Hypercompendia

I think I have it here in a flash file:

Recycling Transition

The other thing is that I was able to fix a major mess up in the marking layout; what happened was that I must have been moving a dot and hiccuped, thus moving the dot way northeast of where it was originally on the previous image. This resulted in some odd stuff happening.

I never would have figured out how to fix it until I selected “show triangles” from one of the menus and came up with this, which obviously showed the dot that was off on vacation (can’t see it here, it’s been fixed, but think of taking one of these dots and moving it and the resulting effect on the pattern).

Well, aside from some major mess-ups–didn’t realize that any dots added to an image in the sequence adds dots to ALL the images, even those prior to that image, I’ve put together this file from the Recycling segment. Problem is, that while I can email the preview in a .swf version, I can’t seem to send it to a website like this to include it in a post.

Workin’ on that problem.

Found out that yes, I can do a series of images into Morpheus though I haven’t finished the sequence. What concerned me was that I wanted to be able to replicate (for now, as practice) the Recyling transition from face to fetus that needs to be done in stages. Since it follows the lines of a poem, the images relate to those specific lines, and this is what happens throughout that poem, from Poe turning into Jesus Christ, to the finale of tunnel to birth canal. This may come up in future work.

Evidently this can be done. I’ll have the short clip ready probably tomorrow, but the work area of the program, at the portion where I’m currently working–image three into image four– is below. What is being done is dots made on one image show up on the others (that follow), then those marker dots can be moved on the next image to bring them into sync when the sequence is run. More later.

Just got myself a few new “toys” – that means software that’s fun to play with despite its nature of productivity. What I got was Smith Micro’s Poser 7, Anime Studio Pro 6, and their Morpheus Animation Suite. (Links are to the latest versions.) Obviously, these aren’t the latest version of each, but at a total cost of $60, it was better for me to feel I could afford these on a whim rather than either wait until I could afford to get them at full cost or feel pressured.

The easiest one to learn was the first one I’m trying and that’s Morpheus. There is a limit to exactly what you can do, but I must say that already I can see where I could have used this to make my life much easier in the 2008 production of Recycling, a poem I made into a movie with images I worked over in Photoshop and then dropped into Windows Movie Maker.

The sequence in particular that I’m working with is the transition of a photograph of a face (mine) into a fetus. Here are the images I’d used in the final piece:

Now there were several images in between these as steps in the process, but these were the finals I used. There were transition effects between them, available in the Movie Maker program.

But Morpheus, while still requiring much of the work to be done in Photoshop (though I haven’t learned the Warp feature to see how much it can do) I think that the transition between the shots in the sequence could be much more vibrant, more physical, in the Morpheus platform.

I intend to play with these to see what possible effects can be achieved, for example, I am not sure if it’s possible to do a continuous strip from a series of images such as the above eight. The program has a setup of making A into B, but there is also a movie strip with frames so that may be the way to work it–though between the pairs, I’m not sure what happens.

At any rate, I’ll be back with the details as I work.

I’ve been a fan of Dreaming Methods for a long time though I’m still stubbornly into text as the load-bearing walls of story, but today’s tweet offering the free source code of many visual effects and my new zest and zeal for taking my hypertext pieces further was more than I could resist.

My other problem has been that I’m rather a purist about not copying what’s already been done (excluding what Steve Ersinghaus has taught me in effects, but he’s a friend) and seeing it as unoriginal. I’m just accepting that I am incapable of both seriously understanding and developing the code and instead am better geared toward story and language and should use the skill and talent of the creative coders to better advantage.

Dreaming Methods also has a resource kit available that I’ve been eying for a while.

Thanks to Dorothee Lang’s review of the Ars Electronica Prixars Competition for CyberArts I maneuvered around and found a most entrancing film clip by Spy Films that just took my breath away.

Without a single word of dialogue, a story of two strangers meeting is both beautifully and horrifically presented in Nuit Blanche. While the writer has described it as  “(it) explores a fleeting moment between two strangers, revealing their brief connection in a hyper real fantasy.” I would say, even after a single viewing, that there is so much more within it. For me, the car, the spilled wine, the flying glass, are metaphors for the trials and resulting wounds we suffer and heal from in life; something we all normally go through before those more rare moments of perfect alignment in time and connection with another human being. I see that instant of possibility and potential that can be life-changing, yet is often overseen or ignored.

Another great feature of this film is that there is a “How” it was produced film that is indeed fascinating (once you see the visual effects in the film, you’re going to want to know how they were accomplished). While the process is over my head, I can see that it is a combination of slow motion, and computer animation that brings about the resulting story, and that it entails an awful lot of work and talent and skill to accomplish.

Absolutely awesome piece.

I do love the audio visual narratives that play up the graphics and motion over story, but isn’t there a place for digital text as the main vehicle of narrative? It seems that hypertext as a way of storytelling, without the added pizazz of preferably moving visuals and audio that to me at least sounds annoying when repetitiously run throughout the piece, is either a dinosaur or needs the help of much more than color and background images. And yes, sentences that sing no long mean eloquent writing.

There’s much to think about.

(Update: a relative post at HtLit here.)

Sometime last week or so I posted about a man I knew years ago who did panoramic photography. Well in reading around today I found an article on Wired called “Do It Yourself 3D” and that brought back memories too.

I worked/lived with a photographer a couple decades ago and so ran into folks seeking special photographic printing which my partner did very well (I did the picture framing and tried to learn photography on field trips taking rolls of film of a turtle on a stump). One of our customers did manage to rig up a camera system that took images in stereoscope (?) that produced a 3D effect.

Some things come through and stick. Some things come as a trend and fade away. And some things drift in and out like clouds, better each time for the passing.

Been playing in Tinderbox the last few days, trying to update the Literary Endeavors file with all current submissions–both straight and hypertext, stories and poetry–and it’s intensive. This is only because I’m backtracking with hundreds of bits of data from emails, spreadsheets, bookmarks and their websites, that have accumulated over the past maybe six months actively, though some of the info is on older stories and such that were sent out in spurts of ambition over the past few years, with years in between.

I’m caught up to a point that tells me a few things. One, the design of the Tinderbox file changes with the input; while I loved the threads of links from work to venue and luckily, was smart enough not to put return trails for all replies, a pattern established itself that proved itself to be the best way of keeping track of things at a glance at the mapview. This set a new method of linking submission to publisher.

What I’ve decided on now is to link from the story box to the venue via the publisher’s name, and including the name of the story within the publisher’s box. Doing it this way, I can see exactly how many and which stories are out there awaiting replies. When a reply comes in, the link is either deleted (with the date entered within the boxes) or turned into a happy bold red acceptance link from publisher to story.

Another thing this mapview tells me at a glance is that I don’t currently have much in the pipeline!

So here comes the next project on the agenda: to write, rewrite, throw away into the black hole, or send out, some stuff. The most important will be rewriting–and this includes the hypertext pieces that were done over last summer. It’s hard to find a home for a hypertext; so until these have been placed somewhere in some form, I discounted the initial idea of writing a hundred more this summer for the 100 Days Project. On the other hand, the discipline of a deadline worked for me…

Which means that while not a part of it, I’ll possibly be setting up a goal for myself to do X every day (for a grand total of 100 Xs) alongside the project–just outside the fence. What I’m thinking of now is either a hypertext poem (short and easy) or a short story a day, just enough to leave time for two other concepts I’ve been putting off–stretchtext and another flash piece or a movie.

And, of course, the garden, reading, and sitting around drinking wine.

A new digital story from one of my favorite writers of new media, Alan Bigelow, is now available at Webyarns.

It’s a flash piece, and as with all of Alan’s work, it is thought-provoking and contemporary in this day of wondering what the world is all about and how and where we happen to fit in. The carnival effect which is one of the backgrounds of the visual is so telling of what we often feel inside our brains, the whirl of movement, the noise of a crowd that surrounds us, the focus inward despite the blur that represents the world of people pacing at a different speed. I like the opening of military stringency that places a burden on the mind and body and the coughing that may indicate that we just don’t measure up–perhaps hinting at fatal flaw of smoking, or dependency that helps yet hinders our achievement of our goals.

I love the simple statements that are relevant to us all and yet reach beyond the norm: “My brain is in the past, present and future tense” and my favorite: “My brain is the last place I look for my keys.”Meanwhile, relevant facts of more physical reference float by as if secondary to the revelations of self-analysis.

But each opening space offers something else. Entering via a different path of “The Metaphor Room,” we are given a different pace, a dreamlike spot in the brain that oddly is more of a reality as it expands away from self to the interaction with others. with a seemingly more empirical knowledge of the world.

More of Alan’s work can be viewed at Webyarns, as well as archived at the ELO Directory.