The GIFitUP2015 event has started and many in #4life and #ds106 folks are working on GIFs for submission.
WOW! the submissions are fantastic and very intimidating. But at the same time, it does promote creations. I am not even in the farm league in this thing. I started to work on some things but gave up. But true to the ds106 world others were having ups and downs and the connections allowed for feeling good and being inspired – to sweat through the frustrations and finish something. The power of community and peer pressure to try your best. Shows what being connected can do for someone – keeps you going when the going gets tough.
@mdvfunes shared her ups and downs – but also support. By responding to her trials – she found a way to suggest to me – a true give and take and give. Mariana finished a wonderful GIF. RonaldL and JohnJohnston have been active and by sharing their work they opened the doors and windows to continue. The power of just a short comment is so powerful. It really shows the wonderfulness of simple courtesy and good will can move mountains.
By sharing my drafts suggestions made that took away the heavy frustration of not being able to make my visions reality. But the cool part is sharing the visions -others got it and saw it too and then offered some tangents to follow.
The result was I got to a point of finishing a submission – although very rudimentary – and a good baseline for improving over the year and doing better next year.
My attempts were to create the hats in a ferris wheel motion – have not accomplished yet. This one is just in the files as practice.
The second was to have the icons play with a balloon. First attempt ….
and the result after being introduced to Puppet Warp and attempting FireWorks…. the submission:
I also did a couple of birthday GIFS on the fly this week….short and not polished – but to celebrate.
So a GIFFY week of practice!
and I still have a vision of a Toulouse Lautrec poster floating in glitter….it may happen. :-
Processes:
Did not do well at tracking development. Lots of erasing, cutting merging layers at first. Then Puppet warp to make the hands move in the balloon gif – I used this tutorial.
I used the grid lines in the Hats to keep the images in the same place in each frame.
For the most part – the standard steps that suggested tutorials cover until I got to puppet warp.
Fireworks – all by the seat of my pants. States are a math problem for me and the preview frames seemed to go slower than they really came out when exported. But I did like how FW smooths things out. Too bad it is a historical app now.
An additional attempt with a Toulouse LaTrec poster….
Thanks for the feedback on the banner. Was nice to know it was noticed. When I switched themes last summer I started the “seasonal” banners as a creation activity. I had to take down the ds106tales as I fell way behind and thought good intentions going forward might help. 🙂
I love how you use your DS106 skills to cheer up your family and friends…you know it took me years to put together that I no longer need to buy birthday or other special occasions cards ’cause I can create lovely things for people? What is interesting to me, is that I have never shared those on my blog or anywhere, wonder why. I am encouraged by your persistence, trying to learn about the Pen tool now to help me with my cinemagraph ideas…feeling a little like you with the States in FW – not very intuitive. Always learning! Thank you for keeping going as it helps motivate me to keep learning. Love your seasonal banner gif! I was not expecting the Western106 one, a lovely surprise!
Thank you Mariana. It is #4life and applying skills to everyday life seems like the right step.
I went into ds106 Headless with the intention of learning thru themes and community, but with the outcome of how to apply learning to other situations in my life. In many ways that is my wish for the traditional students – that some of the creation and new insights they find in their coursework will help them create and succeed in their future path.
My Digital Mustard Blog is my learning and creation blog no matter what the application. So I have used it to describe process, thinking, and visions of not just ds106 assignments, but the use of ds106 learning in application of my daily life. It is also a way to show others by example that this can be everyday life as well as dive deeper for change, small and large scale projects as needed.
and YES! Thank you and the community – it keeps me going and helps me stretch while I share with others who yet do not understand the craziness, passion and drive to do things like this. It is a wonderful balance to have found a diverse group of which everyone takes turns being learner and teacher, collaborator and audience. The fuel for continued growth for all.