Category Archives: Animated GIF

Storytelling Used in Poaching Talent (3M-DS106 Repost)

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HCHeadlessGIF

“HC” Headless Self-portraits

This blog post was submitted internally at 3M by “HC”, one of the 3M-DS106 Salon members on 9/10/13. I’ve been given permission to re-post it to my personal blog in order to share it with the outside DS106 community.  Last week “HC” created his headless self-portrait that I riffed into this GIF. [Read about it here.] Now this week he’s created his own GIF to go along with the post below.

STORYTELLING USED IN POACHING TALENT

By “HC” a 3M-DS106 Salon member

Storytelling can be used in a number of ways, from sharing experiences, showing a vision, an escape from the real world or even poach top talent from another company.  When I heard one of my friends from high school left Google (Australia) in November 2012 to join a small start-up (Canva), it raised some eyebrows – was it that Google was treating him poorly (doubtful based on the perks and benefits they get and constantly on the top employers to work for list), or did they offer him more money than what Google was giving him (doubtful based on the fact it is a small start-up that hasn’t raised their first round of capital yet).  So what was it that pushed him to switch?

Recently Business Insider (Australia) published the pitch-deck that was enough to sway Dr. Hearnden over (here is the link to the article).  It was lucky for Canva to have Lars Rasmussen as their advisor because David was in Lars’ team in Google Wave before Lars left to go to Facebook.  Apparently Facebook also did a pitch-deck story for Lars to leave Google and join Facebook – which might have influenced his advice for this approach.

I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to play around with animated GIF and have the pitch-deck in one image.  Interesting enough the pitch-deck itself didn’t have the images of the same size so I had to fill it in as black to block off the image below.  To make it readable, I set the frame speed at 3 seconds, so for 16 frames this means 48 seconds to view their story for Dave.

HC_Canva_PitchDeck

Would a pitch-deck like this sway you from your current position (assuming you are somewhat happy with your job at the moment)?

********************************

Comments:

“HC” this is a great example of the power of digital storytelling and the use of the GIF format in this context is something I haven’t seen yet. BRAVO! Thank you for creating and sharing with the rest of the salon. And speaking of sharing…. do you mind if I share this with the outside DS106? Or even better yet, do you have an outside personal blog where you are creating your own non-proprietary digital presence?

Reply…

Thank you Rochelle, I think it is powerful what they did to Lars and Dave (and creative). It would be cool to see Facebook’s deck to Lars. You are free to share this with the outside DS106 as it is public information – although I did take the photos without asking permission from Canva or the Business Insider but at least attribute it back to them. I have pondered creating my own non-proprietary blog but find it hard to find time to do so. Started to do Twitter so I do have somewhat a small digital presence (in addition to some of my activities on LinkedIn within some groups).

What did I do in Week 2?

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FdeTroyLectureMoliere_DS106-3MWhat did I do in DS106 Headless 13 Week 2? Tried to keep up with essentially two courses of ds106 at the same time, and it’s stretching me to the limits.  I’m learning tons setting up the 3M-DS106 Salon’s cyber-infrastructure behind the 3M firewall.  And continuing to experience a lot of frustration as I come up against technical obstacles with the 3M systems that I know I can do here on my WordPress blog, in Twitter, in Tumblr, on Flickr and YouTube.  But the small group of brave souls who are taking this journey with me are jumping in, starting internal blogs, commenting on one another’s posts, sharing their skills and workarounds, creating headless self-portraits, and GIFs –  even had an unexpected GIF riff today with a Koala bear that wanted to blink.  🙂

HCHeadlessGIF

The 3M-DS106 Salon going headless.

I just have to share the headless self-portrait created by one of the 3M-DS106 Salon members, HC. He had followed the advice to take two photos- one with him in the picture and one just of the wall.  He hadn’t counted on the lighting casting a shadow against the back wall. With GIMP he created two versions which I’ve ‘riffed into a GIF’ to illustrate the differences. When asked which we preferred I was torn. I’m certainly familiar with the flat no-head-at-all version, but his shadowed headless self invokes in me the realities of the work that goes on behind the scenes in any collaborative effort.  There are always leaders in some shape, way, or form, but they may not be visible.

BLOGGING

“Each blog post must be able to stand on its own as something that makes sense if that is the only thing a visitor reads on your site.”

I’m getting a lot of practice blogging these days, and I found the blogging tips very helpful:

DAILY CREATES

Some of us who have been through a round or two of ds106 know the realities of balancing a full-time job, family, friends, and the addictiveness of being an open-online participant in this digital story telling community.  We were joking about the three R’s could be “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”.  You can read all about how I’m using these to try and keep my balance and sanity as I manage all of my responsibilities. State of The Daily Create – wk2

“IT’S SHOWTIME” WITH A DIGITAL STORYTELLING GIF

BeetleJuiceGIF_2

One of my favorite movies of all time and characters is Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice.  The ghostest with the mostest.  This 1988 comedy horror film directed by Tim Burton is a scream and I’ve always thought quite romantic too.  [Wikipedia Post] There are indeed headless ghosts running around from time to time.  But none of those scenes seemed as appropriate to sum up the movie and capture the essence of a key scene as when Beetlejuice, a self-proclaimed “bio-exorcist”, is being released from his exile in a small model town in the young couples attic. Indeed… It’s Showtime! Including a post on how I made the GIF.

Removing GIFFight for 3M 

Headless Over Heels In Love 

Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr

Picking up the GIFFight challenge this week turned out to be a double edged sword.  I had no problem creating and posting my “Headless Over Heels In Love” GIF. But a serious issue arose when another GIFFighter, not in DS106, posted a GIF that I feared could be labeled as sexual harassment by someone viewing it from 3M. This prompted the e-mail exchange below with one of our ds106 headless mentors.

I’ve been struggling with this decision since the 80’s toys poster GIFs. The drug & sexual references in a couple of the GIFs are not appropriate in the corporate world. The latest naughty GIF could even get me in trouble for sexual harassment. I know the guys are just having fun, but I take my professional responsibilities seriously. I’m going to remove the GIF Fight assignment references from my 3M version of the weekly assignments.
I don’t feel I have any right to ask the GIF Fight guys to not post those kinds of GIFs since this is their game &  I am just a visitor.  These are some of the consequences we run into with the open nature of the course. How have you guys handled stuff like this in past DS106 courses?
Sincerely,
Rochelle
****************************
Rochelle,
Perfectly understandable. First of all, not everything listed in each week’s laundry list is necessary; it is more of a buffet than a required consumption list. GIFFight was an add-on; the real challenge in this week is asking people to figure out how to create an animated GIF w/o us providing explicit directions.
It could be a lot worse. A lot. But this is the flip side of a class on the open internet. We had a case in 2012 where some male students did a radio show played in class that had some offensive content to women. It led to some hard but good discussion on grounds of decency.
But for the most part we have avoided as much of this that could easily happen.

Gardner Campbell Golden Treasures

Brain_AliensFiguring out how I wanted to share my reflections on Campbell’s article and videos took some time.  My first attempt had me making a little GIF from a discussion point about the work of John Medina on the human brain.

After seeing Mariana Funes use the Tapestry app, I wanted to give it a try.  It seemed like an interesting new platform to capture my notes from the Gardner Campbell 2012 discussion with a group of UMW DS106 students. And I tried to incorporate my little alien presenter. It turned out “okay” – nothing to write home about though. Next time I make one, I’d like to add more images to the mix and figure out the best animation speed when adding a GIF.

UPDATE: 9/11/13… Imbedding the tapestry story so that it work across multiple operating systems, browsers, desktops, and mobile devices is proving to be an issue. I’m trying to figure it out and will keep an updated list of ways to help you see the story.

  • You may need to refresh the page to have the story show up.
  • Try a different browser.  I know Goggle Chrome works for me.
  • By refreshing the webpage on a desktop computer you can return to the beginning of the story when finished.
  • Here is a direct link to the story in Tapestry:
  • Link to the story posted in Tumblr:


Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr
download/iPhone

Headless Over Heels In Love

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GIFFight_MannequinsLove

Headless Over Heels In Love [Tumblr Link]

GIFFfight_ManequinsI’m joining the GIF FIght again.  This time we were given a pair of stark white mannequins to work with. I like to give some time to thinking about my projects before I start them. [Link to past example of my non-linear creative thought process. ] I had a couple of ideas in mind that would use existing GIFs that I could riff off of like Alan Levine’s (@Cogdog) blue caterpillar. It didn’t work here, but I’m going to use it someday. I then tested out what it would take to move the arms to have them hold hands.  It could be done, but with more work than I had time for. My daughter is getting married on Saturday and if I wanted to complete this DS106 Headless13 Week 2 AnimatedGIFAssignment1190 I needed to get it done now. graphics-hearts-230756I then had the idea of giving this lovely headless couple pumping hearts.  I tried my luck over at Microsoft Clip Art, but again nothing seemed to work.  A Google image search on animated heart and GIF was fruitful and led me to a whole bunch of free heart GIFs at:  http://www.picgifs.com/graphics/hearts/ Using Adobe Photoshop CS5

    1. graphics-hearts-741799I opened the animated heart GIFs which show up with all of the layers intact.
    2. Combined the two heart GIFs with the mannequin base layer
    3. Selected all of the layers for the hearts
    4. Moved them into place
    5. Enlarged the small heart layers to match the size of larger heart.
    6. Created the animation frames by selecting the appropriate layers.  There is no need for merging of layers when using the full version of Photoshop.
    7. Resized the entire image to 350px by 500px making sure it would be less than 1Mb so Tumblr would accept it.
    8. Previewed at 256 colors, liked it and saved as a GIF.

To complete the process I uploaded my completed GIF to my Tumblr account, wrote up this blog post, and posted to Twitter and our DS106 Google plus community.

 Past GIF FIght Entries:

Other links to animated hearts I decided  not to use.

Chomp Chomp The GIF Fight

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PacMan_400

As I become more and more experienced with any of the digital media platforms we play with here in DS106, my thought process for how I choose and go about creating matures. Let me walk you through how this one went.

I read the tweet announcing the new #GIFFight challenge photo had been posted at about 9:30pm.

I was seriously considering going to bed early. But now my mind started thinking about what in the photo I could animate. That was it. I was sucked in. But I really did want to get to bed at a decent hour. So… it went something like this.

Run! Run! I forgot my meds again!

Run! Run! I forgot my meds again!

Hmmm… I could animate Superman flying across the page… Yeah, that might work…. Or I could add the ‘Batman & Robin Run Away From $#!%’ GIF to up top under one of the monster guys. Nah… would probably make the GIF too big. Tumblr only gives you 1Mb and 500px to work with. Let’s see. Oh, how about incorporating the headless theme? I could have Pac-Man come in and eat Batman and Robin’s heads off. Nah… I’d have to rebuild background. Hey.. That Pac-Man concept is good. I think Pac-Man is an 80’s thing too. Yep. Trusty ol’ Wikipedia confirms it. First introduced into the US in Oct. 1980.

1024px-Pacman_HD

Public Domain Image

Let’s find a usable, non-copyrighted image with a Google search. Drat, all of these are copyrighted or unknown licenses. Wait, here’s a simple-looking one. And what luck. It’s a CC Public Domain licensed wikimages.

 

 

PacMan_Lines

Pac-Man can move along the white lines, looking like original game.

Now that I have my image, how shall I move the little guy across the page. Hey wait a second, there are white dividing lines between the images, sort of like the video game. Yeah… I can make him move along the lines.

 

 

PacMan_Only

Pac-Man open, closed & change directions

Oh, but I’ll need to have his mouth open and close. Let’s do some copying, pasting and a little band-aid work to create a Pac-Man with a closed mouth.

Great I have all of the pieces. Let’s start him moving along the line. No that’s not right. He is moving too far from frame to frame. That’s better when they are closer. Hmmm.. he has to turn the corner, I need to duplicate my two pacman layers and rotate them 90deg clockwise. Chomp, chomp, chomp. He finishes his way out of the GIF.

PacMan_Pellets

Pac-Man can eat the pellets

Let’s take a look at it. Yep. That looks right. Hey wait…. There are little pieces as he’s heading out of the frame that look like the pellets that Pac-Man eats. Oh… I have to do something with that.  Another round of copying, pasting, resizing of a layer to cover the objects as he passes by. Now this is lucky… Because of the way I have Pa-cMan moving across the screen and his size, I won’t have to make the pellets disappear gradually. They can all be eaten in one pass as Pac-Man chomps by. Now we’ll post to Tumblr. Tweet out #GIFFight completed.

Oh that’s really ni…. wait a minute, hold the Tweets.  The shadow by the pellets is partially obscured by the new layer covering them up. Drat. I want to fix that. Let’s see if Tumblr will let you replace a photo without having to change the post link. YES! I can delete the old one and add a new one in its place and no one needs to know about the mistake at this point. Go back into Photoshop. Erase a bit of the new cover layer so that the entire shadow is visible. Save as a GIF remembering to bring it down to 500px. Open Tumblr post, delete old version and replace with new version.

Ta Da!

DJ B-day Dance Photostrip GIF

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DJDanceGIF_Strip_2

The DJ Birthday Dance Fim/GIF Photostrip

You know how you can take those quick burst photo strips at the mall or the fair? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could bring it to life with a GIF? That was my inspiration for making this Film/GIF Strip extracted from a short video clip taken on my grandson’s 2nd birthday this past weekend. [See his birthday cake here]

HOW IT WAS MADE

DJGIFDance

DJ Birthday Dance Still

I first downloaded the 9 second video clip my daughter sent into Adobe Premiere Elements, where I promptly exported it as an image sequence choosing 10 frames per second as my download. This significantly reduces the number of JPEGs produced. [Read how here]  I choose the images I wanted to use to make 4 different GIFs. Then I downloaded a free to use film strip image from Imikimi to use as my border.

With a little trick I learned yesterday, I duplicated the layers from each potential GIF and when the dialog box comes up, lo-and-behold, it asks me where I’d like to duplicate them to.  Of course it defaults to the file you are in at the moment, but by changing that drop down selection to my working consolidated file, I can easily move them without much of a bother. (Unlike what I’ve been trudging through on previous projects.)

Once all of the images were aligned onto one strip, using the full version of Photoshop , (each GIF having its own location) I created two animation frames and set them to 0.2 seconds.  There is no need for merging of the layers like when I’m using Photoshop Elements. THANK GOODNESS! My first attempt with all four GIF frames moving didn’t appeal to me.  [See below] It felt just too busy. I also wasn’t real pleased with the first GIF in the series. After some trial and error I decided I liked the look of the film/GIF strip with Photo A and D remaining stationary, while the two center GIFs of DJ really dancing continued to move.

DJDanceGIF_Strip_4

All frames moving are too busy for this Film/GIF strip

I’m now contemplating how I could turn one of these into a 3D Stereo Wigglegram GIF like Rockin’ The Rocks in 3D. The background is basically still with mostly DJ moving.  I think that means I can extract DJ from each photo and keep a single background image without needing to do much work rebuilding the chair.  Hmmmm……

Polar RIFF-A-GIF

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jim_groom_dance_Freezer

DS106′ Jim Groom doing the Polar Bear Polka in Viv’s Freezer

Some of the best parts of ds106 happens when people spontaneously build off of the whacky things others share. Rapid fire style. Your assignment is to riff on someone else’s ds106 work and make it new in a GIF form. It can be revising an existing GIF, or taking a graphic and turning it into a GIF. [ Animated GIF Assignment 859 ]

Where in the world is Jim Groom? He’s moved from Christina’s refrigerator
http://ds-ina.tumblr.com/post/57311409496/groominmyfridge
to Viv’s freezer. http://flic.kr/p/eSZKx7

Talk about reduce-reuse-recycle.  I get a three-for-1 on a GIF I made for fun some days ago.

  1. Talky Tina’s August 2013 GIF Challenge #13: RIFF-a-GIF 
  2. DS106 RIFF A GIF Animated GIF Assignment 859
  3. Dancing Jim All Over The World: Animated GIF Assignment 1001

Notice how Jim is nestled in the polar bear’s arm? By wisely choosing my original photo there was no need for rebuilding a part of the image.  It was a simple wave of the magic wand tool over the polar bears leg in Photoshop Elements. Then the new layer was placed in front of dancing Jim.

jim_groom_dance_RLL

Dancing Jim Groom. Right click to download & open as layers in photo editor.

Get Ready to Tumbl! The #GIFFight is on.

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Vader_DS106_GroomJoinAlliance_2

“DS106 Joins the Rebel Alliance” and the Tumblr #GIFFight by @Rockylou22

DS106 joined in the Tumblr GIF Fight (#GIFFight) this week.  Our subject?… to GIF-ify Darth Vader. A few of us (who I knew about) stepped right up when the tweet from @mbransons came across our screens.

And now Talky Tina has posted August 2013 GIF Challenge #12: You Ain’t My Father, Bub! GIF Fight! [ Animated GIF Assignment 1190]

Vader_DS106_GroomJoyRide

DS106 Joins the Rebel Alliance by @Rockylou22

I had so much fun making Groom Outta This World With Joy, followed by his surfing the DS106 space shuttle in celebration of joining the “rebel alliance”, that I couldn’t help making another, and then another. Since I’ve moved over to the full version of Photoshop I can do so much more. (I apologize for the slight background image bump on animation frame #3.  I tried to fix it, but finally gave up.)

GIF #1: DS106 Joins The Rebel Alliance

There are three moving animations In this GIF. A feat too time consuming and technically difficult to have produced with Photoshop Elements. All those merging of layers just to get an idea of what I had would’ve been a nightmare.  [See earlier post: Groom – Outta This World] In the full version I can maintain all layers and view work in progress by simply selecting and deselecting layers for each animation image. The bouncing globe only required a capture of Vader’s front fingers to be placed as a layer over the globe when in the palm of his hand. What was tricky here was getting Dancing Groom and the DS106 Space Shuttle to align properly as they moved across the screen. Timing, spacing, positioning, etc. But again, through the wonders of really nice (and unfortunately expensive) software it wasn’t a chore – just a little fiddling around.

GIF #2: What Really Happened to Humpty Dumpty

I’ve been downloading images from Microsoft Clip Art lately and would often see animated GIFs that I thought would be fun to use in projects.  But I couldn’t get them to load into Photoshop as layers because the files are what’s called Indexed color mode and they need to be in RGB.  You’ll never believe how easily I got around this technical difficulty. (After a bit of trial and error though.)

  1. Open the GIF in GIMP 2.8 as layers

    Humpty_Dumpty_Transparent

    Humpty Dumpty GIF

  2. Image=>Mode=>RGB (See screen shot below)
  3. File=>Export
  4. Select file type as Photoshop image (*psd).
  5. Click Export
  6. Select “As Animation” in dialog box (see screen shot below)
  7. Click Export
  8. Open with Photoshop.  All layers will be visible.

 

ConvertToRGB

Converting a GIF from Indexed to RGB in GIMP

SelectAnimlayers

Export RGB GIF as animation : GIMP screenshot

Poor little Humpty Dumpty.   He was lulled into a false sense of security watching a sweet little butterfly. Then WHAMMO! The Death Star zooms in and knocks him off his wall.

By hacking into the image layers of the original GIF I…

  • Made the wall shorter.
  • Extracted Humpty from each layer to have more control over how he moved in the scene.
  • Extracted the butterfly to get two separate image layers: wings open, wings closed, to create the illusion of flying away.
  • Put the egg into its own layer. (Which ended up being used in GIF#3.)
  • By lassoing the last pillar and pasting it into a new layer I had a place where the egg could splat.
Vader_Humpty

GIF#2: What Really Happened to Humpty Dumpty by @Rockylou22

GIF #3: Oh Crap! Run, Run

Vader_duck_2

“Oh Crap! Run, Run” Tumblr #GIFFight submission by @Rockylou22

Number three in my Vader series stars a little ducky Duck_Lifesaver_Transparentescaping the wrath of Darth after laying an egg in his hand. I took the egg from the Humpty GIF and placed it in Vader’s hand. I used the same fingers layer I had used in GIF#1 to make it look like Darth was actually holding the egg in the palm of his hand.

Besides getting my duck to run across the railing, the splatter of egg onto the post and slowly sliding down took some creative effort. Thanks to a video tutorial by Michael Branson Smith, I learned how to distort an image by using the transform layer command.  Talky Tina had used this effect in her Flower Power GIF to make the flowers mold around the top of her Drill Sgt hat. I had been wondering how this was accomplished.

Select image layer => Edit => Transform => Warp => adjust handles till it looks right

Vader_duck_WarpEgg

Warped egg in Vader’s hand.

As I was writing up this section of my post to get the correct sequence for transforming an image layer I noticed that I should’ve warped the egg in Darth Vader’s hand too. It looks so much better for dripping if it’s draped.

Feel free to Riff and hack into any of my GIFs. It’s fun to see the creativity of DS106 in action with stuff I’ve posted.

I made a point of including all of the GIF files so you could use them if you wanted and a few other pieces of art used in this post.  [Talky Tina  August 2013 GIF Challenge #13: RIFF-a-GIF]

Transparent GIF of Groom’s Joy Ride on the DS106 Space Shuttle

Groom_DS106Shuttle

Groom’s Joy Ride aboard the DS106 Space Shuttle. Right click to download. Open in photo editor as layers to use.

RLP Under Construction

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RLP_UnderConstruction

Rockylou Productions Under Construction

August 2013 GIF Challenge #6:  Sophisticate Your Own, Personal “Under Construction” GIF

or

 DS106 AnimatedGIFAssignments911

RLP_Logo_27leavesThe Rockylou Productions logo was created by my daughter, Amber Lockridge, as a surprise gift for me back in October of 2012. It was fun to animate our webheader to create this Under Construction GIF.  It was a simple cut, copy and pasting of the letters and parts into different layers using the full version of Photoshop. Once the layers were in place, selecting the appropriate layers and timing to be visible during the animation sequence.  Nothing to this one.

The tough part of this GIF challenge is going to be figuring out how to customize my Error 404 page.  After reading a helpful post from WordPress.org, it looks like my theme doesn’t have a 404 Template page.  I think this part of the challenge will have to wait until the DS106 Headless Course  boot camp begins on August 26th, 2013.

In the meantime you can check out another error page I had to create for visitors trying to find this blog from my regular Rockylou Productions site.

 

Rockin’ The Rocks in 3D

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RaisinJiggleBand_Stonehenge

California Raisins Rockin’ the Rocks at Stonehenge- 3D Stereo Wigglegram GIF

Another kind of GIF that you can make is a Stereo Wigglegram GIF. You take two pictures that are almost the same except they are taken from two slightly different angles. When they are viewed your brain puts them together into one picture that has a 3D effect. Talky Tina’s DS106  August 2013 GIF Challenge #11: Get Your Wiggle on, with Friends! had us creating one of these 3D Jiggle GIFS.

RaisinIPAD_Band_2

Rockin’ The Rocks in 3D

This is one of those projects I’m not going to admit how much time I actually spent on it.  Let’s just say I was fascinated with the process and technical issues learning how to make these and I was really into it. The idea of having the California Raisins rocking with the rocks at Stonehenge tickled me tremendously. I’ve had a set of these little guys since the late 80’s, and now they sit proudly on a shelf in Studio B. (My basement where I do most of my DS106 and other digital storytelling projects.) Now that I’ve dusted them off, I’m thinking they might be making another appearance in a future stop motion video.

I created a couple of different versions and used different techniques and software as I was moving through the project. I started out with the Camera+ App on my iPhone 5 and downloading the pictures into Adobe Photoshop to create the GIF. I didn’t know how or how much I was to move the camera for the two shots to get a “slightly different angle”, so my first attempts didn’t quite look right. I then read Talky Tina’s post a little closer and she recommended an app called 3D Camera by Juicy Bits. The iPad version of the app gave me some guidance on how to actually take the photos.  You don’t just move the camera slightly by rotating your camera on the tripod like I did, You need to slide the camera in a straight line from left to right to get the two shots.

Raisin_StereoImages

To create good 3D stereo images SLIDE your camera left to right, don’t rotate it.

RaisinIPAD_Band

Green Screen Stereo Wigglegram GIF. Created with 3D Camera by Juicy Bits

My decision to take the original stereo photos against a green background so that I could “easily” replace it with a background of my choosing from my own photo collection didn’t turn out as I had expected. I had ambitiously started out with the concept of having the band members and Stonehenge remain stationary, while only the guitar player popped out of the image. This was NOT successful! (See problem plagued GIF below and second successful version at the end of the post.)  Creating layer masks by using the quick selection tool required a lot of fine tuning to remove the haloed green around my raisins.  This was further complicated by the fact that I was doing this process on two different photos and couldn’t select exactly the same areas with each image.  Consequently, I had occasional bulges and valleys along the edges that had to be manually erased or rebuilt for each separate image so that your eye remained focused on the 3D effect and not the little anomalies as the photos switched back and forth. Here’s an original unsuccessful version for your amusement that is a fine illustration of these issues: green halos, bumps & valleys, instead of popping out of the screen it moves back and forth.

RaisinJiggle_GIF_Band

Unsuccessful first attempt at 3D Stereo Wigglegram. Lots of technical issues!

Ahhh… this is better… a second SUCCESSFUL version of the California Raisin solo guitar rockin’ at Stonehenge.

RaisinGuitar_2_Jiggle

Stonehenge Solo 3D Stereo Wigglegram GIF

Ewwww… Brain!

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3DGIF_SharkBoy

Ewww… Brain! Scene from “Shark Boy and Lava Girl”

Talky Tina’s DS106 animated GIF challenge August 2013 GIF Challenge #10: Monster Chiller Horror Theatre 3D Style GIF for today was to:

…look for a part of a scene in a 3D type movie where the thing comes right out of the screen at you.  Find a way to emphasize the moving of the thing out of the screen and into your face in a GIF.

3DGIF_SharkBoy

Ewww… Brain

This one was easy.  I started with a YouTube search on 3D movies.  A bunch of movie trailers popped up right away, which I knew would have the good stuff.  Sharkboy & Lava Girl- May The Best Dream Win won.

I’ve just recently discovered the wonders or the full Photoshop CS5 software for creating GIFs. [Technology is Great! (When it works.)]  But as ‘luck” would have it, I have a 64-bit operating system on my PC based laptop and Photoshop won’t allow me to import video frames as layers unless I use a 32-bit OS.  Arrrrgh!  That meant I had to do some unexpected futzing around.

I downloaded the video clip using the downloader add-on for Firefox and placed it into Adobe Premiere Elements on my Mac.  From there I selected the short segment I wanted to use and exported it as a sequence. [ “Hula Hot Seat” will step you through the process.]

Since I am using both a PC and a Mac, (different software versions are at the moment residing on different computers.) I uploaded the JPEGs to my Google drive so that I could transfer them easily from computer to computer as needed.

I imported the photos into the full Photoshop on my PC, but again hit a bit of a snag because I couldn’t figure out how to easily move each of individual photo images into a new layer in one consolidated project file to be used to create the GIF.  I ended up tiling 10 images at a time and dragging each layer over. But oh no… does the fun end there?  Of course not! When I did the moves manually like that they were not aligned properly, and I had to go back in and manually align all 40 images layers.  Fortunately, I hadn’t messed with the formatting of the images, so the snap function for alignment kicked in and it went rather smoothly, all things considered.

The final step was to create the animation layers.  There was no need for merging of layers, as I wasn’t adding anything to the original image clip, and that alone made the project much less complicated than:

I most likely could have made this GIF in my limited Photoshop Elements on just my Mac. Oh well, I’m enjoying learning how to use the software. And I’m getting better and better all the time as I practice and come to terms with the advantages and limitations of each digital story telling tool that I use.

I’ve included the full movie trailer below for your easy viewing pleasure.