Talky Tina has Jim Groom held hostage for RANSOM! And the ransom is that we need to make animated gifs of Mr. Jim Groom. We had until midnight. Well, it is 11:34 my time and so I think that counts, right?
Super true friend, please let him go? I see that he is still in his hut overnight, but hopefully he will be released in the morning.
Process!
I made this gif in GIMP.
1. I copied the original image, which had “edupunk” on his hands, a few times on different layers and labeled them “edupunk” for ease of reference later.
2. Then I took one of those layers and, using the “clone” tool, got rid of the “punk” so I just had “edu.” I saved that layer as “edu.”
3. Then I got rid of the “u” in “edu” using the clone tool, and saved that layer as “ed.” Same for eliminating the “d” and ended up with just an “E” layer. Then I erased the “E” and ended up with a “blank” layer.
4. I then had to order the layers and specify the time delay between them. I started with the blank layer, then used the “E” layer, then the “Ed” layer, then the “Edu” layer, then “edupunk.” I alternated the “Edu” and “edupunk” layers to get the “blinking” effect, ending with an “edupunk” layer. The part I spent the longest on was specifying the delay between layers to get the effect I wanted. You can see what I chose in the screenshot below (it is just missing the very last “edupunk” layer, which was 600ms).
6. Then I had a heck of a time because though the delay was right when I used “filter,” “animation,” “playback” in the GIMP menu, when I exported the file to a gif file it just gave the same delay to all the frames (looked like about 100 ms). After some web searching, and having been fooled by a tutorial on time delays that told me otherwise, I found that what I had done wrong was put a space between the number and the “ms”, like: (600 ms). Wrong. Need to take out the space and then it works!
I’m participating as much as I have time to in #noir106, the ds106 iteration for this term, focused on noir writing, radio, film, etc. For week 3 (yeah, a couple of weeks ago…I’m behind) we were asked to do a noir photo safari:
I kept meaning to do this for over a week, and the weather here in Vancouver kept being grey and rainy…not good light for things like “dramatic use of distinct shadows” or “the ‘Venetian blind effect.'” Finally, last weekend I just gave up on waiting for some sun and did a rainy noir safari instead. I only managed a few of the things on the list above, mostly “the grittiness of built environment,” though I also tried one or two “off kilter.” I also captured two noircats on film (yeah, my own cats, who are not really very noir when it comes right down to it).
These were all taken with my phone, so the quality isn’t as good as if I took them with our good camera. But I still don’t feel like I know enough about how to use that, and I didn’t have it with me on the day I was walking around laneways.
And of course, because it’s noir, I made them all black and white!
I also think that a couple of these work pretty well in colour, as showing “grittiness”:
Yale Noir, Flickr photo shared by Tony Fisher, licensed CC BY 2.0. I kind of especially like this photo b/c it’s of the Yale Hotel in my hometown of Vancouver, BC.
I’m following along, as much as I have time to, the latest iteration of ds106, #noir106. I’m excited, not just because, well, it’s ds106, which I love, but also because when it comes right down to it, I’m not really sure what “noir” is. I have this image of black and white films, fedoras, lots of smoking, and private detectives. But what, could one say, makes a story or a film or a piece of audio (or anything else) “noir”?
Fortunately, this week there are some resources suggested to help answer this question (scroll down on this page). I’ll just comment on a couple of these here.
Paul Schrader, in “Notes on Film Noir” (1972) says that film noir is not a genre determined by “conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by tone and mood.” And the tone and mood seem to be, of course, dark. He speaks of stories about crime and corruption, about aspects of the psyche and character that one might wish to sweep under the rug, stories that express hopelessness rather than happy endings. There is “loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, insecurity” (11). Part of this is the “post-war disillusionment” that occurred in America after WWII, in which there was a desire for “realism” rather than empty optimism (expressed in part through scenes shot in real locations rather than in studios from which the subtle–or not so subtle–sense of simulation could blunt the “sting” of the noir tone (10). Schrader also points to the influence of the “hard boiled” novels of authors such as Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, who created cynical heroes with a “narcissistic, defeatist code” (10.
The filmic aspects of film noir, according to Schrader, include (unsurprisingly) that “most of the scenes are lit for night”–even during the day the scenes are dark, with shutters closed and low lights (11). Actors are often in shadow, as if they don’t stand out from the rest of the scene, the city, producing a sense of defeatism–no matter what they do, the city will win out. There is an emphasis on water, including city streets wet with rain and docks and piers as common meeting places.
This article helps me a great deal, pointing to how noir need not be just about crime fiction, but could include numerous types of stories of corruption, despair, hopelessness, etc.
What I found interesting, though, was that on the noir106 week one site there is also suggested a Bugs Bunny cartoon (among other cartoons, including Scooby Doo and Courageous Cat), called “Racketeer Rabbit.” This could be interpreted as a parody of noir, in that it contains the usual noir aspects (dark scenes, gangsters, guns, violence), but uses them in a humorous context. Yet at the same time, it’s kind of noir itself, what with Bugs being also cruel and violent, showing the “dark underbelly” of the (human?) character to the degree to which the gangster, at the end, would rather flee to the cops than stay with him.
The other noir example I explored was the podcast “Welcome to Night Vale.” That’s partly because I’ve listened to this podcast before, but hadn’t thought of it as “noir.” If I describe this podcast it doesn’t sound like much: a single narrator speaks in the character of a community radio host, talking about the goings-on in the town of Night Vale. Those goings-on, though, range from the bizarre to the absurd to, well, what one might encounter in a sci-fi horror story, all of which are treated as more or less normal by the narrator. After reading Schrader’s article, though, I can see how we might consider this podcast in the noir genre, focusing as it does on the dark, the negative, the horrific, the mysterious, and doing so as if these were simply a part of life. (Honestly, though, the podcast is also very funny, which to me is the main “tone” I get from it rather than darkness).
We were also asked to suggest other examples of noir. I am having a bit of trouble with this, but if I think of the most dark and depressing story I’ve read in awhile, the first thing that comes to mind is The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I think that one might work.
I did this with GIMP, starting with a background for which attribution is given below. Then I used Chancery Cursive font and made it a bit “dirty” by using a paintbrush with a grunge pattern and kind of dabbed lighter colours on the words.
This is something I need to tell myself over and over, not just on New Year’s Day! It is pretty powerful to think about what, when I’m old(er) and grey(er), I will wish I had done more of. It’s not that I don’t like my job–I love it. But I really shouldn’t let it take up as much time as I do.
The DS106 Daily Create for October 25: “A free pass to change your past. Today you get a free pass to go back and change anything in your past. What did you change and why?”
Here’s my entry…
See, I know that ten years from now I’ll say: Damn, I should have spent more time with my son and less time on work. I know I’ll say that; I can hear it already. I’m practically saying it now. He’s seven, and the next ten years are going to be crucial to our future relationship. And yet, I work 9-11 hours per day, 5 days a week, and another 5-8 hours per day on most weekends. At least, during the 26 weeks of the year that I’m teaching at my university job. (Anyone, anyone who thinks that university professors all have it easy because they only teach a few hours a day should just take a look at my schedule. And not only mine.)
So I know that in the future, I’ll wish I had changed the past that is now the present.
So why don’t I just take this advice now and keep myself from having to say this ten years from now (or even today)?
What I’d like to change in my past is whatever the hell it is that keeps me from taking this advice. Whatever it is that drives me to work longer than is probably necessary, to prep for classes and mark essays. Whatever makes me stay up to all hours of the night doing teaching, research, and service work. Whatever won’t let me say “no” to that next really interesting project that honestly, will push me over the edge.
But the thing is, I don’t know what that thing is.
But if I had the chance to change it, I’d probably do so, even though it means that my career wouldn’t be where it is now, most likely. But what am I gonna really think is important when I’m old(er) and grey(er)? Pretty obvious answer: my family. Duh.
Greg McVerry asked ds106 participants to make something to promote a campaign called “Burpees for Bobby,” which helps out Greg’s nephew, baby Bobby, who has a type of leukodystrophy. Do a web search about it and you’ll weep as I did. You can donate to the cause, here.
I was looking around for drawings of burpees that were openly licensed so I could make an animation, but I couldn’t easily find any. So I made my own, modeled on a stick figure drawing I found on the web, but can’t now find anymore for some reason. I used the Paper 53 app to do it, then sent it to myself over email.
My burpee drawing on Paper 53 app
I opened the jpg and did screen shots of each of the parts to put them on separate layers in GIMP. I had to fiddle around with scaling the layers to get the stick figures to be approximately the same size–the heads and bodies of each one ended up different sizes when I did the screen shots.
Then I opened new white layers in GIMP and added the text layers to the beginning and end. To get the “GO!!” to flash, I just alternated the GO layers with blank white layers.
I repeated the burpee sequence 3 times, then gave my poor stick figure a rest for a little while, then started the animation over again.
The only tricky thing here was to get the timing of the animation right. I had to go back and figure out how to specify the duration of each layer in an animation by adding it to the layer name in milliseconds, such as shown in this screen shot:
Here’s the finished product! The one thing I’d change if it weren’t late and I didn’t need to go to bed is that the jumping person doesn’t really look like they’re jumping but rather standing and raising their arms. Would need to raise that figure up a bit. But bed calls…
![Jim Groom is an [edu] PUNK!!](http://chendricks.org/ds106/files/2015/03/JimGroomEdupunk2.gif)
