The Dark Side

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For this assignment the task was to create a mashup of two iconic movie scenes. It was said that we should aim to be as subtle as possible with the mashup image.

When viewing the assignment page I thought that the main given example simply puts the “Wilson” ball from the movie Cast Away as a second moon onto a minor scene from the 5th Star wars movie. So this main example isn’t exactly meeting the assignment brief with using iconic scenes. So on viewing another example of what someone had previously done for the assignment which also wasn’t fully meeting the brief I was given inspiration from their work to create a mashup which also had a different take on the assignment.

Their assignment work which inspired me can be seen here on their blog and as the image below simply took a Range Rover and placed it onto the moon.

moon

Image created by Emily Atkins as seen here.

When I read the description of their finished mashup on the assignment page before I saw it I had pictured something different in my mind to what they had actually made. This inspired me to use their idea as a starting point to create a better mashup like I’d first imagined upon reading this example where I would place a Range Rover or other 4×4 vehicle into a Moon scene and then possibly add in a couple of other elements around it.

I started by gathering the first two images for the mashup which were a photo of a Brabus 700 Mercedes 6×6  from here and a photo of the Moon’s surface from here. These can be seen below:

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I opened both of these images within Adobe Photoshop and began to blend them together using the Magic Wand tool, Quick selection tool and Eraser to remove the background of the 6×6 image. I then used the black and white adjustment layer to remove the sand colour from the shadow and window since the moon is monotone.

I then gathered some more images to put into the background of the mashup image to give it some movie relation for the assignment and to make it more interesting to viewers. I felt that the space theme and menacing looking Brabus 6×6 lent themselves to relation to the evil characters (dark side) in Star Wars. I gathered an image of a star background from here, an image of the Death Star from from here, and image of an ATAT from here and an image of a Death Trooper from here. These can be seen below:

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I then inserted these into the Photoshop file to blend into the mashup. The star background was placed over the moon scene and was erased until it just covered the black “sky”. The death star was scaled down, placed in the top left corner and the opacity was reduced to make it blend in with the “sky” more. The background of the ATAT image was then removed using the quick selection tool and then scaled down to be positioned near the horizon.

The death trooper image was then positioned next to the 6×6 and scaled to be appropriately size in comparison to it. To make it look realistic I then created a shadow by selecting the area of the trooper and on a new layer filling in this area with the paint brush tool to get a silhouette. This was then positioned, scale, angled to the same degree as the 6×6 shadow with the perspective transform tool  and the opacity reduced which created a realistic shadow effect.

Using the paint brush I then added a white highlight to the right of the trooper and death star to add even more realism by making them fit with the scene lighting and also used dark grey to cover the 6×6 number plate since I wanted the finished image to be as good as possible.

The finished mashup can be seen below:

mashup-assignment

I’m quite happy with the result of the mashup and while the image is obviously not real or subtle I think that the cleanliness of the Photoshop adds to the effect that it “could be real” as you can’t see where I’ve cut out the images and that they have been blended well. Looking at the finished image it also reminds me of a car advert with the perfectly lit and central car and the other elements engaging viewers into looking at it. (Also slightly somewhat related to the Nissan Star Wars Advert)

I also tweeted the finished assignment to the DS106 participant that inspired me to create this!

 

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Animate 2600: Miners on the Moon

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I’m having a blast with creating GIFs for the ds106 GIFfest, but I’m also enjoying Stella, the excellent Atari 2600 emulator that Jim Groom turned me onto before Christmas. I spent a few good solid hours playing some of my old favorites, including Miner 2049′er (just as difficult as I remember), Moon Patrol, and Missile Command (still as good as I remember). I wanted to create a bunch of separate GIFs from these games to try and capture the twitchy nature of 8-bit gaming, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the results.

 

Miner 2049'er was a beloved classic for me.

endless moon patrol

 

It was difficult for me to capture a moment in Miner 2049′er that conveyed the strongest memories I have of the game, which would be a still shot of my miner in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the level after falling from a high ledge. I created a GIF of the miner falling to his doom, but I wanted something that worked better as an seamless loop, not just a “restart” and fall. The same goes for the Moon Patrol GIF. I wanted to create a seamless action shot to convey the frenetic “run and gun” that you felt while playing the game. Miner 2049′er and other platformers at least gave you a safe spot to rest or wait until pushing ahead. Moon Patrol was not so nice, as your vehicle pushed forward whether you wanted it to or not, in an endless treadmill of UFOs, pits, and other obstacles.

During the creation process I kept thinking about the episode of Futurama in which Fry, a present day schmo transported to the future after being cryogenically frozen, dreams of visiting the moon. His future friends take him to the Moon Park, which turns out to be a huge disappointment for Fry as the moon has been completely “Disneyfied” and turned into a cheesy theme park. The lunar rover ride is on a rail, cotton candy comes in “moon rock” grey, and the most awful form of revisionist history takes place in a riff on the “It’s a Small World” ride; the “Whalers on the Moon” ride presents Moon tourists with what is believed to be what man’s first trip to the moon looked like, a bunch of drunken sailors with harpoons who have set out to hunt whales on the Sea of Tranquility.

The only way to clear my brain out was to create a new ds106 assignment that I’m calling “Animate 2600 Mashup” and take both my Moon Patrol and Miner 2049′er GIFs and cram them together, thus creating “Miners on the Moon”. Sure, it’s not quite the same thing as the Futurama joke, but it was a fun remix of the idea.

miners on the moon

 

And because you’ve been a good sport about reading this entire non-education related blog post, I thought I’d at least create a “how to” video on creating an animated GIF using Photoshop and just about any video clip you can get your hands on.

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