Draw On

This week's class assignment was threefold (sixfold, actually, if you do the math). We needed to make two each images in three different online programs to demonstrate generative art. 

I am grateful for an instructor that understands technical difficulties and the stress of a student because this week was the week for me! Whew. I'm just glad to have six pieces to submit that I am pretty pleased with. Not to draw out what could be a very long story, I have an old, cheapy graphics tablet that I was trying to use for The Scribbler Too/Flame Paint images. For some reason when I was using the online programs, they would go "back" to the previous web page and I would lose all of my work. This happened several times before I had to quit for the night. I also saved one image but it saved as something else and I didn't know that until I was uploading everything! It was crazy but I persisted and finished and that's what's important.

Made with Scribbler:
I tried several images and these are the two I liked the most. For the first, I love peace signs and I thought this looked like something off a vintage poster. I wanted to add some dimension to it so I tried my best with that but it's hard when I'm not looking at an object to keep it with the right perspective. The second image was harder than it looks to create since scribbler does not offer an eraser. I would definitely fix a few things if it didn't meant having to redo the entire picture. It is sign language for "I love you" and I actually use it a lot with my boyfriend as it's easier to "say" in a room of people or if we are in a quiet place or when he leaves for work. We're pretty much cheesy like that. LOL. No save feature in this program (ick) so these were screen captured and cropped.

Made with Scribbler Too:
The first image, again, is retro inspired and was created to look similar to tie dye. I played around with settings to find a good balance with the line work on this one. The second image was my experience from hell described earlier. Too much work was put into this but I love it! I thought the program made great spiderwebs and fishnets seemed similar and much sexier. I used an image underneath to trace over all of the lines so I could get the perfect shapes and then I did the shading. Shading was hard in this program, but achievable.

Made with Flame Painter Free:
The first image is supposed to be a faerie holding a flower in a blue flame. The second image is a nod to flowers and I'm kind of in love with it. With the unpredictability of Flame Painter's drawing tool, it was a little hard to draw with any real type of accuracy so that was the difficulty with this for me. I could have just drawn lines and been a little less specific with my drawing but that's not really my style and what I did try ended up just looking like random squiggles and didn't evoke really any type of feeling for me so I went this route.

All in all, this would have been a fun assignment if not for my troubles. I enjoyed Scribbler Too the most because of being able to incorporate other images and all the controls available to vary the look and style of the drawing.

I recommend trying each of these programs, they are all free and good for experimenting with ways you normally wouldn't draw.

Keep calm and draw on!

My Type of Typology

Typology done with nail polish. Click for larger image.

This was a really difficult assignment for me this week so I'll get right down to that for this post.

Our assignment for class was to make a Becher Grid/Typology based on the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

My creative juices we just not flowing this week which is not good when you need to be creative. I wanted so badly to do a typology with origami, I even checked out a few books from the library. It just didn't work out (for various reasons) so I tried a different approach with earrings and they just didn't photograph well. Long story short, I remembered my plethora of nail polish and decided to go with that. So I took a tablecloth and set up a little studio in my kitchen and off I went.

I hadn't anticipated the amount of detail work this project would need! I had to put down a piece of tape to try and make sure the bottles were photographed in the same spot, at relatively the same angle. My camera I used is my cell phone (LG Optimus G Pro) camera and there is no tripod for that so I used the case as a stand and had to be reeeeeally careful not move it when I took the pictures.

I ended up taking three sets of pictures because the first two were very, very different in terms of their exposure and all of that (the backgrounds were noticeably different for one thing). I finally realized I had the white balance set to auto. Once I turned that off, the final set turned out pretty similar.

I used Corel Photo Paint X6 for this project because I am slightly familiar with it and I also knew I would need grids which that is capable of producing easily. I first straightened each image slightly because they looked a little "off" to me. Then I took each image and squared it up to with cropping. I then took each image and resized it to a smaller size. I didn't change any of the other settings on this assignment because I took great care on my lighting beforehand (and it was a controlled environment) and liked how they looked (but I did use the value editing process to try and fix my other two series of photos).

I started a new image and added the photos in as objects/layers. I then used the grid feature to add an even spacing between the pictures and arranged them to my liking which ended up being in order of color. After merging all of the layers to the background (I chose a color that would compliment the images), I saved it and posted it.

The editing part was really pretty easy (except for a small error I made with the straightening that gave me a white line on the top... had to start over) in comparison to taking the actual photos. I like how this turned out and would probably just change the subject if I could change anything but I did learn a lot during this assignment so that's a huge plus!

Stay colorful!

A Walk With My Shoes

I was lucky enough this week to be in the right place at the right time. Right place? Meijer. Right time? Well, I don't remember exactly but it was on Monday. So I decided to meander to the shoe department just for kicks (see what I did there?) and looked through my favorite aisle, the clearance aisle. Because I like to tie everything together with a theme, we will call this 80's pricing. I found a pair of super cute, purple K Swiss shoes in my size marked down from $50 to... ready?... $10! Had to buy them! Did buy them!

Our school assignment this week was to make a "day in the life" slideshow presentation. I could have chosen myself but I'm not big on selfies and it seemed like something most people would do. So I thought and thought about it and finally decided on my new shoes as the subject for this project.

I spent the morning running some errands (UT for a meeting with my advisor, the library to return a movie, Speedway for gas and a drink, and then back home) and document my shoes' adventures. Hope you enjoy!

Stay trendy! (at clearance prices, of course)

80's Music Mashup - Part 2

Last time I wrote, I showed you guys my skill(ish) for music mashing. This time around, I took that song and put it into a video mash-up. This class assignment was definitely more fun for me than the last but it was still a challenge.

I used Windows Live Movie Maker to take pieces from two movies from archive.org and reassembled them into this mini movie I've titled Changes. I added, of course, my music mash-up and some well-placed sound effects to make the finished product.

The story I tried (and hopefully succeeded) to tell was about a man who realizes he needs to change himself after he gets a bit of a wake up call. It sounds like a serious plot but it came together to be a little more comical in a way that only sped up silent movie footage can achieve. I’m glad for that, though, I love making people laugh (or I’ll settle for a chuckle).

All-in-all this was a good time but I think I’ll leave the movie making to the professionals for now. So, Spielberg (if you read this) your job is safe for now.

Keep creating!

80's Music Mashup

I can still recall the first music I ever bought. It was a cassette tape (you youngins can Wiki that right here) of The California Raisins (huh?). I think I may have been around six or seven at the time. My babysitter took me to a music store and I remember coming home with that tape. "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" was, I'm sure, played over and over in my house for the next several months. Good times.

I had an assignment for school this week to create music; a daunting task that gave me a new appreciation for the skill involved in song making. I decided to do a mashup because I figured I could get into that better than starting a song from scratch. So I went back to the 80's with this and (after many many scrapped ideas) went with mashing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" with "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" by Culture Club after a tutorial suggested a website that listed song's beats per minute (BPM). I found two songs I liked that had similar BPMs. It is (noticeably, I'm sure!) my first time ever doing anything like this and I had quit a bit of difficulty.

I tried several free programs but finally settled on Sony Acid Xpress. The program was helpful in that it was supposed to keep everything at the same tempo. I don't know much about tempos so I will just figure it did that since I heard a difference in some songs I tried. I made use of the program's splitting feature and cut up "Man in the Mirror" where it felt right (during breaks in the music) and then tried to find places to put it into the other song.

The chorus was an "easy" (nothing about this was easy. LOL) first choice and is the only part of the mashup that I am really happy about. I wanted to use more of the song so I tried to find parts that went together but some of it sounds like it is competing instead of harmonizing. Overall, not my favorite assignment but I think I did OK with my first time foray into music making.

Keep singing.

Finding Beauty in the City

Try our video maker at Animoto.

I know it seem a bit off my blog topic, but beauty is timeless so this actually fits right in (go with me on this one). I made this video from some edited photographs I had done for my digital media class. If you've been reading my blog, you may remember my last post involved a picture from that very class.

For this assignment, we needed to make a 30 second video set to music with some of our pictures using Animoto.  I had a song in mind from the very beginning which was the lovely "Beneath Your Beautiful" by Labrinth and Emeli Sandé. It's a love song, I know this, but for me the song is also about finding inner beauty and I think beauty can be found in a lot of places if you just take some time to look deeper.

With my images in the video, I wanted it to almost feel like a journey from the little things like some small graffiti to the bigger places like the universe.  My "universe" picture, for example, actually started off as nothing more than some broken glass in a parking lot, something not everyone would see as beautiful. I also added text to the beginning of the video to convey my message and used the spot light feature to give one of the photos a little more time in the video. I used the simplified style so I was able to fit in a couple extra pictures and I also liked how it essentially turned the images in their own backgrounds. I tried a couple of others but I think this one looked the best and allowed my photographs to stay as the primary focus.

I hope you enjoyed.

Stay beautiful.

Pay Phones/No Answer

Cell phones. I am thankful, indeed, for that huge invention. Before cell phones, the only way you could call someone was either from a business phone (local calls only and you’d better have a good reason) or the pay phone. When I was growing up, these germ laden contraptions were at almost every store, every gas station, and restaurant I can think of. I remember it would cost 25 cents to make a call (later 35 and then the big hike to 50 cents) and you would have to talk fast so you wouldn't get the monotone message telling you to insert more money.

I remember the day I was at Wal-Mart and desperately needed to reach my mom (this was actually in the early 90’s but, eh, close enough for this topic). I wasn't sure if she was at home or at work so I tried home first and the answering machine answered so the phone assumed I reached my call recipient and didn't give me back my money (if no one answered the phone, you could hang up and your money would clink into a change return slot). I had to frantically search for more money and exchange some pennies for “silver” so I could call the other number. Frustrating for sure!

This leads me into an assignment I had for my college digital media class this week in which we first had to take photographs of “urban landscape” and then edit them. We were then asked to publish our favorite edited image to our blog and give a detailed explanation of the edits. So, two stones being the killer of two birds (aw, poor birds) I picked this picture because it is one of my favorites and also reminds me of my childhood in the 80’s.

No Answer (Edited), a photo by Blue_Eyed_Geek on Flickr.

I titled this picture “No Answer” which is apropos for this broken, pay phone handset. I took this raster-based image with my 13 megapixel LG Optimus G Pro cell phone camera. The original image (viewable here) had a resolution of 4160 x 3120 pixels which is equal to the 13 megapixels of which my camera is capable. The image was edited through Pixlr Express. I optimized the image to a final size of 800 x 678 pixels through cropping and interpolation since I knew this would be viewed on a computer screen. I am an amateur photographer and am not really familiar with manually setting the exposure on my camera. Flixr shows the exposure of the original image as 0.005 sec which was the camera’s auto setting. When I edited the image, I was pretty happy with the amount of light in this image so I didn't mess with the contrast but I did increase the saturation level very minimally just to make things a little brighter since I shot on a cloudy day. I played with the sharpness a little but found that I liked the original image better because the sharpness tool took away the soft look I had and wanted. I liked the warm tones in the original so I didn't play with temperature changes. I then went into the creative tools and applied the “Max” effect. I wanted a little pop of color in the black and white area so I used the history brush to show the blue on the handset. My final step was to apply a border overlay to balance out the frame on the little boxes created by the earlier effect. I’m really happy with the final image. So much so that I’m considering printing and framing to display in my house.