – so just a diet coke. :-).

I like the community painting. I get to meet others, see some great art, be inspired by all the different versions and interpretations and come out with a finished product.

It gets me going again to create on my own and try to figure out new views.


Boys Back in Town with Sound!

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I like the animated GIF – but the song kept running through my head!

I converted the frame animation to video and added a short rift from the song “Boys are back in Town”, by Thin Lizzy.

2 Versions – the 9 second clip and then the 9 seconds looped 3 times. There is just something about visual and sound together…..

I ran into issues. Photoshop to video isn’t smooth. I found that out on the Sketchy Groom creation. When I rendered the GIF as video it dropped a layer and swapped a layer. I left it as it was and then imported it into iMovie to trim and transition. PhotoShop probably could do the corrections, but I found it requires going back in versions and redoing some things again. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to want to climb that hill. As rendered video it also changed the ration of the photos cutting off top and bottom. Since it is so short – it still seems to work. Not sure that they will ever be used too closely together that someone would notice the differences without viewing a few times. The brain is a wonderful thing when it comes to filling in the missing pieces. 🙂

Here is the original animated GIF. I still like this better visually.

I guess these 3 are going to have to be put on the character page with bios now that they have shown up so many times!

GIFfing Sub-contrator Case/Project Options

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Going back to some animated GIFfing as some creative pieces for project. It looks like the near future I will be creating different components that will fit together as one.

I went back to Photoshop to create the animated GIF. I started with my own photos: Cloud/Sky, 2 dog pics, hat, sunglasses, storefront. Each was manipulated and created into new images.

At first I had each part as a layer and it got overly confusing in trying to figure out which layer on or off and order. Duh! Finally dawned on me to create groups and then merge the groups. I ended up with 9 frames instead 27. I created the photos with text to insert by copying the image before it.

I also referred to another ds106 4Life YouTube tutorial by Michael Smith that helped with some of the details and location of features in Photoshop.

The tutorial was helpful in understanding the different choices when saving so that I could reduce the size of the file without changing my intent. Instructions were clear and very helpful

The next challenge was where to store animated GIFs to save on space in my WP media gallery and not use up storage. I decided to try my Google Photos and when accessing found that my account has been flipped to Photos in Google Drive! YEAH! So now I can get share links and embed codes for things I save in my Google Drive. One more storage well to use. Skor!

I want to try the cut out GIF, but haven’t figured out what I would use yet and how it will fit into my story thread. More things to create – I can see why this would be a good collaborative project and not independent. Lots on the list!

The Boys and 4LC Staff are available for some side jobs – we don’t have a drop dead deadline to meet like #noir106. Or open #ds106 collaboration opportunities considered too. If you have a need for some temp help – Fill out the contact form and we will get back to you.

******I also added sound and saved the GIF as a video  – the song just wouldn’t get out of my head until I did it!

 

Rusty Gold

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Rusty Gold

Dailycreate 1186

Look for flaws in your landscape, take a beautiful photo!

I am one to see the flaws as the beauty to begin with – especially outdoors. The contrast of things that are weathered, neglected, or combined with the tidy and manicured are more appealing to me. I actually think it is harder to achieve the natural look!

This is a planter that is an old vintage bread box that saw it’s day. Instead of a landfill – it became a planter. The perennial ground cover usually comes back and annuals are added for more color in June.

 

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