Well as luck has it – being stuck with my leg up in the air and being confined – along comes GIFITUP 2016 – so at least I have had some time feeling like something was getting done.
I haven’t been making a lot of GIFs the last few months – but using the DPLA archives always is a treat in creating new art. It is quite amazing to view the submissions. Last year I submitted 3 and I did the same this year. I thought I would be farther along in my skills by this year- but …eh…not really. It does become a learning process. I learned new features in Photoshop and new tools to use. Community of ds106 provided feedback and by doing so pushed me to go back and do more tweaks.
I am not going to document the process of each one this time – another habit to come back too.
This is a fun one – I missed it the last time it came up. And with trying to get back into daily creates- it was one to try.
Even though the traditional sections have wound down and summer is still in question about any organized activity the #ds106 community is active and keeps going #4life. It doesn’t need semesters or direction, it bubbles from individual self direction of connection and collaboration – and story building. Always taking an idea and building on it to give back to the original creator or group. I kinda think of it a Amish Friendship Bread – once you have the starter it keeps growing!!
Stories of socks and hedgehogs and the dailies are circulating. @NanaLou is on the way back to the trailer in Bovine and calling out to Sophos, Ron, and the other family to begin to plan for the Burgeron106 summer retreat. @mdvfunes post that has many talking and remembering it is about the story and freedom – not pre-determined checklists. So this daily seemed just right to continue to build upon the threads.
I decided to do a GIF – well, just because I like doing GIFs, and toast popping up seemed it had to move. I used the selfie, a sock, and a hedgehog as the burnt images. You NEVER know what story will pop up in ds106! And you just jump in and continue a thread. If some of the original creators saw something different – they will jump back in and try to re-define and build in a different direction – that is how it grows and gets better and finds new life.
I finally made a mask layer in PS!!! Not sure how the heck I did it – but I did and it worked!!! YEAH!! Now to see if I can do it again. All I did was go to Layer – Make Mask and it joined two layers that stayed in place and allowed the toast to pop up between. I still need to figure out what and how…. For the burnt images I used B&W and decreased opacity. For the sock and hedgehog I used a filter of charcoal and colored pencil and then B&W followed by diminishing opacity. I also choose the animated toaster on purpose – to remind me this is fun work and creative work. It is meaningful and has purpose and definitely takes serious commitment – but it is to feed the soul and create connections – not build walls or boundaries – keep smiling! Keep creating! Keep your mind open to others ideas. And if something is not for you – just let it go by and get on on the next bus – it comes around again with new tires and plenty of open seats.
and of course once you start a daily and it gets longer you have to quit – but even with stopping and calling it done – I now see how I would want a frame between of no toast between slices and some lines to clean up…..always something to tweak!
So keep using the ds106 toaster! Stories pop up just like that!
In some ways it took me back to Oct2015 and trying to step up into the Gifitup challenge. Taking time to make a GIF art over just an animated reply or statement. I am of the camp that they all have a place and purpose. The snarky fast GIF can say more than a full blog post at times and a really great art GIF can mesmerize for hours.
So the next conversations were….
I want to learn how to make cinemagraphs … Anyone have resources? Tutorials? #ds106
So as I am waiting for the arrival of grand baby #1 – whom at this time seems to be teasing us with a later than expected arrival and some false starts and my body is sore from spring garden clean up – I decided to try and focus on the challenge. I have to admit – my focus ability is very short now – so this is going to take a few iterations. To keep it in scope and to keep building – I started with the inspiration. Well -Cristopher Benitah spent a year collecting photographs and is at more of a professional level than I am -but that should not be a show stopper.
Subject and planning are key here. Not wanting to get to invested or too far from home in a video shoot if “the call” comes, I found his example of hands, sky and water. I thought this would be a reasonable goal and would use the subject as a way to deconstruct the process and decide what I need to do. Hopefully this will then help make a video set up more productive when I get to that point. I have visions of baby cinemagraphs floating thru my brain. 🙂
Started with a photo of my husbands hands to be able to crop out back ground and make my still. I used his because it was a quick shoot instead of setting up a tripod and remote to take a shot of my own hands. Nice to have a model around at times.
Pulled into PS – standard stuff. Lasso and magic wand and eliminated the background. Adjusted the photo to B&W and saved it.
Searched for some video footage of rain that was labeled reusable. Wasn’t very obvious in what I found, but then used the GIFIt plugin for YouTube and captured 6 seconds. Imported into PS using tutorial suggested by @mdvfunes at http://photodoto.com/how-to-make-a-cinemagraph/
Brought it into PS via Open after setting my workspace as Motion. Had to do some problem solving as directions were not for same version of PS and things are in different places…. Set frame rate at 12. Pasted the hands in as a layer and lowered opacity and then that gave me something and I am still not sure what it was or is: Not very long – should probably loop it for better effect…
From there I went back to what I know – imported video as frames. Used Timeline and created frame animation from layers, made sure all new layers visible in all layers was checked and pasted in the hands. I ended up with an 8mb GIF – so went back and got rid of 40 frames and got down to 9. Copied the 9, reversed them and added them to get 18 movement frames. Applied the hands frame but wasn’t able to take the opacity down -still trying to figure that one out. That would make it look like the hands were actually in the water. Scaled down the size to 500 pixels and got a gif at 863k.
But for video within a video with a still as a mask and constant will still take many frames being merged – at least in my brain and my level of PS. So I am thinking there are actions and presets to do some of this to be explored to speed things up over merging layer one of vid 1 with layer 1 of vid 2 and so on….don’t cha think?
I may try the long and tedious way with a short clip to try it out when I want the video within video with still.
The real challenge and task ahead is starting with my video and capturing that….seems there is plenty to keep me busy on this.
I am also now thinking I could use the accidental video now as an import as one layer – so again more to think of in creating the parts to get to a whole. Hoping eventually to document more precisely start to finish – that will help me – but let’s just call this the semi-focused keeping busy so I am not worrying about when “the call” will come for now.
Thanks @dogtrax, @mdvfunes, @twoodwar, and #ds106 club for the diversion and a reasonable challenge to take on in staying creative each day and between larger projects. Doing the sprints of creating art objects is good practice and spurs the thoughts and visions of ways to use in other things.
Ever since the movie Twister – a family shout out is COW! – with a little twang and drawl added in. I don’t think we ever saw the full movie. And here it is 20 years later and we still say COW! ANOTHER COW! when we see one while on the road. Here is the 20 second clip.
So the Daily Create 1520 was Create a Cow GIF and all that kept going thru my mind was COW! Another COW!
Cows dancing, spinning, dreaming, all sorts of cows….here’s my COW Gif – keeping to the 20 minute limit on this one so not as smooth or detailed as a finished gif….
I found the California Happy Cow commercials on YouTube. Used the GifIt plugin and captured a cow mooing – exported the GIF and then imported it into Photoshop. Got rid of the twitchy frames and added a tween on the end. Added the text to go across all the frames – Done!
And then – a little out of practice of doing dailys – I put the wrong #number! So it landed in an ice cream prompt. Well – Cows make milk and cream that is needed for ice cream – so it could fit. 🙂
While I have been busy with other life things – I still keep a finger on the pulse of #ds106. Mariana Funes had a birthday this week. The ds106 Shrink on the couch gives abundantly of her time, support and attention to all those in who travel #ds106. The #tdc1499 daily create was to honor her birthday with a gif.
I chose a dog and also changing the color span. Mariana is a whiz at creating artsy minimal gifs and a dog lover.
I love the outcome and now that I have done a low color GIF may have found a new obsession.
