Purikura: It’s what I do ; )

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The Assignment:

Make a ‘what people think I do’ meme.

The Process:

Instead of using a meme generator, I decided to make it from scratch on Photoshop. I picked out the photos I wanted to use (all of which are mine). Then I arranged the photos and added text to a blank black canvas.

The Story:

I’ve been purikura-crazed lately, so the idea popped into my head. Then the rest was simple: I came to Japan for university, so my family thinks I study. I came to Japan to explore, so I chose a picture I took while exploring Asakusa.

Maybe I should’ve purikura-d the meme itself…

EDIT: I posted it on my Tumblr account, which OBVIOUSLY makes it an official meme.

: P

~NOMNOMreeses~

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Ambient Sound Journey Behind the Falls

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If I did this assignment perfectly the images wouldn’t be necessary but hey, I brought my camera and the sound matches these pictures…

Out of the elevator

Down the tunnel

Many languages of tourists

Roar of the Falls

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Join in the brand

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Me and the gals learned to stop worrying and love the propaganda.

Because we’re in DS106 now.

This is an ANIMATED propaganda poster. I used Photoshop and very crudely selected out the bits I wanted to erase, used the eyedropper to select the background colour and filled in parts. This was not satisfactory in some sections so I had to use the rubber stamp tool to clone and get the right variety of colours. Thanks to @cogdog I was able to use the opacity animation feature to make a layer 100% to 0% visible across the animation timeline. I never knew that was there! There are also animation ability for position which would have made my bread head assignment way easier to do, instead of using nudge, you can just set key frame position and Adobe figures out the tweening for you.

Learning, learning, always learning! (hmm…sounds like another propaganda poster)

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Learning by Design: Sketchnoting in DS106

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Jim Groom invited me to present to his DS106 class yesterday. Unfortunately this week has been a challenge to do things in the evenings synchronously so I pre-recorded this video [7min]

For those of you who can’t sit through 7 minutes of video, here’s a quick outline of the talk:

Introduction to me (In B&W, then in living colour!)
Sources of Inspiration: Text

Timothy Gower’s Blog- Elsevier Boycott

Sources of Inspiration: Listening

Sources of Inspiration: Your Beautiful Mind

Doodling Essay

Mechanics

Layout
Lettering
Basic Shapes
Metaphors

Oh. And one more thing

shoutout to Bagman & Allygator from guest presenter Handgela

I have housed all my Visual Notes resources on a special page but this video was my first time talking through a few of my work. It took far longer to create than I’d like to admit and in hindsight, I forgot a few key points to remember when taking on the fun challenge of live sketchnoting.

Reading from the twitter stream and looking at the Flickr ds106doodles after the fact, I think Jim had them listen to Ken Robinson’s Changing Education Paradigm. I love that talk and I think it’s a testament to the students that I can identify that’s what they were listening to, just by looking at their sketchnotes.

I read some of their comments and they had difficulty keeping up. And this is common. This is where the real focus and fun comes in because knowing that you have to draw something to convey the essential points of a talk makes you pay very close attention. You need to be selective about what you decide to write and draw. Sometimes you’re able to keep the thought in your head and draw a lot of it and other times, you just have to let it pass.

Some presenters are easier to sketchnote than others because they state right up front what main ideas they will be discussing. I tend to enjoy classes that run this way too. I’ve read from other incredible visual notetakers that sometimes they even ask for an outline from a talk beforehand. The big thing is that it takes practice. TED talks are excellent for this because they are a great length, interesting and released under creative commons. You can listen and re-listen and hone in your skill. Of course, as Jim showed, the RSA videos are exemplary.

SIDE NOTE (how I did the movie):

I took a picture of my hand holding a pen on paper with my iPhone.

Imported it into Brushes on my iPad.
Created a new layer.
Drew on the top layer.
Exported the brushstrokes as Actions.
Imported into iMovie.
Recorded Audio using iMovie as I watched the animation.

I have been meaning to do a video of what this looks like since a few of my visual practice friends are not familiar with layers and I cannot live without them. Life without layers is so flat.

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Picturing Prufrock

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Inspired by Jim’s Etherized on a Table and Joan’s There is Time, I decided to also give Serena’s Picturing Prufrock assignment a whirl.

The symbolism in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is so rich. Every line has imagery I’d love to illustrate. I could happily spend days illustrating these stanzas. I chose one of the more boring lines because I wanted to try and draw T.S.Eliot himself thinking about getting old.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

120
I grow old … I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

How I did it!

MIXED MEDIA! I used old fashioned water color paper, water color pencils, marker to draw and color. Then I took a pic with my iPhone and uploaded to Flickr!

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ReCaptcha Predictions for 2012

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I’m not going to shake the magic 8 ball or come up with a list of really insightful surprise predictions for 2012. Instead I’m attempting @cogdog’s new #ds106 assignment to illustrate something meaningful out of random words.

ReCaptcha Predictions!

This is the equivalent of reading the random tea leaves at the bottom of your cup. What Black Swans does ReCapcha say Education has in store for the next year?

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

In 2012,

THE Shumpt is the teacher in a slump, living in his walled classroom, relying on tech support to make things happen. The Shumpt will suddenly be carried by his educational technology support team to the edge of the wall to see over the other side.

Here he will encounter Sir PartsBo and become acquainted with the deconstruction of digital fluency. Immediately The Shumpt will come out of his slump and will be reanimated as if a layer of stone has been removed and his professional life will transcend beyond purposeful but might even include- FUN.

Merely considering what exists on the other side of the wall will be known as the Wallar Proposition.

It will not always be simple, of course, because the apocalyptic veffig will try to attenuate the use of toolitas outside the wall. New legislation will be drafted and redrafted, remixed and repurposed to the point of ridiculousness. For example, the Family Educational Rights Stop Online Piracy (fersop) bill will be the source of much consternation to the liberated educator.

Of course, it is difficult to know how this will turn out. The only thing to do would be to analyze more ReCapchas. I recommend submitting assignment ideas to DS106, as there will be a ReCaptcha at the end of each form submission.

This will serve the dual purpose of working on Assignment 305 and contributing to the reanimation of your creative self.

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My Dog, My Muse

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Must. Make. DOG. GIF. ASAP!

Ear flapping Flying Dog

Why must I make a dog gif? Well, let me take you on a journey through my thought process.

As you may know, I have already written how much I love photograph nostalgia like Dear Photograph.

Yesterday my friend emailed me a link to Back to the Future. Be still my heart! What is going on there?!

The artist, Irena Wirning writes:

“I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them…”

I can really relate. I love other people’s photographs, old and new, in their homes, in their albums, in their ancient projectors, in their Flickr streams. You know that Flickr picture with 1 view? That’s me clicking through creating little narratives about the context for each photo.

The way she sets up each shot is so meticulous. I found myself revisiting the site and on the fourth visit, I started clicking around looking at other pages and then- I came across Irini’s Muse: Chini the Chinese Crested dog!.

Now, I have also been reacquainting myself with the joys of dogness in my life.

Most of all I enjoy the walking again. In past winters, I have been prone to semi-hibernate into a mild turpor when cold weather comes. Stella’s necessary walks have been great motivator to get us out of the house.

This weekend on our evening walk, we noticed Stella’s ears looked like she was flying and my dog became my own muse; I thought how cute it would be to make an animated gif of her funny little ears flopping. I filmed a short 10 second video last night on my iPhone.

Then I notice in the twitter stream these hilarious definitive collection of cat gifs. Martha and Alan shared an exchange about the lack of dog gifs, so without a minute to lose, I transfered the video from my phone to my computer, imported into MPEG StreamClip. Set in and out at the appropriate 2 seconds.

MPEG StreamClip screenshot, Select OUT

Exported to QuickTime.

Imported Video to Photoshop as Layers.

On the Mac: in order to import video to layers in Photoshop you need to ensure that you are running 32bit mode. This can be changed from Finder-Applications-Photoshop- Info (cmd+i)- select “open in 32bit mode”

Screen shot Photoshop 32bit mode

Played with delay per keyframe (default is 0.04). Cropped image. Played with dithering. Exported as animated GIF.

Default GIF 0.04s delay (TOO FAST)

Screen shot Photoshop Import Video to Layers

slow 5 frame 0.5 second delay – GIF (TOO SLOW!)

GIF – alternated delay- 0.2s, 0.2s, 0.4s, 0.2s, 0.2s

GIF- alternated delay-0.3s, 0.4s, 0.5s, 0.4s, 0.3s delay

GIF sweet spot: 0.1s delay. Ear flapping 5 frame goodness

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How DS106 Changed My Life

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Having exhausted everyone in my physical proximity, I was sitting around this weekend just hoping someone would ask me about DS106.

#ds106 folk help me out. @jimgroom & I need short video clips telling me what made #ds106 special, powerful, fun, different etc. Anyone?

November 19, 2011 9:20 pm via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@twoodwar

Tom Woodward

Oh, Tom, I’m so glad you asked:

This is the second animation that I’ve tried using this method. The first one was last week for Dave Cormier’s #change11 session on Rhizomatic Learning.

I find it interesting that Rhizomatic Learning has 300 views and two “likes” whereas this DS106 video has only had 30 views and already has 5 “likes”. I realize we shouldn’t conflate mouse clicks with engagement but this is a good example of how I feel the DS106 community is so encouraging and enthusiastic.

What I meant to mention in the video was the essential role of commenting. My first post was just two drawings, no text. The comments caused me to revisit the post and write out context and process. Luckily, Tim and Alan have already touched upon this in their videos.

And maybe you will too? There’s always time to tell the world about how much you love DS106!

Technical notes:

[Yes, I used an iPad but please be aware: I partially despise the things.]

I used the Taptrix Brushes app to do the drawing, which records your brush strokes as you draw. I have been mostly using AutoDesk SketchBook Pro for most of the work in my Visual Practice. I use a pogo stylus. The hardest part is erasing and redrawing because it does not do frame-by-frame animation, just records everything you do.

I do NOT enjoy the process of drawing, exporting “Actions” via email. [EMAIL?It's 2011, why am I EMAILING!?]
Then I have to extract the .zip file into a .brushes file, open the file on the desktop Brushes App (free download). Then export to MOV. Then Import into iMovie. Alas, this is Life With an iPad, where moving content is notoriously painful.

I feel like I help sell these infernal devices every time I do a drawing on one, so I must tell you: it is not all rosy. It takes patience and tenacity.

I used PhotoBooth to record the video and just watched the animation as I read. (This is why I missed the key important bit about comments) Finally I brought the whole thing into iMovie. I confess I also despise iMovie 8 and up so I’m still using iMovie HD (v. 6?). I had to export the thing about 4 times before I got the settings correct. YouTube wants wide screen but Brushes exports 800×600.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

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Filtering for Bags of Gold

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Last night I stayed up incredibly late. Combed over the Change MOOC threads. Analyzed my opinion about comments on the main site vs my blog. Signed up to help with the eBook project. Listened to DS106Radio. Y’know a usual Friday night.

Around 5am I drifted off to sleep as I think I hear It’s…Later…Than…You…Think was playing. I don’t remember any of the episode.

[Screenshot from: Deb Roy, MIT Media Lab Ted Talk March 11, 1011]

But I had the oddest dream

I was sitting with all the listeners from across Canada (BC, ON) and the world (NZ, USA, UK, AU)

and

even though we were geographically far apart
we could still see each other
because
we were sitting on this large patch of sandy earth
plugged into our devices
I was on my laptop
others had mobiles
a few people sat at large desktop PCs

then suddenly
the ground moved upwards
and we weren’t on the ground at all
but rather a giant sieve box

like the kind the maybe the gold rush would use
to filter between gold and dirt
or what they use for compost
to filter between nourishing earth and waste
and the box lifted the listeners and their devices away from the earth
and the sand fell through the sieve
and all that remained were the listeners
having a conversation
and the words shapeshifted into
these incredible hybrid beasts

they were
beautiful and slightly grotesque mashed up beasts
straight from mythology
Miyazaki’s Totoro inspired,
or something from Spirited Away
impossibly combined
hirsuit insect dinosaurs
grasshopper legged yeti

and all the listeners sat physically in this filtered sandbox
were
elevated,
but trapped
with giant brick walls around us
we were in a box
though we didn’t notice
because we were
having fascinating conversations
but people from the outside the giant walls
below our huge sieve box
in the rest of the world
had no idea what was going on
and it was impossible to describe the beasts of the conversations properly
and the outsiders couldn’t see the beasts
so they were just mythical

soon enough,
interestingly,
outside the box
the beasts rose in popularity
out of context
not as pieces of conversation
rather, instead, as products on shelves
children had them as beloved stuff toys
stickers
colouring books
there were handcrafted interpretations for sale on etsy

at first we enjoyed the popularity of our beasts
we had shared the wonder of our experience
and they were so flippin cool
of course they should take many forms
beyond a conversation

I wanted to collect all of the beasts
to put on my shelf

but

there was also this acute sadness
a loneliness
a feeling of incompleteness

that we were unable to describe the feeling
of sharing
of being
and learning together
of the ideas
that sprang forward
without commodifying it
or objectifying it