Axel

AdobeGenPro Digital Creativity Workshop: Flash Professional

November 14, 2013 by kathi

This week, our challenge was to create a short frame by frame animation.

The Flash Professional assignment

Creative Challenge – Walk Cycle: Using Adobe Flash Professional create a short walk cycle of a drawn character using the frame by frame technique described in the live class.

I’ve used Flash before for creating some very basic text animations, and I’ve also modified an existing Flash photo gallery. None of these projects involved any drawing, so this was a mostly new experience to me.

We were given some excellent walk cycle resources in the class, including this great tutorial from idleworm.com. I thought that a dog obedience recall exercise would give me the movements I wanted to include:

Sit Axel next to me and ask him to stay.
Walk away from him for several paces—this would give me a 2-legged walk cycle.
Turn towards Axel and call him to me—this would give me a 4-legged walk cycle.

My process:

Video the recall exercise. I used the video function of my Nikon Coolpix S51 point and shoot camera. Once again, I had no one to help me film, so I set up the camera on a mini tripod and kept it running for several takes of the recall exercise. I ended up with about six minutes of raw footage.
Trim the video down to one recall exercise, which was about 10 seconds of footage.
Import the video into Photoshop, using Import Video Frames to Layers. This is where I learned that I should have used an HD video camera and got closer to the action. Cropping in on the action resulted in an image that was low resolution and more difficult to trace in Flash. Live and learn, and next time, start filming earlier in the day so a reshoot is possible before it gets too dark! This is where I trimmed down the number of frames and tried to pick the ones that would correspond best to the walk cycles. The 4-legged walk cycle didn’t work that well because a dog will run or gallop on a recall rather than walk, and I really didn’t get all of the best frames.
Export the frames as an image sequence from Photoshop. Import to stage in Flash and trace over me and dog in each frame with paint brush tool. This would have been easier with higher resolution images to trace. Since I am somewhat drawing challenged, I was fortunate to have a Wacom Graphire tablet instead of having to struggle with tracing with a mouse. I was able to reuse sitting Axel and standing me across several frames. In addition to the class resources, I found this tutorial from Ripper Designs and Multimedia to be very helpful. I realized too late that I had no idea how to fill in the shapes I’d created (because they aren’t really closed shapes when drawn with the paint brush) so I could not use the background I’d originally planned. I settled for spray brushing some different greens at the bottom of the stage so it wouldn’t look so bare.

I ended up with six seconds of video, and I’m guessing that over an hour of work went into each second. I did enjoy creating this project and I’d like to do others in the future. For professional or hobbyist uses, I can think of many instances where an animated video sequence would be very effective to illustrate a step-by-step procedure. My drawing skills will need some improvement first, though!

AdobeGenPro Digital Creativity Workshop: Photoshop

November 14, 2013 by kathi

I’d like to go into a little more detail about thought processes and technical notes for each one of the Digital Creativity in the Classroom weekly projects.

The Photoshop assignment

Creative Challenge – Big and Small: You’ll need to take two images of yourself and relate them to one another – one a supersized (or normal) version of you, the other a normal (or super-small) version.

I’ve had a recurring nightmare over the years where I’ve switched sizes with one of my pets and I’m being hunted down. That was my inspiration for this project. While this did not exactly meet the assignment given because I did not use two versions of myself (or two versions of the same person, animal, or item), I still felt it related big and small in a way that was more personally inspiring to me.

I did not have a good location to stage a hunting scene with any of my pets, so I skipped straight to where I was already captured for the next meal. Somehow I also skipped right over the fact that it was neither easy nor kind to ask them to pose with a partially filled bowl of food and do nothing but look in. I was planning to do the scene with one of the dogs and hope their obedience training would get us through the photo shoot. I didn’t expect the photobombing cat, but I ended up using his portion of that photo.

There were no other humans around to help me with photos, so the photo of myself was taken using the 10-second timer on my point and shoot camera. Why is 10 seconds so long when you are trying to fill it in a speech class, and so short when you are trying to get from one side of the kitchen to the other without hurting yourself? This was an outtake as the version where I have both hands outstretched worked much better.

I used the Quick Selection tool and the Eraser tool with a Wacom Graphire tablet to do a quick ‘n’ dirty outline and clean it up a bit. I admit to not using best practices in production: I did not use a mask, duplicate layers, or other non-destructive techniques. In an actual production situation, I like to think I’d be more careful!

Putting it all together

Here is the photo I picked for the “dog” version (1).

I cropped it down and made it the bottom (background) layer of my file (2).

I placed the outlined photo of myself on the next layer, rotated it counterclockwise, and erased my feet (3).

The bottom of the bowl was showing through where my feet should have been, so I added some layers with a few pieces of kibble outlined and pasted onto each, like this one (4).

See above for the finished product as well as the “cat” version. Click on any of the photos to display a larger version.

One of my goals is to add more graphics to any appropriate instructional or informational materials I prepare. I am not sure how often I will need to use photo montages but I will watch for opportunities to do so.

Won’t be making the best-dressed list again this year

November 10, 2012 by kathi

I’ve mentioned before how most of our dogs have not had the clothes-wearing gene. The dogs that win photo contests and costume contests obviously have this gene. Not all of them are purse dogs either.

Axel can be convinced to wear a t-shirt, and someday I may be thankful for this fact if he ever needs minor surgery and thus a barrier to keep him away from the stitches for a few days.

I don’t think there is anything that can convince him to look good in a t-shirt, though. By the time I can get a camera focused, it’s always riding up or pulled down too tightly. It’s still sort of cute in an embarrassing-your-large-dog kind of way. But he won’t be winning any contests in the foreseeable future either!

(NaBloPoMo | November ’12: 10 of 30)

Review: MrChewy.com online pet food retailer

March 3, 2012 by kathi

Finding good brick-and-mortar pet supply stores of both the small independent and big-box discount variety is easy to do in my sector. I live in Chicago, about five minutes from two large chain stores and about fifteen minutes from an all natural pet food store. Could I still benefit by using an online pet food retailer?

MrChewy.com gave me the opportunity to find out: the answer is a definite “YES!”

I got a chance to try it out last month over the Presidents Day holiday with a simulated “emergency” food order. Freya was about to hit bottom on a bag of California Natural Lamb Meal & Rice Large Bites. If you are a repeat visitor, you might recall that Freya has a mild case of IBS and it is one of a very few foods that agrees with her. Happily, it is also one of the more than 70 brands of food currently carried by Mr. Chewy — an excellent variety, with an emphasis on premium and natural foods. Mr. Chewy’s selection of California Natural varieties is actually better than what is available locally. I have had a hard time finding the low calorie and grain free varieties at times.

Mr. Chewy also carries Axel’s favorite food choices: Wellness CORE and Orijen 6 Fish. I had been wanting to try Acana Pacifica as a substitute for the Orijen 6 Fish since it is slightly less expensive, but it wasn’t widely available locally. Since it was in stock at Mr. Chewy, I placed our order for a large bag of California Natural and a small bag of Pacifica. The shopping experience on this well-organized, easy to navigate website was pleasant with no surprises. Out of stock items were clearly marked as such and the toll-free number and live chat link were displayed on every page if I did have a question.

One of the most attractive benefits of Mr. Chewy is their free 1-2 day shipping for orders over $49. This is a huge deal for heavy items like the large bags of dog food. I had previously used another online pet food retailer to send food to Axel when he was on the road with Julia chasing his AKC Championship. While service and selection were satisfactory, the expensive shipping charges were not pretty. So it is wonderful to see Mr. Chewy offering both the free shipping option for orders over $49 and a $4.95 flat rate for smaller orders.

So. Would the food arrive as promised before Freya hit the bottom of the bag? Yes, it did! The order was placed on Monday afternoon and arrived on Wednesday afternoon as promised. It was raining that day, and no one was home when the package arrived. Not to worry, as it was packaged nicely and our FedEx driver doesn’t throw our boxes over our fence.

DSCN0790c — Oliver Kittyweiler looks a bit offended that no cat food or cat treats were included in our order. Maybe next time!

I did a quick check of local pricing of our most-purchased items. Base prices average about a dollar more at Mr. Chewy than at my usual local stores. However, sales taxes in Cook County and Chicago are among the highest in the country, as are gasoline prices, so the total cost from Mr. Chewy ends up the same or less than a local purchase.

In addition to dog food, Mr. Chewy carries a good selection of cat food, dog and cat treats, dog potty pads, cat litter, and flea and tick treatments. There is a further discount to their already-competitive pricing if you set up subscription ordering.

If that isn’t enough to get you interested, Mr. Chewy also has a referral program that benefits not only shoppers, but animal-related charities as well. If you try Mr. Chewy, enter my referral code KWIL7576 when you check out. Mr. Chewy will give you 10% off your first order, and donate $10 to their partner pet charities. The vom Viersen Rottweilers give Mr. Chewy a big paws up!

For more information or to place your first order, go to MrChewy.com or visit their Facebook page.

MrChewy.com offered us a store credit to use in reviewing their service. I did not receive any other compensation for this review and am not connected to MrChewy.com other than as a satisfied customer. I thank them for the store credit and the opportunity to write this review.

When all else fails, there is always a Rottweiler

November 7, 2011 by kathi

Or two Rottweilers.

My attempt at doing a photo-a-day Project 365 petered out in April. Since then, I’ve gone between days and weeks of taking dozens of photos and other times when I take no photos for a few weeks. I have managed to learn enough about my DSLR to be able to pick which of my two lenses is the better one for a given situation and to figure out the right manual settings more than half of the time.

This, unfortunately, is from the less than half of the time when I didn’t figure the settings out correctly…

…still not a master work, but at least it’s Facebook-able and friends-and-family shareable. I love you, Photoshop. That is all.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’11: 7 of 30)