Once upon a time

I don't have much to blog about today. Yesterday we visited the Hunterdon Museum of Art and saw some interesting stuff. The work by Marion Held was very interesting. A lot of her pieces were organic in nature whether two of three dimensional.The upstairs gallery was of student print work. Quite a bit of originality here. One piece was a video. It was composed of photos as well as line art. Since I have been investigating this media I found this most interesting. I have video effects that I think would have improved it. The art used in the piece were on display nearby. I'm not sure this contributed to the piece except in "this is how I did it" note.
Museums to me are always learning experiences. I don't use the word educational because it doesn't mean the same to me.

Look Ma, no camera!

Sometimes I just can't help myself. I burn a lot of DVDs just as experiments. You don't know exactly how something is going to look on the big screen TV until you play the DVD. Anyway, I don't like to trash anything, I mean, we make collages from scraps of paper. Right? So, what do you do with discarded DVDs? I've painted on some of them. Painted on them. Cut them up and reassembled them. Tried to thermoform them. And nuked them.

This photo comes form the last. I placed the DVD in the microwave oven and hit the start button. There was a flash of light and some smoke was generated as well as sparks like miniature lightning bolts. All of this happened in the length of tome it takes to move your finger from the start button to the stop button.

I scanned the DVD into Photoshop and then, with a minor stroke of genius, I scanned my hand.
Then I combined the images,clicked auto adjustments to the image, cropped and fine!

Scanning my hand introduced me to a whole new method of image creation!

AND no camera was used!!!!!!

Whew!

I'm happy this slideshow is finished. Life is so much simpler without cammentary. It is enough of a problem to get the narration synchronised with the images but there is more. The volume must be at the proper level and equalised, plus all pops, cracks, and misspeaks must be removed. The volume levels of the commentary vs. the background music must be adjusted. I never seem to get it (the final product) just right.

But, of course, now I will be starting a new project. I want to animate one of my sketchbook pages. Animate may be the wrong word. Perhaps, explore a page via the medium of video would be more descriptive .

I enjoy mixing mediums.

Ain't this some kinda creative stuff?

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Mixing it up

I often draw things from my imagination. There is no such structure such as the one in this drawing. Although I was watching a movie in which some men with hang gliders attacked a temple in the Himalayas. The fortress is simply from my imagination, but based on medieval fortresses.

Once I had drawn it, I visualised a stormy night. Enter video. I scanned the drawing into Photoshop and cropped it and increased the contrast. Then I imported it into Ulead Videostudio 9. First I duplicated the frame and with the color control I darkened it. By using the cross-fade transition and adjusting the length of each frame on the screen I created the effect of oncoming and subsequent darkness.

I used three different "lightning" video filters randomly. I also added two "rain" filters. I searched the Internet for the thunder and rain sound effects and used three "thunders" and two "rains". I mixed these effects on Audacity before adding them to the sound track in Ulead.

Lastly I added the music which was some royalty-free stuff I had laying around.

I think it came out OK. What about you?