My good ole friend Jack introduced me to this song, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” a few weeks ago and it has been with me ever since.
This is your typical break up song, and the main idea is about that horrible feeling after a break up when you realize that you don’t know the person in the present anymore, that they are now “somebody that you used to know.”  The first half of the song is Gotye’s solo.  You can tell that he is upset because he tried to make a relationship work that obviously couldn’t. Once they broke up, she sent her friends over to get her stuff and changed her phone number so he can’t contact her anymore. “You treat me like a stranger and I feel so rough,”  he laments.

There is a pause in the lyrics and the camera pans to Kimbra and she gives her side of the story.  “Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over,” she says.  Then Gotye lets out this visible sigh, and this felt really powerful to me.

It perfectly conveys the emotions that he projects in this song: regret of his mistakes, sadness that this is where they are now, and longing for a friendship that doesn’t exist anymore. It felt like the most important part of the entire song to me, except you can’t hear it in the song; only see it in the video.  I felt like making this a looping gif would capture all of his emotions here.  Plus, the visuals are awesome!

-

I made this gif as a loop.  I deleted all of the frames except for the ones from a pause before he sighs until he is mid-sigh.  Then, I made each layer a duplicate. When I rearranged the frames, I actually did not use his exhale from the video, and instead put the frames of his inhale backwards so that it looped full circle.

So, the frames sequence looks like this:

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 -

This avoids any awkward visual jumps and instead makes the gif look way cleaner.

I hope that this makes sense, DS106!

 

I have a kind of complicated relationship with this book.  It was very important to me at a certain time in my life and carried a lot of weight then. Now, I look at the book with a fond sort of nostalgia.

This concept came to me as a plan b.  I couldn’t find a good image of the back cover of the traditional cover, which features (presumably) the main character in three different positions.  I wanted to use the regular book cover but switch those images to the front cover and just make that part a GIF. Obviously that did not work, and instead I opted for this.

This book features a teenage boy who writes letters to a stranger to tell them about his life.  The boy, Charlie, at one point acquires a typewriter, hence the way that I made the font a typewriter style.  Even though typewriters type from left to right, I set up the type centered because I thought that would look more interesting.

This wasn’t very difficult to make but the layers in the animation options were being a little finicky for a while.

 

In honor of Valentine’s Day Vamlumtimes Day I thought I’d make a quick GIF of Homestar Runner’s Teen Girl Squad episode 12.

This was pretty easy to make.  Interestingly enough, I used to watch this back in the days before YouTube, but with the invention of YouTube I used that site to rip the video to make the GIF.  I found watching the episode on YouTube to be strangely jarring and was surprised about that.

Each frame is 1 second long, but I made the in between frames where the girls dance .5 seconds.

 

I miss DS106 and I have been working on a few assignments – my friends that are in the class now make me miss the awesomeness that was that class.

DS106 for life.

 

Well, I’d say that turned out pretty well.

I’ve been making some gifs lately and this was one of my favorites.  I’ve been doing kind of boring stuff (just cutting videos down into images) but this was one of the first where I’ve put something into the image to make it unique.

I feel like there is something else I should say about this but…

nope.

 

Charlie Rocket: he does it for the lulz.

 

 

Welp.  Here’s my submission for the Movie Fortunes assignment.

I know, this isn’t from a movie.  But, it is my dad’s favorite joke – every time he opens up a fortune cookie instead of reading his fortune he says “‘Help…. I’m trapped in a… fortune cookie factory?’  We’ve gotta help this guy!”

So, this one is for my dad, who has been great about getting me drugs for my wisdom tooth recovery the past few days.

 

Thanks to stock.xchange user plattmunk for the original image.

Evaluation: This was super easy. The image only has three layers – the base image, the text over that, and then a layer of cookie so that it looks like the fortune gets cut off.  Looking back on it, I could have improved this image by using the dodge tool to bring out highlights on the text where the paper looks brighter, but now I know, huh?

 

 

 

I’m signed up for Jim‘s summer DS106 class.

That’s right, I’m taking DS106 for the second time.  When we say DS106 for life we really mean it.

What am I thinking?

 

Anyway, the first assignment is to create a .gif from a favorite movie.  I’m not sure that I have a favorite movie, but I do love Up.

I used GIMP because I decided to put down Photoshop for a bit and give it a whirl.  I also used Jim’s tutorial which was super easy to follow.  Kudos.

 

Alright! Here’s a project that I did in Illustrator for a class.  The assignment was to make an infographic, so I decided to do one based upon Trans 101.

Click for the full size!

 

Talk about a hiatus – sorry team.
This challenge is from Worth1000, a Photoshop contest where winning isn’t the goal – it’s about getting better at image editing.  It’s called “Invisible World” and the idea is to edit a photo and take the people out. I was pretty intrigued by this idea and decided to give it a stab.  I haven’t really Photoshopped since Jim Groom‘s class in Spring 2010 so this was a refreshing jump back into the game and I already have a lot of ideas for some more challenges.



Click for full size.

This was a super fun project, I’ve never done anything like it before.  The hardest part was the chain-link fence and getting the wires to match up.

I’m really proud of this picture, and I definitely want to do another one of these.

 

The image is from flickr user Neo_II and is located over here.

 

Worth1000 prompt “If Mother’s Day Card Told the Truth”


Click to enlarge.

Evaluation: I feel okay about this.  It’s not amazing, it’s not terrible… it’s amazingly average!  Also, I’m not gay, just for the record.

Thanks to stock.xchng for…

String

Flowers

Tag

 

Sure the class is over, but the Photoshop will never be over! This blog will hopefully stick around for a while.

Worth 1000 contest Book Review 3: Books that will never be published.


 

Evaluation: I worked pretty hard on this one.  Perspective is difficult for me and I can still see some things I wish I had done better but I overall I like hat the book looks real.  I used a blank book image to start with.  My favorite part are the green lines that go around the book, I think they really bring it to life. Also, Douglas H. Shulman is the guy in charge of the IRS.

 

Thanks to

stock.xchng for the blank book

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