Tag: VisualAssignments

Say it like Tequila

I see another round of DS106 has started, I have too many balls in the air at the moment to do more than watch it flow through my reader. Then I saw Week 2: Bootcamping It:

This week, we’re also going to ask you to do your very first digital storytelling assignment from the ds106 Assignment Repository. The Repository is a Web site filled with new media assignments that we’ll be using extensively this semester. Your first assignment is “Say it Like the Peanut Butter,” in which you’ll be creating an animated gif of a clip from your favorite (or least favorite) movie. You must also follow the instructions on the assignment page to ensure that your contribution shows up on the Assignment Repository site.

So I though I’d do a wee gif just for fun.

This is from Betty Blue, when this movie came out (1986) I just loved it, didn’t like the 2005 directors cut which added far too much nonsense.
I’ve not dared watch the movie again in case my old brain doesn’t like it so much.
In this scene Zorg and a friend are making and drinking tequila slammers, tequila rapido, and laughing like manics. As I remember the movie, this went on for quite a while.
I downloaded the flv from youtube, opened in in Quicktime and copied a wee section. Opened this saved movie in Fireworks 8 and deleted some frames. I also auto levelled the images as it is a fairly dark scene. I am guessing I’ve added something to a plain QuickTime install to allow it to open flv files.

Keep Calm and Make a Gif


A new Assignment form Ben Rimes, ds106 Technical Difficulties | The Tech Savvy Educator worth 36 stars! My own effort took all of 3 minutes so an easy win;-) I started here: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON with the Keep Calm-o-matic and finished in fireworks, with a bit of noise.

Let’s face it, ds106 is a difficult ship to sail. Besides the shark-infested copyright waters and the mine filled seas of comment-apathy, it can be hard to keep the ds106 boat going forward all the time. So let’s honor the fact that the site will more than likely continue to endure growing pains, and provide some excellent “technical difficulty” signs/gifs/media that can be displayed the next time the site goes down….wait, it’s working now, right?

ds106 Technical Difficulties — MISSION: DS106
Finding time to do a few Assignments today as it has been raining fairly steadily.

After the Jump an animated version, suggested by  Chad Sansing:

Continue reading “Keep Calm and Make a Gif”

Kung Fu Hustle

I am fond of animated gifs, but haven’t had time to make any. After seeing Jim Groom’s Master of the Flying Guillotine Animated GIFs I went over to YouTube to see if I could find any kung fu. Kung Fu Hustle – YouTube which I had watched in the cinema. Very much a comedy. I downloaded the movie and grabbed a few gifs:



I didn’t spend much time on these, but there is something fascinating about animated gifs.

To download youtube videos I use youtube-dl a command line tool. It seems to work better than some GUI tools I’ve used.
To grab gifs from the movie once downloaded I use Movie2Gif this is just a GUI front end for the Gifsicle command line application. It works on a Mac and you can download it from a link on the Movie2Gif post if you want to give it a try.

More after the jump:

Continue reading “Kung Fu Hustle”

A few years off

Create a new you — MISSION: DS106 an easy one for 2 stars, if I was counting. I just took off a couple of year so fairly subtile. Read a couple of googled tuts for photoshop: Removing Wrinkles – Photoshop Tutorials and another one I’ve lost.

more intersting, to me, is the Before After WordPress Plugin. I’d used the Javascript before so was please to find a plugin.

Warhol Me

This is my first assignment for this session of DS106 Warhol Something

Take a photograph, or use an existing one, and create a piece of pop art. You can use something ordinary, like Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup can, or do a portrait, like Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe. This can be done in Photoshop, Gimp, or whatever photo editing software you have available.

I’ve done something of this sort before, tracing photos with drawing software (the face trace below from 2007) and even did a wee tutorial using the smartboard software to do the same thing, great fun for kids tracing a giant face.

It is even easier to do with photo booth, I am sure there is even an iPhone app that would do the job. But on of ther aims of my ds106ing is to lose the photoshop fear, so I loaded up the recommend Andy-Warhol-Up Your Photographs with this Photoshop Tutorial and followed along. The tut does what it says on the tin. I could have spent a lot longer tweeking the modes of the layers and messing about with colours, but this is enough for one day. (I’ve been ds106ing a lot over the last few days, mainly due to having a couple of days holiday