I was sent to a resident bungalow this week to help in creating a new arrangement for the occupant.
First priming and painting were done first. The resident decided on Rye Grass green for wall color – it reminded him of when he was a child and felt like all the cares in his world were lifted by laying in the grass.
In order to conform he needed to have a TV installed. Keeping with the vintage style it was built in to a space and has a retro feel about it. The lion planters are add as decor.
When testing the TV stations it seemed I was able to get an outside signal. Gnomes kept showing up on different channels. I am not sure how I got the signal – but there must be some information in the programming that is running. Either that or as I was teleporting some of them were in the tele-porter with me and are now residents in the Village too!
Be careful – these Gnomes are not usually able to be seen and now they are broadcasting n the Village! Must be some information that needs to be sleuthed.
Icelandic Week at the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival seems to be causing multiple sightings of wee forest folk! Cousin Ron has hinted that we are not alone in Bovine County – but I am seeing more elves, fairies, and gnomes than terrestrial beings so far.
This is a visual assignment from the ds106 assignment bank. Multiply Yourself. I decided to multiply a Gnome named Boo (wonder if he is related or knows MamaBoo?) He is a playful guy popping out of the garden with a hearty laugh.
I had to set the scene. Set the camera on a tripod so it wouldn’t move and then place Boo in different places. Since he is a little stiff – I could only pose him at different angles of direction and depth from the camera.
After getting some shots, I uploaded to Photoshop and loaded them as a stack so that they all went into the same project file and at the same size.
From there it was selecting one as a base and then using the selection tools to cut Boo out and then cut the backgrounds placing him with the base photo in place. Since he is mostly in the foreground there was not as much detail in layering needed.
Another reason for choosing this assignment was to see how it might be useful in creating a fairy garden tour….still have that on my mind and bubbling.
I think I might teleport over to the Village and see if any of the forest folk have been in the gardens….
It is visual assignment week in #burgeron106 and it is Icelandic week as well. That means, gnomes, elves, fairies and more.
The poster could be “design” because it is a poster- but I used my own photos to create it. (well – except for NanaLou’s porch)
I used a shot of the moon off my deck. I have tried for moon shots for a long time and this one is a step up in starting to understand the settings on my camera. It is from the fall – but it also forced me to get my camera out again and actually use it over my phone.
From there I decided to learn how to use the external flash and remote I got for Christmas this last year. I used it once and could never get it to work again – packed it away.
I spent about an hour trying to get the flash to fire when I took a picture – nothing worked and I have about 200 pictures of only black to prove it! Searched the Internet and everything said “not a problem – works easily – not difficult”…….hmnnn……..after a few more tries I finally figured it out! I had put the receiver on backwards!
Problem solved.
I use the external flash in one hand and hold it at different angles as I shoot to get different effects. I have some Tom Clark Gnomes that I collected years ago and have since moved to the basement with the former collections of things and thought they would make good subjects. More on how I shot the pics as the next products are completed.
Once I had the picture and lighting I liked – I cropped it and added it to the poster.
So while it looks like a design assignment – I am focusing on the visual and photography – and pictures telling a story. 🙂
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!
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 was sent to a resident bungalow this week to help in creating a new arrangement for the occupant.
