Tutorial to: Your Favorite Lyric

View Assignment Details

Your Favorite Lyric

To create this assignment, start by choosing the lyrics
Then think of a picture setting that would fit perfect with the lyrics you have chosen.

You can then copy the picture from the website and paste it into MS Paint, or if it is a picture that is already saved on your computer, you can open it up in MS Paint directly.

To add the lyrics to the photo, click the textbox button on the top of the toolbar, and open it on the picture where you want the lyrics to be located. Then type in the lyrics and think about what the color the words should be. When you have chosen a color now it is time to decide what font to use, select all of the text and go through all fonts if needed until you find the one you liked the most. Before clicking outside of the textbox to see what the finished product would looks like, make sure the transparent link on the toolbar is clicked so the lyrics just sit on top of the picture, using the picture as the background. After completing the final details of the font, font color and font size I clicked outside of the text box to see how it came out. If you are happy with the results, save the picture to your computer, and now you can upload it to any blog, website or what have you!

View Assignment Details

(Not) Stuck in the Drive-Thru: A Tutorial

View Assignment Details

Before you read any further, please make sure you have appropriate background music playing. You’re welcome. Everyone needs a dose of Weird Al every now and again.

Now, this audio assignment is one of the easiest in the Bank–worth only one star. Despite this, it has a lot of room for creativity and good ol’ goofiness. Plus, I’m showing you all how to do this assignment on Garageband, an application for Mac OS, so fellow Apple users, read on. PC users, read on, as well, because chances are, at some point in your higher education or career experience, you will encounter Mac computers and have to use Mac software. This is a nice way to ease into the OS.

1) First things first: open the application! The icon looks like this and can be found in Finder > Places > Applications:

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

2) Double-click the icon, and be patient. There’s a lot to load in the app, so it might take a while. When it does pop up, you’ll be greeted with this window:

Yeah, this is as awesome as it looks.

3) Since you’ll be recording your voice, double click the mic stand. Name your file whatever you’d like. The .band extension is default for Garageband; you can change that later, so no worries.

3A) For future reference, if you’re penning a song and know what key and time signature the piece will be in, you can alter the file’s details before it loads. This assignment, however, doesn’t require any musical theory.

My personal files are blacked out; that black rectangle won’t typically be there!

4) Your newly loaded workspace should look like this!

Such opportunities await.

5) Now, “Female Basic” and “Male Basic” are just fancy terms for vocal tracks laid down for you to record over with slight attention to pitch variation that occurs between genders. Don’t worry about it, but if you prefer one or the other, go ahead and choose. The differences are quite subtle.

5A) To delete a track, click it, and then hit COMMAND + DELETE. It should disappear from the left hand column.

6) Again, we’re not doing anything fancy with this assignment, so, the first thing I recommend is to turn off the metronome that counts you in during recording. When it’s turned off, there will be no check mark next to the word, and you won’t hear any clicks rhythmically echoing through your headphones.

7) Now it’s time to record! When you’ve prepared your script and accent, press R. You are now recording. Say what you will!

8) Once you’re done with what you’ve decided to order, hit the space bar. This will pause/stop your work. Your space should look a little something like this, with variations in audio marks–little ticks along that line–and overall section length.

Feelin’ like a rockstar, yet?

9) Click back at the start of your recording, near the 1. Press the space bar for PLAY and take a listen. If you’re satisfied, move onto Step 10!

9A) If you’re not happy with the recording, that’s totally okay. This is a learning process, and Garageband is tricky at first! You can get rid of/select all or portions of your recording by literally highlighting sections of the colored area and COMMAND + DELETING. Feel free to take as much time as you need to record over and over and mess around with effects if you’d like! This is a simple assignment that’s fairly wide open, so you have room to fiddle with different details.

10) Once you’re happy with your recording, hit COMMAND + S. This will save it as a Garageband file on your Mac so that you can go back and edit or access it whenever you want. To upload it to SoundCloud, however, you have to make it a .mp3 or .wav file.

11) To do this, move your cursor to the top tool bar and click SHARE. Then, click EXPORT SONG TO DISC.

I’m suggesting you save your file as an .mp3, so when it comes up with this window, just hit EXPORT. Don’t change any details.

Title your piece something memorable and/or awesome and save it in your chosen folder.

So, don’t title it this!

Viola! Your recording is now saved as an .mp3 and can be uploaded to SoundCloud like the rest of your audio work!

I hope this tutorial helped! Let me know what you think or if you have any questions in the comments below!

View Assignment Details

Lincoln’s Selfie – A Tutorial

View Assignment Details

To start the selfie off, you need to pick a political figure.

Using google images, try and find a picture of the person where you can imagine their arm stretched outward.

I grabbed this one of Abraham Lincoln.

Next you want to open the photo with a photo editing software.

I use pixlr.com because it is free.

To remove whatever background there is, you need to use the lasso tool. Before doing this make sure that the layer (right middle box in pixlr) is unchecked so you can actually erase down to no background. This lets you choose what you isolate. Once you have selected the background, you need to use the eraser to get rid of all that garbage behind the figure you want. Tip: select small areas so that if you mess up, you do not have to start all the way at the beginning.

Once you have your figure isolated, uncheck the layer. You should just have the checkered background (if you save at this point the background will look white).

Now go grab the scene you want. Use whatever image you want.

Download that image.

I got a cool outdoor type picture. Abraham Lincoln was an “outdoorsman”. Or so they say…

In pixlr go to Layer->Open Image As Layer. Select your background image.

Now you probably want to change the image a bit. With the correct layer selected in the middle right box, use the adjustment and filter settings to get it just right.

I used Adjustment->Desaturate. This got rid of all of the color.

Next you need to resize things.

Make sure both layers are checked. Click on the layer you need to adjust. Use the Edit->Free Transform tool (or CTRL + T) to use a dragging type of readjustment. You can also use this to position top image (the figure).

If you cannot get the figure on top, you need to just reorder the layers in that same middle left box.

Now, go to Layer->Merge Down. This makes it into one Layer.

Last, use the Blur tool to go around the figure lightly. This gets rid of hard lines and pixels. I only click, I don’t drag the blur tool. It just softens the edges.

Now you have your final selfie! Upload it to flickr, and tag it appropriately.

View Assignment Details

How to remove an item from a picture

View Assignment Details

For this tutorial I will show you how to remove certain things from any picture using Corel Paintshop Pro X6.

We are going to start with this picture, and remove the girl swimming.

To begin, upload the picture to Paintshop Pro

Next, go to the left tool bar and select the drop down arrow on the clone brush icon and select object remover

This will turn your cursor into a lasso. Use this and outline the girl. Once she is outline, a dotted line will appear around her. Now on the top tool bar, select the sqaure source mode button.

This will bring up a square box. Move the box over an area of the picture that you want to replace the girl with. For this picture, I will move it over another area under the water, so that the photo matches

Now, go to the top tool bar again and select the Apply icon

And there you go! The girl is gone!

It’t not perfect but with a little practice you’ll be able to learn how to make it smoother.

View Assignment Details

Twitter Trends Turned Lyrical Poetry – A Tutorial

View Assignment Details

This may seem like an easy assignment however, rhyming and writing poetry can be difficult. I am going to walk you through creating a poem, with a given topic, and even given words.

So first off, how do you check what is trending on twitter and screen shot it?!

First log into your twitter account:

Next, you need to go to the now discover section:

The current trends are at the bottom of the far left column on your screen!

This day there were some interesting trends for me to write a poem about.

To screen shot this, I used the PRNTSCR button on the top left section of my keyboard. You then need to paste it someone. I used windows, so I just pasted it into paint! (Mac users, I hope you have an image editor…)

Ok, so now we need to crop the trends to just a small image.

To do that, we need to use the select tool, to make a box around the trending area, then simply click the crop button! It might take a few times for you to get is just right. If you don’t like it the first time you crop use CTRL + Z to undo it.

Now that we have our isolated trends image we can upload that to flickr.

So in paint, type CTRL + S, and save your image someone you will be able to find it. Like the Desktop.

Now use the Add Media button to intert your picture into the post.

Select the image located on your Desktop, and now it is in your Blog post.

Next we need to write a poem!

here are my trends:

James Garner
#Gaza
Hamas
#MH17
Israel
#RemoveALetterRuinABand
#grantdm
Rory McIlroy
#VinesGotTalent
Netanyahu

So I don’t know what half of these are. There are two ways to figure out what is trending. Click on the trend, or use google.com!

I clicked around and figured out what most of these things meant.

Now that I understand them, I need a crash course in poetry to write a decent poem!

The easiest way I know to write a poem, is get it all together, and reread it to yourself outloud. If something sounds stupid, I change it.

Some of us however need more structure. So first thing you need to decide is what type of poem you want to write. For this assignments blank verse or free verse is going to be necessary. The words are all unrelated so trying to fit it all into a Haiku is not going to work.

‘Blank verse is when our poem sort of follows its own rules. Rhythm, measure, tone, and even rhyming scheme tend to go out the window.

Lines should be able to the same length, for flow, but occasionally that gets thrown out the window for a more dramatic effect.

Besides rereading a poem to myself, I find the greatest greatest tool for me is a rhyming dictionary. You type in a word, and it spits out more than enough words that rhyme to help you get out of a rut.

Try RhymingZone.com .

With that tool in hand, you just need to take the time (maybe a pen and pencil) and write out your poem!

Here is my end product:

Mr. Reeper won today.
No one to tell use the tale of Noah and Allie,
Maverick and more lost with James Garner.
Gaza peace never long to stay,
So many lives lost, citizen and soldier.
Is it you or Hamas taking from us these people,
what happened to our society’s sepal?
The flower of peace began to bloom,
but MH17 controversy brought more doom.
What is it with you and countries like Israel,
the attacks surface, sea, and aerial?
Distracted by gimmicks, jokes and jabs,
RemoveALetterRuinABand?
How can Rascal Fatts and The Grateful Dad,
compare to the tragedy in another land.
Kids begging and asking for a grantdm,
while people die at the hand of Grim?
Should we be so cheered by the accomplishments,
of Rory McIlroy among all these tragic events?
Would you care about #VinesGotTalent,
if your 6 seconds could sway a government?
Netanyahu are you listening,
the streets with blood are glistening…
So now with Deaths at our door,
do we acknowledge or just ignore?

That is my end result. I reread it a few times and made sure it flowed.

Sadly, I got a bunch of morbid trends, but I think I pulled it off.

One word of advice (if you don’t like the trends, check back in an hour or so!)

View Assignment Details

Interview/Music Mashup Tutorial

View Assignment Details

Below is a tutorial for the “Interview/Music Mashup” Assignment using GarageBand.

For songs I didn’t already have, I used a YouTube to mp3 converter.

Once you find the song on YouTube, just copy the link and paste it into the box above the buttons that says “Covert Video.” Then click the “Covert Video” button. The image below should come up. Then, click the “Download” link and the mp3 will be downloaded to your computer. You will then be able to access it from GarageBand.

Once you have done this for all the songs, you can drag the songs from the Media Browser under the Audio tab onto the track.

Now you have a bunch of full-length songs, when you only need snippets of then. To break up a song into segments, you need to use the Split tool under the Edit menu. Make sure the red time bar is located at the time where you want to split the song, then split it.

Do this repeatedly for all the songs until you have all the snippets you need. Then, just use the Record feature (the red circle) to record yourself asking the questions. Rearrange the snippets as needed by dragging them so everything is played in the correct order.

Hope this helps!

View Assignment Details

How to remove a background

View Assignment Details

For this tutorial I will show you how to use the software GIMP to remove the background from any image and then place the image onto another image.

We are going to start with these two pictures

Open GIMP and upload the picture of Harry Potter

In order to remove the background you have to use the lasso tool, so go to tools>selection tools>free select then trace the outline of Harry which will create a dotted line around the image. Once this happens select edit>copy

Next, click file> open and import the image of the field of flowers

Click inside the flower picture and select edit>paste to put Harry in there

We now want to resize Harry so that he doesn’t look like a giant in this picture so select tools>transform tools>scale

To move Harry to wherever you want him to go, select tools>transform tools>move

And now our dear friend Harry is flying through a field of flowers, probably late for a Quidditch game.

View Assignment Details

Tutorial for “Why So Serious?” Video Assignment

View Assignment Details

This is a tutorial that will show you how to do the “Why So Serious?” assignment, where you have to take a video of a serious movie and add the audio from a funny movie. To follow along with my tutorial, you will need iMovie, iTunes, and QuickTime Player, all of which should be available if you have a Mac computer. Part of this tutorial will consist of screenshots because I can’t show you how to use the screen recording in QuickTime Player when I am actually using it myself to record a tutorial. The rest will be a screen recording so it will be easier to follow along with what to do in iMovie.

To start out, you have to find two clips – one of serious movie and one of a funny one. YouTube is the perfect place to find these. Once you find the video you want to use only the audio of, go to this converter website. It coverts the video into a mp3 format, so it will be only audio. Just paste the link to your video inside the box and click “Convert Video.”

The image below should appear once it is converted. Click “Download” and the mp3 should automatically go into your iTunes library.

Now comes the harder part! To get the video from your other clip, you need to open QuickTime Player. Once you do this, go under File>New Screen Recording.

The box below should pop up. Once you hit the record button, the computer will be recording anything that happens on your screen except for the black “Screen Recording” box. When you’re ready, hit the red record button FIRST. Then, put your YouTube video into “Full screen” so that is the only thing recorded. Don’t move your mouse or do anything on the computer that will show anything except the video. Sound doesn’t matter because we will be removing the audio from the video later anyway. When you’re done, click the stop button on the “Screen Recording” box.

Now you should have recorded your video! It will appear in the QuickTime Player window. You can play it to make sure it’s acceptable to use. As you can see below, it will record your screen before you start playing the video.

You can trim your video by going to Edit>Trim, as seen below. This will allow you to cut off any extra recording that you don’t need.

You can drag the yellow border to shorten your video as needed. Click Trim when finished.

Once you’re done, we are ready to save the video to your computer so we can access it from iMovie. Go to File>Export.

The window below should pop up. Save the movie under Movies>iMovie Projects.

Now, we are ready to edit the audio and video together in iMovie! Please see the video below for the rest of the tutorial.

View Assignment Details

Tending to My Cherry Red

View Assignment Details

Once again I’m employing my DS106 time saver maxim to Reduce – Reuse – Recycle by creating a video that takes a close look at the food we eat (for DS106 daily create TDC 633) with photos and footage I had already taken. This time it’s with my favorite birthday cake which has made several appearances in daily creates and other digital storytelling projects.

This beauty had to make another repeat appearance since fellow DS106er Stephanie Jeske was unable to view the time lapse video of me frosting my cake a few weeks back. I use a small section of ZZ Top’s Cherry Red as the sound track and YouTube in Germany has blocked it because of copyrighted content. I’m using an even longer section this time, but I’ve uploaded the video directly to my website, so no autobot is going to block it.

UPDATE 11/2/13: Just discovered there’s a video assignment for this type of project VideoAssignments1024. Yay! Yet another Reduce-Reuse-Recycle for this one.

How it was made.

There are a number of sections to this video that was assembled in Adobe Premiere Elements 12: Intro GIF, Time Lapse, Still Photos, Outro GIF.

The GIF at the beginning of DJ licking the frosting off of the number 2 that was on his cake was made with two photos taken fairly close together. They weren’t close enough to make a smooth GIF right away. I ended up doing some work in photoshop to adjust the size and skew of the photos so that they blended more when flashed from one to the other.

Using the Lapse It Pro app I photographed myself frosting the cake. In reality it took about 20 minutes (551 frames) that was reduced to 46 sec when all was said and done. The app did all the work. I just set my iPhone up on a tripod and went to work using the default settings since this was my first time out using this app.

2 yr old’s beauty

The cake really did look beautiful when I had finished, just like the one I made for DJ’s second birthday. But I made a fatal error by frosting the cake while it was still warm. I was in a hurry to get to my birthday massage and for some reason was driven to take the time lapse photography right then and there. Why I couldn’t wait is a mystery to me now that a little over a month has past since I made it.

Aaahhh! It melted!

When I returned from my massage, I removed the cake from the refrigerator and this is what it looked like. To my horror my beautiful cake had melted. I briefly thought about throwing it out and starting all over again. But I didn’t want to do all that work again. It was my birthday and I wanted to play, enjoy myself, go get my hair done….. While I was running around having fun I came up with a brilliant idea on how I could pass off this monstrosity as something creative- if nothing else.

At 51 you’re showing your age.

My guests are accustomed to this gluten-free birthday cake and had just a few weeks earlier joined in the celebration of DJ’s second birthday. Of course a 2 year old’s cake would look fresh and new, no wrinkles or bags, or cracks showing through. But a 51 year old’s cake? Now that’s a different story. They all laughed and dug in. It still tasted just as good and moist as it always does. And really…. by the time I get it on their plates it’s a mess anyway.

51 in all her glory. No shame required.

The final GIF segment of the video clip was made with a series of still photos as I turned the cake slowly around in a circle. For a first time effort, it’s not too bad. (Note to self… Next time have a marker of some sort on the counter top so I can line up the placement of the object from shot to shot.) The photos were uploaded to Photoshop, assembled as separate layers into one file and turned into an animated GIF.

Music Attribution:

I certainly will give credit where credit is due though, and wish to express my appreciation to ZZ Top for making such good music. You can buy “Cherry Red” on

View Assignment Details

Chicken Heart Terror – Behind the Scenes

View Assignment Details

“It’s going to eat you up!!”

The how and why of the DS106 AnimatedGIFAssignment1162 created of Batman and Robin running away from the Chicken Heart was definitely fun to create. But the bulk of my project time and energy was put into on-line research to locate and link the images, audio files, and relevant websites that provide the story behind the story.

Arch Oboler recording “Lights Out”. (Photo Source)

During audio week of the UMW DS106zone summer 2013 on-line course in Digital Storytelling, I was introduced by Scottlo to the Arch Oboloer The Devil and Mr. O radio plays. As I started listening late one night I found that Oboler had created the “Lights Out” radio play Chicken Heart. This play had been the center of a favorite childhood comedy routine by Bill Cosby from his Wonderfulness album. And I eagerly began what turned out to be a fruitless quest to locate the original 1937 Oboler recording. Sadly, I discovered it was one of his lost episodes. Recordings of the original radio broadcasts in 1938 and 1942 are lost or unavailable, although Oboler later recreated the episode for a record album in 1962 – which I couldn’t locate. There is an 8 min abridged version that many mistake for the original. And amazingly while researching this blog post, I actually came across a December 31, 2008 recreation of the entire Chicken Heart radio play by the Post Meridian Radio Players.

Here’s a link to Wikipedia for those of you interested in learning a bit more about Arch Oboler little more background from Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia: Arch Oboler made effective use of atmospheric sound effects, perhaps most memorably in his legendary “Chicken Heart,” a script that debuted in 1937 and was rebroadcast in 1938 and 1942. It features the simple but effective “thump-thump” of an ever-growing, ever-beating chicken heart which, thanks to a scientific experiment gone wrong, threatens to engulf the entire world. Although the story bears similarities to an earlier Cooper episode (about an ever-growing amoeba that makes an ominous “slurp! slurp!” sound), Oboler’s unique choice of monster was inspired by a Chicago Tribune article announcing that scientists had succeeded in keeping a chicken heart alive for a considerable period of time after its having been removed from the chicken. Recordings of the original radio broadcasts are lost or unavailable, although Oboler later recreated this episode for a record album in 1962.

To create the GIFs and other images I first downloaded:

The PSD of Batman & Robin Running Away

Philco 41-280 Radio
- see their other adventures here
Images taken from The Cosby Kids cartoon show on this blog post
Girl listening to radio (wikipedia creative commons)
Batman, Robin & Catwoman photo
And a photo of what I remember as the hallowed out radio where my sister and I performed our radio plays.

Listening to Bill Cosby's Chicken Heart.

Imagination at work…

Using Photoshop Elements 11 for the mac I created a composite image of the little girl listening to the radio by using the magic wand tool to copy out the representative chicken heart images from the cartoons. I then adjusted the transparency of the cartoon images to 80% to give the impression of an imaginative mind at work and merged the layers.

It took more steps in the process than I was expecting to create the background image of the Chicken Heart terrorizing the city. It was important to show what the Chicken Heart was actually doing. In order to do that I had to shift the Batman & Robin images from the original center to the far right…

and move the original Chicken Heart image to the far left. This resulted in a blank area on the right hand side of the image that was corrected by duplicating the Chicken Heart graphic into a new layer and sliding it over to right.

GIF Background modified from original

At one point I had the blue car mysteriously hanging in mid air, which I promptly fixed. And the color mismatch you see above on the street is hidden behind Batman & Robin, but I had to be careful and align things properly.

Once I had the background completed, it was time to merge it with each of the 13 provided Batman & Robin image layers. For the full version of PhotoShop there was no need to merge the individual layers. If there’s a way to do that here, I’d be oh so grateful if you’d share it with me.

To produce the final GIF:

File=> Save for Web.
Check the animate option box on the top right hand menu
Change the default 0.2 sec frame delay to 0.1 seconds – Otherwise, as I found out, they’ll run too slow, and it’s not as funny.
Click save and give it a file name.
To view your GIF, right click on the file name and open it with a web browser.

TA! DA! Batman & Robin terrorized by the Chicken Heart.

“It’s going to eat you up!!”