Category Archives: Daily Create

State of The Daily Create- Wk 2

5 Replies

It’s week 2 of the Headless 13 dS-106.  While we were finishing up boot camp and continuing to build and personalize our personal digital cyber-infrastructure, we were also having some fun along the way creating GIFs and doing some 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”

REDUCE: I try to work smarter by choosing foundational media that will be easier to manipulate technically if I have limited time on my hands. i.e tdc609 showing the “coolness” of a refrigerator.  Lassoing that refrigerator was so easy, plus no need to extensively rebuild background with these images, that I ended up creating two photos. 🙂

What do we do with this thing? This long lost outtake from the opening scene of “2001 A Space Odyssey” wasn’t quite what Stanley Kubrick had in mind.

What do we do with this thing?

That 1969 refrigerator was so cool it was selected to fly to the moon with the Apollo 11 guys. But there were a few glitches in getting it hooked up.

Apollo 11 Fridge Debacle

I may choose to not make a big production out of a project, even though I could have for tdc603 when making a video to tell the story of my keychain that gives a deeper look into who I am.

I also continue to toss aside my perfectionism and let my technical vulnerabilities be seen in public as I shared with the world my limited ability to draw a 3D perspective for tdc606. I’m using the Paper53 app on my iPad.

3D Drawing Skills

I was quite pleased with my brilliant use of the reuse principle by combining two daily creates into one photoshoot.  tdc601 asked us to draw something DS106ish backwards in recognition of 601 being the reverse of 106. Here I’ve drawn DS106 backward again on my iPad with the Paper53 app.

Backward Glance at DS106

In combination with my submission for tdc602 capturing the elegance of Apple products that are designed with elegance in mind from the device to the packaging right down to the details of the insert materials.  It is an experience just to open the box for an iPad or an iPhone.

Elegance in the 21st Century

A very simple GIF was also added to the mix.

DS106 Elegance for tdc601

Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr

UPDATE: (9/10/13) The above daily create duo now has a project process posted: DS106ish Elegance. There were a few little tricks to getting the images and GIF to look nice that I thought should be captured.

REUSE: I use pieces of past projects too. Either from another ds106er, an on-line source like Microsoft Clip-art or free image and GIF sites, or from my own art collection. Like this photo of my grandson actually taken the day before tdc605 was announced.  I’ve captured the calm amongst the ever lurking emotional chaos of the typical two year old. My grandson DJ looks so sweet and adorable here. And he is… most of the time. But those tantrums can come & go at anytime.

Calm & Chaos at Two

Headless_Rockylou_3_GIF_Final_500RECYCLE:  Not sure if this would fall under Reuse or Recycle, but either way for tdc604 my headless self-portrait was created a few weeks back for one of @IamTalkyTina’s August GIF Challenges.

Read all about how I created the GIF and the image at:

Engineering Headless Rockylou

There was one final daily create, tdc607 “Create an exciting movie trailer for your ds106 web site. Use The Voice.” that I really wanted to do. But due to my youngest daughter getting married this weekend, that balance of personal time and ds106 weighed most heavily onto the family side.  I plan on doing it this week though.  I have some ideas floating around in my head I’m excited to try out.

Star Spangled… WHAT?!

6 Replies

Star Spangled What?! video link

Today’s DS106 Daily Create tdc597 was to “edit an existing video clip to include an unexpected object in the story.”

StarSpangled_WHATVideo is my “thing”.  Not so the case for many of the DS106ers.  And I didn’t realize until I read a couple of comments in the DS106 Google + community today that some of you have felt intimidated to try your hand at the animated GIFs and videos from previous daily creates once you’d seen submitted projects.  A tip for maximizing the value from this course? Don’t compare your art contributions to anyone else’s.  Do what works for you. Do what you enjoy. Don’t worry about your level of expertise with the tools.  We are all beginners in some areas and there are those with more experience we can learn from. The DS106 community is a supportive group of individuals who hold a space and offer encouragement for us to take risks and move outside of our comfort zone.  It’s okay to be vulnerable here.

For me today that took the form of not pulling myself back.  But I also decided to take on the challenge of seeing how quickly I could produce the video.  (I really need to get some sleep tonight. Too many late nights working on DS106 stuff!)

chicken_2

B&W Chicken GIF  courtesy of John Johnston

My first creative inspiration was to use John Johnston’s chicken GIFs: Red ‘Chicken Talking  and his B&W Chicken (He would be considered one of our ds106 experts in the GIF arena.) Based on my personal experience this summer with a previous project [Talky Tina – Sweet as Tupelo Honey] I knew if I used the original GIF files in my Adobe Premiere Elements 11 video editor, I’d have to string together multiple copies of the still images to have continuous movement over several seconds. This would not be conducive to going to bed early.  Ding! I could use my screen capture software, Camtasia, to actually capture the GIF in action over several seconds. It would already be in video format and could easily be inserted into any video I wanted.

chick-01

Chicken Talking  from John Johnston

Next, I started looking at YouTube videos made by other DS106ers.  I downloaded a few of them to my computer with the Firefox Video DownloadHelper extension. Nothing was working.  I then remembered an earlier daily create of my own, Speedy Star Spangled Banner.  I thought it would be really funny to have John’s  red ‘Chicken Talking’ GIF  do the singing, but it took me a little trial and error to make a “logical” substitution of the B&W GIF.

My video editing software allows me to have several layers, and all I had to do was to put the video versions of the GIFs onto a layer above my original video. I then spliced out a segment at the beginning that referred to the previous daily create, added a video title image that comes with the program, personalized the text, rendered the video, and published it to YouTube.

In John’s podcast today, Evidently Not ChickenTown, he talked about how we can have a flurry of ideas after seeing other DS106 projects.  Here’s proof.

Original Video:

Monster In The Kitchen

3 Replies
IMG_1342

DS106 tdc595 “Monster In The Kitchen”

DS106 Daily Create tdc595 was to “Build a monster out of items in your kitchen.”  I tried a few things on my countertop with a teapot, an over-ripe banana, a recipe book holder, a cup tree, some tongs, knives, beaters, a cork screw, and a tea tin, among other various items. But my attempted kitchen Frankenstiens were too complicated and seemed forced.

I was also thinking about turning the photo into a stop-motion build of the monster or a GIF with moving parts.  So I needed it to be simpler to get photos in a sequence that had a minimum of camera movement. In the end the GIF idea faded away in exchange for taking the time instead to write this blog post.

The_Scream

The Scream by Edvard Munch

Since nothing was working I decided to start over from scratch.  What else could I use? Where else could I build it? By moving to the range top I noticed my spoon holder looked like The Scream by Edvard Munch. Now that was something I could work with.

The simplicity of my new monster was appealing. The corkscrew placed underneath was at first supposed to be ears or arms. It eventually became horns. Then I wanted to add a splash of color and found a red plastic fork that doubled as a nose and sharp teeth.  Ta Da! My monster was born.  Now to capture it on “film”.

IMG_1334

Monster looking down

The photos were taken with my iPhone in the Camera+ app and then I applied a filter called Mammoth. As I was taking the shots I noticed the monster’s eyes changed from angle to angle. And tried to capture several angles to work with. Here it is looking down.

 

The final image with a large straight-on stare looked the most monster like. The application of the mammoth filter made the eyes bigger, provided the vignette shading around the outside, and a tinge more dark silver tone. It reminded me of something you’d see in a horror movie.

FilterComparison

Final kitchen monster image with the addition of the Camera+ Mammoth filter

DS106 Invitation to 3M

8 Replies

This invitation was posted on my internal 3M blog inviting my colleagues to join a DS106 experiment I wanted to run from behind the firewall of a corporation. 

Your Invitation

FdeTroyLectureMoliere_DS106-3M

Coming soon! DS106@3M

Want to have some fun improving your 3M digital communication & collaboration skills? This is your invitation to join me in creating our first 3M DS106 Salon*. Where we’ll develop our digital presence and learn the power and responsibilities that come with good digital citizenship – more important than ever as our digital lives blur between private, public, professional, and proprietary. The goal isn’t just to learn the technology.  It is to do something much larger by using these tools as resources to improve our positive impact and effectiveness inside and outside of 3M.  You can participate as much or as little as you like, drop-in, drop-out, drop back in again, as we create and collaborate alongside the 15-week open-online course in digital storytelling, DS106 headquartered out of Mary Washington University, which begins August 26, 2013. 

* A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.  [Source: Wikipedia  Salon Image Source ]

Intrigued and want to learn more?

Try a link or two…

Still interested in joining the fun?

 Contact Rochelle Lockridge ASAP to let me know you’re interested.  Feel free to use your favored communication mode: e-mail, spark, text, phone, blog comments, etc..

image 

   

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cherry Bundt Cake (Microwaved)

3 Replies
IMG_1213

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cherry Bundt Cake made in microwave from Rochelle’s kitchen

Gluten-free, Microwaved Chocolate Cherry Bundt Cake
1 hr prep time + overnight in refrigerator

1 tablespoon sugar
1 package Betty Crocker Gluten Free Devil’s Food Cake Mix
1 cup cherry pie filling (non-high fructose corn syrup)
3 eggs
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp almond extract
24oz Plain Greek Yogurt as cake frosting

Generously grease 12-cup microproof bundt-type  pan; chill.  Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar; shake well to coat.

Mix all remaining ingredients (except yogurt and cherries) on high for 2min.  Add the cherries and mix by hand. Pour carefully into prepared pan, making sure the cherries are evenly distributed without removing the grease/sugar coating of your prepared pan.

Cook on 30% power (defrost) for 27-30 minutes, or until cake tests done, rotating if cake is rising unevenly.  (DO NOT OVERCOOK!)

Let stand 10 min before inverting onto serving plate to cool. Use a knife to loosen the sides of the cake from the pan before inverting.  NOTE: If your cake sticks to the pan in some spots, simply remove the stuck pieces from the pan  and place them back on the cake.  The moisture from the still cooling cake will often help to attach it back again.  And you can work wonders with the thick yogurt frosting to hide just about any imperfection.

When cake is cooled, carefully spread the Greek Yogurt over the entire cake.  Take the remaining cherries and use a toothpick to place them in a ring around the top of the cake.  Now warm what’s left of the cherry pie filling in the microwave to make it “runny”. Drizzle the cherry liquid over the cherry ring. Pour any remaining pie filling into the hole in the center of the cake.

Cover and let sit in refrigerator overnight.  This is very important to create and maintain a moist cake.

I have been on a gluten-free diet since the late 90’s – long before it was mainstream like it is today, and this cake has become a must have and favorite by anyone visiting my house for birthdays. We celebrated my grandson’s 2nd birthday last weekend and of course have lots of pictures celebrating the day and the cake.

10. Cake_Cropped

Let’s see if this is really as good as it was last year.

00_DJLick2

So this is what two tastes like. Yum!

DJDanceGIF_1

Yay for Nana’s Chocolate Birthday Cake! [See a film/GIF photostrip here]

DJBDay1_ChildMuseum_thumb3_edited-1

Here’s the Klingon version of the cake I “made” for DS106 Daily Create tdc582 a few days ago.

Klingon Cake

DS106: Hot Off The Tabloid Press

4 Replies

After writing my own and reading the other fun submissions for the 7/15/13 DS106 Daily Create:  “Write a tabloid headline for ds106 and the opening sensational paragraph” I was inspired to take the assignment a step further and layout the sensational front page of The DS106 Daily Create Tabloid. Which then led to submitting today’s daily create tdc575.

DS106_Tabloid_071513_GIF

First Things First:
Not wanting to fall into the same attribution trap that I found myself in with my last project (TalkyTina – Sweet As Tupelo Honey) I immediately documented my tracks as I gathered my media and placed the important information and links into a draft blog post.  Boy did that save time and reduce the tedium of going back and trying to figure out exactly where I found things – much better plan of action this time around.

Creating the Front Page:
I started with a Google search to locate a tabloid template that I liked.  I found this one at CLEO – Cumbria & Lancashire Education.  Then came the quandary over which of the 7/15/13 DS106 Daily Create submissions should I use? The template allowed space for 2 stories and 3 images. And of course I wanted to use my own submission “Headless DS106 Mysteriously Runs Itself“. Story 1, Image 1. And the talk of the day had been all about @IamTalkyTina ending her ds106 role and being placed back into her cardboard box.  [Read the headline story here.] So that would be Story 2, Image 2. That left the 3rd image to be filled from the remaining tabloid entries.  I had a few I could choose from, but the image of ruby red lips with a snappy headline would be entertaining, eye catching, match the color scheme – and most importantly, the easiest to produce.

Story 1: “Headless DS106 Mysteriously Runs Itself“

Amidst a culture of cost-cutting and outsourcing of education to corporate massive open online courses (MOOCs) a small yet determined group of passionate educators have “organized” a digital storytelling course that can run itself. There is no official leader, although there is a syllabus that can be followed. No one is in charge, but there are plenty of opportunities for any of the global on-line participants to step-up and volunteer to facilitate the focus material of the week during the 15-week course. There are no deadlines or grades, instead suggested assignments and opportunities provided to collaboratively work and learn from others, share their work, and receive feedback to help improve their digital story telling skills.

Some suspect the Illuminati to be supporting this small underground group – encouraging the DS106 group’s subversive tactics with the intent to overthrow the big MOOCs. A secret source was heard to say…“The education system is and has always been ours. The MOOCs have gotten out of control and we need to clip their wings. It’s time to unleash the headless DS106!”

My creative inclusion of a suspected involvement of the Illuminati was to help fulfill the sensationalism and tabloid aspect of the assignment and was serendipitously supported by a statement from @PuppetMaster106 in his guest post on @IamTalkyTina’s blog.

This talk of a ‘headless ds106′ this fall is all well and good, but you know that someone, somewhere, needs to be always at work behind the scenes, keeping things ticking, poking and prodding, feeding the unicorns, and all. And since I’m experienced with webs and scenes, and strings and such, there’s certainly a role for me in the coming months — whether it’s visible to the ds106 community, or not so visible, and rather behind the scenes.

My Fair Tina

@PuppetMaster106 pulling the strings

Wikipedia Reference for Illuminati:

“…refers to various organizations…alleged to conspire to control world affairs by masterminding events and planting agents in government and corporations to establish a New World Order and gain further political power and influence. Central to some of the most widely known and elaborate conspiracy theories,

the Illuminati have been depicted as lurking in the shadows and pulling the strings and levers of power in dozens of novels, movies, television shows, comics, video games, and music videos.”

Image 1: As is usually the case in ds106, I wasn’t the only one riffing on the work of others, and I was more than pleased to use a great image created by Todd Conaway to perfectly complement my story as well as tie-in to the Talky Tina saga. Todd just couldn’t get the thought of Alan Levine’s proposed “headless” DS106 course for the Fall of 2013 out of his head either.

HeadlessDS106_Tweet

 

Back_In_the_Box

@IamTalkyTina is “Back in The Box” Three Layers Deep

Story 2 & Image 2: The talk of the day had been all about @IamTalkyTina ending her ds106 role and being placed back into her cardboard box.  [Read the headline story here.] The guest blog post created by @PuppetMaster106 [Read full story here.] included a wonderful GIF of @IamTalkyTina in her cardboard box being encased in ice and finally Carbonite.

It appears now that Talky Tina has acquired a new PsychicSiri App for her iPhone and is once again interacting with DS106 with animated GIF challenges in preparation for the August 26th, 2013 start of the “Headless” DS106 course.  Although the original post was drafted back in July, my “psychic” inclusion of the GIF fits right in. This all begs for another news breaking tabloid front-page.

 

Image 3 Attributions:

 

 

Head of State Haiku

1 Reply

Today’s DS106 daily create tdc568 is to write a nonpolitical Haiku about your nation’s head of state.  How can you write or talk about your nation’s head of state without mentioning politics?  I am personally uncomfortable talking politics in any form unless I already know that the audience or person I am speaking with shares the same ideas as mine. That is just too hot of a topic for polite conversation, along with religion. [Link to July 1, 2013 Pew Research Center survey of common words describing Obama & Bush]

But since I’m getting in shape for the Aug 26th start of the 2013 Headless DS106 Course boot camp, I took on the challenge and was able to complete it.

Mister Obama
Husband, Father, President
Man of Confidence

This is not the first time I have been up against a challenge to create a piece of digital storytelling that tap danced on the edge of politics.  In 2009 a composer friend of mine, Elizabeth Alexander, asked if I would create a music video for her choral composition of “Where There Is Light In The Soul” based on the Chinese Proverb:

Where There Is Light In The Soul

If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.

If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.

If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.

If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.

She gave me full creative license to choose the photo images for the piece, with final approval on completion.  As I was trolling Flickr for creative commons photos I came across the White House photo stream. I was intrigued.  Hmmmmm….  the concepts of beauty, person, harmony, house, nation and peace could all be found in those images.  But because they were photos of a political figure there would be controversy no matter how I presented it.

CommonValues_DedicationPlaqueI tried several other image themes, and nothing else fit as well.  So I took a deep breath and cautiously went to work collecting and assembling the images to match the lyrics of the music.  When I had a first draft ready, I shared it with Elizabeth, and she too had an uneasy feeling about the potential political controversy that could become associated with her music.  We were both very sensitive to the other’s creative artist and in the end agreed we were okay with giving it a try, and if there was a problem I’d take it down immediately.  As it turned out there was no problem at all and on last count the final version of the video “Where There Is Light In The Soul- 1st 100 Days” has been viewed over 3,000 times.

NOTE: I was very much a novice when I created this video in Windows MovieMaker back in 2009.  I thought it would be powerful to begin the movie in silence as the text of the poem and my dedication played for the viewer. This lasts for almost 45 seconds. The dramatic effect I was going for ended up confusing more than a few viewers, thinking there was something wrong with the sound on their computer. I learned from this mistake.

More Interesting Links:

Fall 2013 Headless ds106 Course: HOW IT WORKS

Fall 2013 Headless ds106: SYLLABUS

link to 2012 boot camp blog post

 

Surf’s Up Dudette

3 Replies

SurferMy first ever attempt at creating a stop motion video, Surf’s Up Dudette was a success.  Inspired by the 7/28/13 DS106 tdc567 daily create to “Make a stop motion movie that brings something to life in a unique way.” I sat at the kitchen table this morning over breakfast playing with little objects I had around the house, gathering ideas and seeing what would be involved in making one of these things.  In the end I decided to bring to life the little surfer “dudette” (feminine form of “dude”) that usually sits on my mantle above the fire place.

DJ & his new pool

DJ & his new Hippo Sprinkler Pool

The blue background is the bottom of my grandson DJ’s new Hippo Splash Pool draped over a piano stool. (Here’s a GIF I made of him recently.)

To add some interest I then put a tennis ball under the pool at the front to look maybe like a wave.  Then added a shell, a piece of coral, and a colored sand art bottle.  This was actually my second attempt at taking the photos. I didn’t realize how many I would need to get something that was of a reasonable length to watch.  In my first set she only surfed by once and it lasted maybe 5 seconds with the extremely short frame length required in the final video.  I found this very similar to creating a GIF.  As a matter-of-fact, I tested it out with my iPhone gifRus app before moving onto loading everything into Adobe Premiere Elements 11.

With the second round of photos I had her surf through the scene then back again.  That way I could easily repeat the sequence in my video editor and it would look more natural.  She then surfed by three times to give me about a 30 sec clip. I like the illusion of slight movement of the “ocean” because of changes in light in the room and my accidentally moving the plastic pool.

Scene set up to take photos

Scene set up to take photos

There are a few shots though that are blurry and I can see that I moved the camera a bit as well.  Next time I will use a real tripod and my regular camera instead of a cardboard box with clothes pin clips to hold my iPhone.  To add the title and credit sequences I added a longer empty frame at either end to aid in the transitions.  You can’t do a 1 second fade with a 0.7 second image frame!

The addition of ocean sounds and background music really added a lot to the story to make the whole thing much more entertaining for the viewer. I found my music with a Creative Commons – attribution license at www.freemusicarchive.org

Music: “Broken Pipe Basement Surf” by Phil Reavis http://www.wmrecordings.com/releases/wm077.htm

Rockylou’s Dreamworld – tdc566

1 Reply

The DS106 Daily Create tdc566 for 7/27/13 was to “Randomly combine unused bits of video to create a surreal dream video with appropriate soundtrack.”

TDC566_DreamAren’t these supposed to only take 20-30 minutes to complete?  How in the world can I do that when it comes to video?  I can’t post something out there that I wouldn’t be able to look at myself!  So yes, this video sequence took me much longer than anticipated.  Just gathering the unused video clips took more than 30 minutes.  Video has been my digital storytelling medium of choice, and I’ve got a lot of it.

I wanted to keep the video at about 2 minutes, since that’s about the attention span of an average viewer.  I choose a couple of different themes that I felt told something about my life and representative video clips for each. Then the soundtrack for the entire video was created with the “Synthetic Design 02” audio clip in GarageBand. The final video was pieced together in Adobe Premiere Elements 11 for the Mac. The image strip below was made by taking freeze frame shots from each video segment and using Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 to put them together.

tdc566_Banner

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CLIPS & FINAL VIDEOS THEY REPRESENT

  • Hubble Telescope Photos [Link to one of the first videos I ever created, “Soul Journey”.  This has a whole series of Hubble telescope photos along with poetry and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack.]
  • Grandson DJ last summer [Link to 2013 Mother’s Day video I created for Amber.]
  • Cooking at my Mom’s house out in Eureka, California this Christmas [Link to the video “Cooking With Tangie” created  from this trip.]
  • The mouse hanging by it’s tail is from a video clip I made for a scientific paper my daughter was submitting to a journal. (I thought it would be funny to add it to the end of the cooking segment.)
  • A trip to Duluth, Minnesota
  • A 2010 trip to Europe: Abby Road in London & a street shot in Brussells [Link to “London Town” photo documentary of the trip]
  • Music clips of my partner and the band he plays in: The Radio  [Link to the final music video montage ]

Rockylou’s Land of Dreams

1 Reply

Today’s DS106 daily create tdc562 is to  “Describe a recurring dream you had as a kid. Give an update as if the dream comes back.”  I’ve been having difficulty with the daily create writing assignments this month, like write a limerick of someone really famous, or “Write a story dialogue in 5 half-twits“.  So when this one came along, I jumped at it.  “Yes! I can do this daily creation no problem.” The only issue now was to choose which dream story line to share.

Would it be my flying Flying_1dreams?

 

 ForgetStudy_4  

Or the ‘I have a test today and I haven’t been to class since the first day of school and I forgot to study‘ scenario?

 

Embarrassed_2

 

Or maybe even the ever popular embarrassing realization that ‘I’m at school and I don’t have all of my clothes on.’

 

I’ve decided to go with my flying dreams for this daily create.

Flying_3Rockylou has never lacked creativity and that certainly extends into her dream life.  I’d start out by sitting in a black inner tube.  You know… the kind you’d use as a kid to float down the river. But the trick was if I wanted to actually fly I had to relax, really relax, and the more I did the higher and faster I could go. I can even remember trying to teach my little sister and a friend or two how to fly with me.

I also have the fun of having a common theme in a sequence of dreams over time.  It’s a little like lucid dreaming, but not quite. It’s only happened once or twice that I recognize I am actually dreaming and start consciously interacting with my dream. But when I am following one of my extended dream story lines (Some are still showing up as an adult.) I remember what has been happening in the previous dreams and will build upon that in the present dream. They seem to have a life of their own. For the flying dreams over time I learned how to get going right away when I wanted to, and knew that there was something going on in my life that I needed to tend to if I was having trouble relaxing in order to fly.  This dream theme still makes an occasional visit from time to time.

All images are public domain downloaded from Microsoft Clipart.