Puppet Tool

For the next project I had the idea of doing a type of puppet effect using video/ picture files of myself and some friends. At first I started looking up different options of animating my own face, body etc. and ended up getting the idea from this video tutorial on youtube and it takes you through the process step by step so its easier for people who are less experienced with graphic design like myself. Granted the guy that narrates the tutorial is annoying as hell so I had to mute it and follow along but it wasn't that difficult. He's got a bunch of other video tutorials that work with animating the body to do many things.

Bass/ Treble Tutorial

Last week in class we went over the steps to tracking the bass and treble with different types of layers. I was going through some tutorials on youtube and stumbled upon this step by step video that teaches you to makes a pulse logo that reacts to the audio (bass/treble). The videos twenty minutes so its a bit long but when you get the steps down its easy to do with any song!

Having some fun

So over the weekend I decided to experiment a little bit by creating my own moving shapes that "bounce" with the music. I'm not exactly sure how much I can write about this, but I'll definitely give it a try.

Making this did take me a little while because I had to try and remember all of the different elements that we used in it. In order to try and make it come out good, I wanted to make two different sets of Treble and Bass. However, I made each respective pair have the same settings for Treble and Bass. I didn't try and make one higher than the other so the bouncing ratio was different. If I wanted to redo it, that's one thing I would change. But anyway. I wanted to try and make each shape be seen by rotating the rectangles as they get larger. So in order to do that I created the 4 rectangles - actually two and then just duplicate that specific layer - and rotated two of them in order to give it that look of more than there actually are. This was done for both Bass and Treble. Once that was done I added a circle to cover up the middle parts so it looked as though the rectangles were coming out of the circle. Once the whole piece was done I had to make some minor changes to the background and the color of the shapes so it was colorful and bright, but that was nothing too major.

Anyway, all in all, I really like doing this specific project. It is always so much fun and I always smile ear to ear when it is all said and done.

It's Always Fun To Blow Stuff Up

When we were working on the birds flying in class on Thursday there was a lot of talk about setting things on fire and blowing stuff up. I was in the middle of doing a tutorial on Video Co-Pilot so I wasn't able to look into it too much. Therefore earlier today I took a bit of a look at some cool tutorials on how to blow some buildings up. Here's a short one:

And here's another one that blows up the Statue of Liberty. I didn't look into it too much, but I will definitely look to explore it more as time goes on:

fun and mindless

Here is a link to the random music generator I was playing with in class. Such a fun and mindless toy, I could play with it for hours. If you're looking to kill some time this link will take you to the page where I found "Ball Droppings". It showcases what their making with Processing.js. The program looks like a mash-up of processing and java. Yeah, nobody really wants to play with code and set parameters, well at least I rarely do, but we all love a little distraction.