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I’m a Professional!

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— Rob Skoczylas (@sgtsocks) September 26, 2012

Well here is one I couldn’t resist! This assignment is “Your very own Spubble“! As soon as I read it, I knew the exact picture I was going to use:

After some weekend training and PROPER use of equipment, us rescue folks like to have a little fun. What I’m wearing is a Stryker Speed-Sheet. We ordered a bunch to test them out. They are used to ease patient transfer from our stretchers to a hospital bed or such. It’s a one time use and well…after we used it in training, I decided to use it some more!

This was a quick create. Open photo in paint, click rectangular callout, change the colors of the callout, add some text, save! BUT remember to save it with a different name so you don’t lose your original files!

2/10

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Oorah! Bootcamp Week 2

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I have officially survived DS106 Bootcamp Week 2!! Alleluia!

Wow, what an experience. This week’s work took more time and effort. I already had a leg up on the first couple tasks i.e. I had already customized my blog, changed up my menus, set up the “cool” version of permalinks and installed my plugins. The next task was to change your theme. I chose not to, because I had already looked at the other themes and decided that my current one is what will work best for me (: I also had a lot of fun organizing my widgets, the tag cloud is OFFICIALLY my favorite concept of this class. I really enjoyed being able to design my blog to reflect me, my personality, and my content for this course. The assignments were definitely a step up from last week. I had to complete 3 Daily Creates, write up a blog post about Creative Commons, link my blog posts to my twitter, and learn how to make a GIF! The GIF assignment proved to be the hardest task of all..

Ta-Da!! My goodness what an adventure creating my first GIF! I chose to use a clip from Sweet Home Alabama, this movieis one of my all-time favorites. In this scene young Jake is protecting Melanie from touching a hot spot that was just struck by lightning

At first, the thought of creating a GIF was very stressful, I researched and downloaded many different types of software but nothing was giving me a good result. After trying for a couple hours to figure it out I finally decided to try the directions on this page. I found them to be VERY helpful. Step by step everything worked and my GIF turned out exactly how I wanted (: RIGHT HERE, you can find the published GIF with a summary all in one post (:

I really enjoyed the three daily creates I participated in this week, I decided to combine them into one post which you can find HERE(:

I really enjoyed being able to set-up my word-press to link to twitter to alert everyone when I posted something new

My reflection assignment on Creative Commons, can be found right here! (: This “research” assignment was very informative and interesting (:

To summarize this week: Stressful, labor intensive, and some enjoyment. I feel as if some things are really easy to do while other tasks are really hard to accomplish. For DS106, I think Bootcamp was a great experience. I learned so much and found that I am able to tackle more and more each day.

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? Don’t touch that, it’s HOT!! ?

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Ta-Da!! My goodness what an adventure creating my first GIF! I chose to use a clip from Sweet Home Alabama, this movie is one of my all-time favorites. In this scene young Jake is protecting Melanie from touching a hot spot that was just struck by lightning

At first, the thought of creating a GIF was very stressful, I researched and downloaded many different types of software but nothing was giving me a good result. After trying for a couple of hours to figure it out I finally decided to try the directions on this page. I found them to be VERY helpful. Step by step everything worked and my GIF turned out exactly how I wanted (:

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Where is my Mind?

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The Creative Process:

YAY, I finally created my first gif. Initially, the task was daunting, but the blog about how to create a gif helped me immensely–I don’t think I could’ve done it so easily without it. (I tried, but it was one of those things where there was just SO many kinds of software offered online. And I wasn’t sure what was safe or not.) http://ds106.us/handbook/tools/creating-animated-gifs-open-source-software/ Check out that link, seriously, so helpful.

I recently saw Fight Club for the first time this summer. I know, it took me way too long. I was definitely out of the loop on that one. But it quickly became one of my favorite movies of all time–definitely in my top ten anyways. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are incredible; not to mention, I love a good penis joke as much as the next dude (or chick). Anyways, this is the pinnacle point of the movie–pinnacle meaning: gave me the chills, point I feel in love with the movie, etc.

If you haven’t seen this movie, don’t worry my gif doesn’t give anything away. Also, it’s not too late to watch it, but I recommend you watch it as soon as possible. SO GOOD.

Here is the youtube video that I used to make the gif from:

I recommend it. Also, the song by The Pixies that plays–couldn’t have picked a better song. Love it. Sorry, I’ll stop gushing now.

 

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DumbleDead

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Scene: Dumbledore falling after Snape Kills him.
Movie: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

First off, I’d like to thank Jim Groom for his awesome tutorial which made the process of making a GIF go ever so smoothly. It was step-by-step with screenshots and links to all the cool software(Fastest Youtube Downloader, MPEG Streamclip, GIMP) to use. I would recommend everyone to check it out, whether you’re in DS106 or just making GIFs for fun!

As for my clip, not only is this one of my favorite movies, but it is from my favorite SERIES of movies. Harry Potter has been a part of my life since 1999 when The Prisoner of Azkaban book was released. As a young kid, I was drawn to the cool looking covers on J.K. Rowling’s novels and decided I should read the first book of the series, The Sorcerer’s Stone, before starting the third book! Well, who knew that 13 years later I would have read all 7 books in the series and watched the 8 movies hundreds of times? If you’re reading this, chances are, you are a part of the generation that has grown up with Harry Potter. If you haven’t read or seen the movies(like my parents), go ask a friend or go to your local library and check them out!

A short summary of the clip: Dumbledore is the Headmaster at Hogwarts(Principal of a magical school) and is the only thing standing in the way of Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters (the antagonist in the series and his followers) from killing off all non-magical beings in the World. Voldemort is weak(literally and figuratively) and assigns one of his followers, Draco Malfoy, to kill Dumbledore. When he chickens out, Professor Snape follows through with Voldemort’s orders and kills Dumbledore.

You’ll notice, I didn’t mention Harry Potter once in that summary. Want to know why the series has his name in the title? Go find out for yourself like I did! It will hopefully take you on an exciting adventure and encourage you to read/watch the whole series over and over again!

 

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Frustrations Resolved…somewhat

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Making a gif proved to be one of the most frustrating things for me. For some reason or another I cannot grasp how to make one. I tried many online sources and all proved to fail me. I tried to find photoshop, but wasn’t willing to spend the money on it. I finally came across the tutorial (HERE) to make one. It took a few tries and after hours of work I thought I had finally gotten it down. Turns out, I can’t figure out how to make it move on this post, but if you click on the picture it will take you to my gif. I can’t seem to get it down perfectly, but I can say it definitely is not due to lack of effort on this project. If I can figure out how to make the perfect gif definitely expect an update!

On a happier note, I love the content of my gif!! Finding Neemo is possibly one of my favorite movies. It never gets old to me! I love the under-the-sea content of it. I feel every time I watch this movie I see something new! It’s such a colorful movie. The sea turtles are all time favorite characters. And it could be due to the fact that sea turtles are some of my favorite creatures or they make me laugh every time. Whatever it is I think they make a great gif! :)

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A little metal for #457

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Not only is this a bastardization of video assignment 457, but it’s also kind of a cheat since I did this video a handful of years ago.  But I’m not a student, and I’m not working for a grade, so I get to do what I want to do.

The rules guidelines for video assignment #457 read like this:

Take a favorite cartoon or anime like show, take some clips, mash them together and add music to it. Try to pick out a specific theme in your clips that follow the theme of the music. Keep an eye out for changes in the music and plan your clips accordingly.

Here’s my interpretation:

Take a favorite cartoon or anime like show, take some clips, mash them together and add music to it. Try to pick out a specific theme in your clips that follow the theme of the music. Keep an eye out for changes in the music and plan your clips accordingly.

I met some of the criteria.

Anyways…  Battlemaster is a Richmond black metal band.  They are wonderful.  Some of the sweetest guys you’ll ever meet.  Back in 2007 they put out Warthirsting & Winterbound, which included the song, “This Mead Is Making Me Warlike.”  When played live, this song really rallied the audience.  It was met with singing, the raising of PBR cans in the air, and sometimes the tossing of said PBR cans.

I took the song and mixed it with public domain footage from Archive.org.  I haven’t looked at this video in years.  The assortment of clips is truly, truly bizarre.  So here we go:

Thanks, DS106, for making me pull this project off the shelf.

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A shining example of parenting

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Inspired by Groom’s animated magazine cover, I decided to try my own. I thought of those creepy Jack Nicholson GIFs from The Shining, and how they really belong on the cover of Parenting magazine.

So I did a search for Shining GIFs to find the right one, then did an image search for Parenting magazine to find a good one to work with. I picked this particular issue for the pixel dimensions. (If you hover over one of the search result thumbnails, you’ll see the size. This one was something like 1600 pixels tall. Most of them were 200-400, which wouldn’t give very good results.) It was a nice bonus that it had an article about tantrums. I tried using Select-Color Range to pull out the type, but wasn’t too happy with the results.

Instead, I used the rectangular selection tool to replace most of Kourtney with the background color from the cover, and then used the paintbrush tool to clear up the parts where her sweater gets behind the type. I duplicated the second “n” to fix the part of the title covered by her hair, and had to do a little more manual work to fix the “e”. It was a little tedious, but not too much.

Then I used Select-Color Range to grab the background color, played with the fuzziness a little, and inverted the selection. A flash of insight told me to change the Image Size of the GIF to match the height of the cover before trying to put the two together.

I pasted it in as the top layer, and the animation plays underneath. I didn’t like the way the GIF aligned with the type, so I undid my pasting and cropped off some of the right side to bring Jack’s head more towards the center. Repasted the type layer and cropped the whole image to magazine proportions, then reduced the image size to make the resulting GIF under 1 MB.

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Firewalk with Me

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I decided I wanted to do a design assignment today, so I started browsing the Assignment Repository. There’s so much great stuff in there (although I do think some of our “Design” assignments need to be re-categorized as “Visual” assignments). I settled on Alternative Book Cover. 

To get inspiration, I started browsing my digital book downloads on Amazon. (Yes, I know I’m the loser who pays more than eBooks are really worth, but, goddammit, I’ve read more in the last 18 months than I had in the last 8 years thanks to my Kindle and iPad). A few years ago I ploughed through the Stieg Larsson series and loved it. It’s not fine literature, but it’s riveting and the characters are pretty fascinating. I decided to do an alternative cover for The Girl Who Played with Fire. I thought I’d find some cute kid shot of a kid. . playing with matches. Then I realized that wasn’t so cute; it was scary. 

THEN I started to think about scary kids and fires, and I remembered conversation Jim and I had yesterday about our favorite Stephen King novels. Aha! I decided to photoshop a picture of Drew Barrymore from Firestarter onto a book cover for The Girl Who Played with Fire. 

THEN I thought about the animated magazine covers that Jim’s been doing, and I knew what I needed to do: 

This was pretty tough for a few reasons. I wanted to stay as true as possible to the original cover of the American edition of the Larsson novel. It’s a pretty stark layout, and the letters are heavily fragmented. But, with some work, I was able to clean them up and add a dropshadow that matches the original. 

I did have to change the spacing of the title to make room for the image. In the end, you can see how the text design of the Larsson book works great on THAT cover, but it’s not nearly as effective on this cover. 

That’s okay, I still think it’s a cool cover. 

I have two problems with it, I guess. First, it’s way big: 2.2MB. Second, the animation doesn’t seamlessly loop, but to do that I’d have to add more frames and the file would just get bigger. 

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Famous Monsters of Filmland Cyclops Animation

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I bring you this so I can share the tutorial for creating an animated magazine (or movie poster) that is to soon follow. This is a brand new ds106 design assignment, and you can find it here. Now back to polishing off the tutorial—it’s actually a lot easier than you would think. The original magazine cover is here if you would like to do a little comparison.

Update: Video tutorial for this assignment posted here.

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