Christina Hendricks – Page 5 – Proving Myself Wrong

July 31, 2015July 31, 2015

Number 2 as anvil

In the episode of The Prisoner called “Hammer into Anvil,” Number 2 pretty much loses it by the end. One part that really intrigued me was when he was shown towards the end stroking the penny farthing. I’ve seen some suggestions online about what the penny farthing is all about in the series, and in an interview McGoohan talks about the problems with progress…it seems to maybe have something to do with an ironic statement about the progress we have achieved (not much, really, despite our advances in technology). Maybe we haven’t progressed very far morally, for example.

So with that in mind, I find it very interesting that when Number 2 loses it he ends up stroking this ironic symbol of progress, as if he thinks it’s going to be his saviour. It’s what he believes in; it comforts him.

It’s also just a creepy sequence, as I tried to capture in this gif.

the process

I made this in GIMP.

1. I used screencast-o-matic to do a screen capture of this part of the episode while it was playing on my computer.

2. I opened it in MPEG streamclip to capture just the frames I wanted, and then used “export other formats” and “as image sequence.” I exported to jpg with 8 frames per sec I think.

3. In GIMP, I had 32 layers, and I had to repeat some of them to get him to close his eyes again after he opens them. I just reversed those layers. So by the time I was done I had many, many layers, and I wanted to reduce the file size.

4. I cut out some of the layers, every other one, for part of the sequence. When I did it for all of it then parts were too choppy.

5. I resized the image to be 400px wide.

6. I tried changing the colour mode to “indexed” before saving, but that made the finished gif even bigger than it was before. Even when I set the max colours on indexed to 100!

So it’s 1.5 MB as is, which isn’t too bad.

And just for fun…

I created two more out of this sequence.

Eyes closed:

Now, just the eyes opening and closing:

July 30, 2015July 30, 2015

Village Philosopher Badge

This week in #prisoner106 we are to make a campaign video for running for office (the position of Number 2 seems to be unoccupied right now).

In preparation for campaigning I created a special badge for the Village Philosopher–that’s me! I need a special way to identify myself so you know whom to vote for.

I am not a number, I am a … Greek letter.

The process

I made this in GIMP.

1. Images used, each on separate layer:

penny farthing, from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Phi symbol, from Pixabay (public domain)

2. Scale and order layers so the phi is on top of the penny farthing. I had it under the penny farthing for awhile and was scratching my head trying to figure out how to get the Phi image to not be transparent because the wheel spokes were showing through. Oh my gosh…unbelievable…complete brain freeze not realizing it was just a matter of layer order. Yikes.

3. Add a white background layer under both image layers. Add alpha channel to that layer. Use the ellipse select tool to select a circle on the white background layer, then go to Select->invert to select everything but the circle.

4. Go to Edit -> clear to get rid of the white stuff outside the selected circle on the white layer.

5. Add bevel. Use ellipse select tool to select around the white circle on the background layer (the following will only work if something is selected, I think).

Use filters -> decor -> add bevel
I used the max size for the bevel, 30px

Done!

Issues

1. When I uploaded to Flickr it had a red background:

This was very puzzling, until I learned that when an image has a transparent background, not all file types will preserve that. png does (what I saved it as), but jpeg doesn’t. Not sure what happens on Flickr, but it doesn’t show the original image in the view window. The red disappears if you go to the Flickr page and download “original.”

2. I couldn’t get the bevel to look as nice as the one on the badge on the right side of this site. There is a way to make a bevel manually, but it’s more complicated. This auto-bevel script has little in the way of customizing choices. I think there might be another GIMP script that has more.

3. I don’t know why the bevel only shows up on the right and bottom sides. Must be something built into the script?

Update

I tried playing with the “light and shadow” filter on GIMP, and got this one. Still not sure what to do to make the top left look like it’s standing out a bit from the background.

July 28, 2015July 28, 2015

4 icons and I still don’t get it

Here’s a belated post for the “one story, four icons” assignment for design week in #prisoner106.

I wanted to do this assignment for an episode I just don’t understand, even after watching it twice.

Here are the icons … can you guess it before I explain below why I am still puzzled by this episode?

WTF?

I watched this episode twice because I didn’t get it the first time. I didn’t get it the second time. And putting it into four icons didn’t help.

If you didn’t get it, it’s the “It’s Your Funeral” episode of The Prisoner, which, funnily enough, was the subject of at least two other four icon assignments this week I just discovered: one by Melanie and one by John. I love how we’ve picked different things!

What makes no sense to me is the following: Why would they involve Number 6 in the plan to get rid of the old Number 2 in the first place? If they wanted to get rid of Number 2 through the use of the watchmaker, what was the point of getting his daughter to get Number 6 involved? What did they want to do to Number 6, or have him do to others, and why?

Of course, he foiled their plans to get rid of the old Number 2, so from what I can tell there was just risk in involving him and I can’t see the possible reward.

They went through the rigamarole of recording Number 6 telling the new Number 2 about the assassination plot so they could create a film that would convince the old Number 2 that Number 6’s warning isn’t credible. But why involve him in the first place? It could all have been blamed on the jammers who, this time, weren’t joking.

I just don’t get it. Help, please?

At least we got to learn a new sport, and you can always tell Number 2 because he wears the white helmet and the other guy wears the black one. They both have cool shoes, though. And, as Melanie points out, Number 2 has some styling glasses.

Attributions:

Glasses by chiccabubble from the Noun Project
Helmet public domain from the Noun Project
Watch by Becca O’Shea from the Noun Project
Medal by Kris Brauer from the Noun Project

July 27, 2015

Week four summary

I just finished two of my assignments about an hour ago. Here is what I did this week.

I spent most of my #prisoner106 time on my “I can read movies” book cover for “The Chimes of Big Ben.” I have really enjoyed seeing what else everyone is creating with these, and am going to take some time tomorrow to catch up on commenting on them.

I spent some time on a couple of different days doing a design blitz, which I really enjoy. And I learned that there are a lot of Cannabis dispensaries in the neighbourhood I was walking around in.

While I was out walking one evening I found a sign for Pennyfarthing Drive, and decided I needed to do something with it. So I did a colour splash assignment.

I have one more design assignment I want to be sure to do (the four icons one, because it has to do with an episode from this week that I am very puzzled by), but it will have to wait until tomorrow…

July 27, 2015July 27, 2015

Pennyfarthing Drive

When I was out doing my design blitz in the Village the other day I discovered that there is a street called Pennyfarthing Drive in the Village. Well, of course there is.

Alternate version

I also did a red version. I’m not sure which I like better.

the process

This is really a “visual assignment” (last week) rather than a “design assignment” (this week), but oh well.

This was a problematic image to work with because it was not very light in the laneway where I took it, and there wasn’t much daylight left in the day. So the street sign didn’t stand out at all. I wanted to find some way to emphasize the sign.

First, I discovered the “burn” tool in GIMP (in the tool pane) and tried it out. I didn’t know what it did. On this b/w image it lightened things up. So I used it on the words on the sign, to brighten them.

Then, I decided to do a colour splash. This was a little tricky because I wanted two different colours, one for the sign and one for the lamp.

1. First, I duplicated the image a couple of times.

2. I added an alpha channel to the layer with the b/w image, and then used the “lasso” tool to select around the sign and then the lamp. I used Edit -> clear to delete the selection, leaving a transparent spot for each.

3. I had two other layers with the same image. On one of them I used Colors -> colorize to colour it green, and I did the same on the other to colour it yellow. Only I discovered something: I had the lamp still selected on the yellow layer, and when I did “colorize” it just coloured the lamp, not the rest of the image. Interesting.

4. On the yellow layer I selected around the sign and did the same thing as in step 2 to make the sign on the yellow layer also transparent. That way it would show through to the green layer below it rather than showing the sign yellow.

Here’s a screenshot of the layers; the b/w on top, the yellow lamp, then the layer that got colorized entirely green.

July 27, 2015

Design Blitz in the Village

It’s design week for #prisoner106, which means time to take pictures that exemplify design principles. We were to take images of things that show at least five of the following:

A nice set of resources on these design principles can be found here.

I’ve done a couple of design blitzes before; one was in Fall 2013 and another in Spring 2014 (that one is on the site with my teaching and learning portfolio; I should put it somewhere else because now that site just has my portfolio on it).

I really enjoy doing these because it helps me understand these design principles, and it’s just darn fun! But I was really busy this week finishing that teaching and learning portfolio (it was due this week for promotion, and now I leave it alone for a year until I find out if I’ll be able to move up to the next faculty level). So I didn’t get as much done on this assignment as I wanted.

Color

I was drawn to the use of colour in this sign for a couple of reasons. One, because I think it’s used effectively to draw your eye to the titles of the different sections, and to separate out the elements in the image on the far right. But I also like it because it works on another level: it’s about water (blue) and how to deal with it in an environmentally friendly way (green).

I think this is a questionable use of colour in the words. When I put some type in different colour than other type it’s b/c I’m trying to emphasize something, to focus people in on some parts of the text rather than others. Here, I can’t tell what I’m supposed to be focused on. The white seems to stand out more, but could it really be that they want me to pay most attention to “your grocery list”?

Typography

The typography here struck me because it’s clearly trying to hearken back in time, but then when you look at the “established” date it’s just five years ago. There’s something interesting in that juxtaposition. At any rate, they’ve managed to capture a retro feel with the typography and the arrows around “distillery.” the wrought iron holding the sign helps too.

Minimalism/use of space

How much more minimal can you get? And yet, this is very effective. This place is tucked away in a part of campus not a lot of people go to, on the ground floor of a residence building. I think it’s pretty effective to let people know quickly and easily what can be found there. Once you get a bit closer you can see the name of the place (sign on the top left), but really, “food” and “coffee” are the most important messages.

Balance

I see this design all over Vancouver, especially at bus stops. Usually there is some kind of roof that stops the rain, but this one doesn’t have a roof…not sure what the point is, then.

This seemed to me to be an interesting example of balance–it should feel off-balance, because the right side is much longer than the left. But it still feels balanced, to me. There’s probably some complicated mathematical or physical principle for why it’s not heavier on the right than the left (or maybe it is?). At any rate, I like this example of a not-balanced balance.

Form and function

I don’t know if this really counts under the “form and function” header; this is a picture of a new earth sciences building on the campus where I work. On the bottom are panels of different sorts of stone, all labeled with the kind of stone they are and where the stone came from. It’s a building devoted to education that is itself educational.

Metaphors/symbols

The University of British Columbia is celebrating its centennial year in 2015-2016. I think this design nicely captures both the past and the future, even if the suggestion that UBC will live on infinitely is rather far-fetched.

This sign is near some apple trees that are nicely placed on campus where one might want to just take an apple and eat it. I like that they’ve put on the sign a suggestion that you wouldn’t want to eat the fruit anyway b/c it’s full of worms. That’s maybe not what they intended but it’s a message one could get even unconsciously, perhaps.

A collection of Cannabis dispensary signs

I found one, then another, then another within a short space. Two were on the same block. I took the image of the first one b/c it seemed a good use of a symbol:

The small plus sign on the left is a subtle connection of this establishment with medicine (as is the word “dispensary,” but that is already commonly used for these businesses). Putting it in green fits with the fact that this about a plant. And the large font for “CANNABIS” plus the smaller font for “dispensary” seems designed to catch the eye (it did mine). Of course, using “cannabis” rather than “marijuana” also indicates a more official, medical purpose.

This one also uses the green plus sign as a symbol, along with the word “clinic,” which clearly brings up the idea of medicine.

And what says “medicine” more than an image of a doctor with a stethoscope? And a sort of clever attempt at connecting “Canada” to “cannabis” in the name of this place. But why does it matter if we get the impression that it’s Canada-wide? (I have no idea if it is.) Maybe it seems more legit?

Also, this was the third one in just a few blocks and I was starting to take pictures of them just b/c it was funny after awhile to see so many ….