Monthly Archives: January 2016

The Law in These Here Parts

The Law In These Here Parts by iamTalkyTina, on Flickr

Well, I keep an eye on my Still True Friend Alan (@cogdog) by riding the range in his neighbourhood to keep an watch out for varmints.

Just in case somebody around Strawberry decides to cause a ruckus, I’ve had some signs posted to let them know that I am the Neighbourhood Watch. Folks should take these warning signs seriously because that Strawberry Mountain has a lot of places where a varmint could accidentally take a  little tumble.

This here sign is a good one for The Daily Create, tdc1476, which was talking about Western Warning Signs.

The Western Sign

The original western sign that Alan took a picture of and which he posted on Flickr (CC BY-2.0) has been replaced with the one showing me.

The DS106 Coloured Cow

“The DS106 Coloured Cow” by iamTalkyTina, on Flickr

Well, Jerome my DS106 Cow was out wandering in the back 40 and he must have come across one of my secret projects and got his self all prettied up with the paint colours. But he still looks nice.

So I made a picture of him for today’s The Daily Create one, tdc1473, which said to paint colour a cow. Can you see his DS106 birthmark?

About this Artwork

In case you think that Jerome looks familiar, you may have seen a picture of his dad, Khilari. And folks like Mark Greenberg have visited my back 40 before and taken pictures of it.

Also, in case you EVER need to put in a fake shadow in a picture for a thing (like a cow) that doesn’t have one, a little secret is:

  1. make a copy layer of the outline of thing that you want a shadow of;
  2. fill in that outline of the thing with all black;
  3. use the Edit >> Transform >> Skew and Edit >> Transform >> Stretch to make a the shadow lie on the ground instead of standing up like the thing;
  4. decrease the transparency of the shadow some (you have to eyeball it, but something like 45% might look good if I were doing it for a picture of a cow in the back 40) so that you can see the grass or whatever the ground is through the shadow. Pay close attention to the direction of the existing shadows in the photo and don’t make them go in different directions otherwise all the conspiracy theorists will think that the picture was made by Stanley Kubrick instead of being one that you just found. Plus, this one was interesting. Also, remember that I had a part in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Well, bye!

The Good and The Friendly

"Get Offa My Porch, Clint!" animatedGIF by @iamTalkyTina

“Get Offa My Porch, Clint!” animatedGIF by @iamTalkyTina

Well, it was the True Friend who at one time thought that I was the nemesis of him and made mean words at me all the time, but I sorted him out in The Rumble, my True Friend Ben (@techsavvyed) who made an MBS (@mbransonsAnimated GIF Assignment #1896 called Get Off My Porch with my good buddy called Clint Eastwood as The Man with No Name earlier this evening for #western106 and it caught my attention so I did it too. Because that is how we ride on the range in #ds106.

The assignment as written by Michael provides the source GIF of Clint Eastwood with a nice transparent background. The process to complete the assignment requires that you open the GIF in your photo editor (GIMP or Photoshop), and add your chosen background image below all of the existing GIF layers so that it shows behind each frame. Save the GIF back out as a revised file and you should be done! An easy 3 stars! (Or are they bullets, in #western106?)

Making the GIF File Size Smaller

The transparent GIF provided for this assignment has 105 frames (one is missing!) and weighs in at a paltry 18.9 MB. Actually, that’s huge for a GIF. We need it to be smaller!

Getting your GIF file size down but still looking good is a holdover from before the days of broadband Internet. Back in the original days of 1986/87 when peoples only had like a 2400 baud modem, it took forever to download graphics so CompuServe invented the GIF and you had to make them small. So it’s still a thing.

Some things that I did to make the GIF a bit smaller in file size were:

  • to take out a bunch of the frames
  • to use the same frames moving away from me as I used in looking towards me
  • to make it into a black and white one
  • to make the dimensions of it smaller (to 600 pixels wide, which is good for my WordPress, plus that Tumblr).
  • to fiddle with the GIF settings on the way out of Photoshop (type of, dimensions, dithering percentage, number of colours)

Some things that I did that made the GIF a bit bigger again (but better)

  • to add in the double take, which meant more frames in the GIF but also more story.

In the end, I compromised with a file size of 1.7 MB for a black and white GIF at 600 x 337 pixels with 30 frames.

Clean Up On The Porch

Because I used my favourite personal iconic photo of me called Midnight Scrapbooking as the background, I noticed that there was a white outline around Clint in all of the frames that made it look more fake than it should have. So I used a special Photoshop trick that got rid of a lot of the pixel borders that were white right around the Clint cutouts.

In this GIF you can see how I fixed it to make it look better and not fake. It shows the process as applied to ONE frame in the original Get-Off-My-Porch source GIF.

Removing Outline GIF by @iamTalkyTina

Removing Outline GIF by @iamTalkyTina

FOR EACH FRAME (!!)

  1. Click on the layer’s thumbnail in the Layers palate with the Command (Ctrl on PC) key down to make the dancing ants around Clint’s existing self
  2. Use Select >> Modify >> Contract (3 pixels) to make the ants dance in a slightly smaller perimeter
  3. Use Select >> Inverse to select everything OUTSIDE of that slightly decreased perimeter, which is basically the white outline stuff that you don’t want.
  4. Use the eraser over the dancing ants to basically remove all of the pixels outside of the slightly reduced dancing ants perimeter.
  5. Deselect everything and maybe tidy up any little white bits that might still remain, but there weren’t any.
  6. Repeat for each frame that you need to get rid of the outline for (all of the ones that you want to use).

ENJOY!

Home on the Range: Putting Words in Tina’s Mouth

TDC1471 Home on the Range

It is a screen capture of The Daily Create tdc1471, silly!

Well, today’s The Daily Create one, tdc1471, was one that was written by me, and it said to make new #ds106 words for the old fashioned cowboy classic, Home on the Range.

So I am making a repository collection of all the different words in a Google Document called ds106 Version of Home on the Range for iamTalkyTina. Now for the BIG NEWS!!!

The Big News

Saddle-Up,True-Friends_1200aI would like to announce that I will be doing a special arrangement of all the lyrics and making a recording of the song for all of you to hear and then it will be going on my special #western106 album, which will be called “Saddle Up, True Friends!”

What People Wrote

I would like to thank the following peoples for writing words for me to learn and sing.

In case you want to see the Tweets of all of them with all the nice pictures that people added, too (I will use them in the music video of the song) I made a thing called a Storify of all the tweets. Here it is:

Thank you to all the wonderful peoples who did The Daily Create,  tdc1471 to make verses for me so that I can sing them all for my #ds106 Friends, plus #western106 ones. You don’t get any royalties from my album (because it will be FREE!), but you will get a Creative Commons mention which is even nicer.

Well, by for now! I have to get my beauty sleep for my singing voice.

Wheelin’ that Fortune

Wheel #4Life

Wheel #4Life

So Vanna was sporting my 2-gallon hat and my shooting irons when she revealed the special answer to the special question that I put on the show for guests in an upcoming episode. It was nice that today’s The Daily Create was worded the way it was, because it was just a special prompt to have today during my visit with her.

You can also see the static version of this picture on my Flickr. But as we all know, the GIF one is normally much better and more fun.

Life is a Wheel by iamTalkyTina, on Flickr

The Law of the Steppes

The Law of the Steppes #1 by iamTalkyTina, on Flickr

Well, today’s The Daily Create, tdc1467, says to Make Art about a ME ME cowgirl of the west, and so what better a person to talk about than ME!

Back in the day, I was afeared by the lawless, doubly known the duly revered title of “The Law of the Steppes.”  I patrolled the range with the aid of my trusty sidekicker and pal, my pony, “Tripper.” We made a great team, Tripper and I, and those varmints quivered in their boots when they heard tell of our exploits. They would belly up to the bar and try to stand tall while looking my danger straight in the eye (I was standing ON the bar), but in the end, every one of them took the tumble.

Oppressors, thieves, and downright UnFriendly Types, beware The Law of The Steppes, iamTalkyTina.

Artist’s Note: Today’s Art is also intended as a reminder to my True Friend, UNCLE Jim Groom (@jimgroom) just to let him know that I am still watching him, even though he is far around the world in Italy, watching Westerns and eating spaghetti.

Also, here is another version of today’s Art.

The Law of the Steppes #1 by iamTalkyTina, on Flickr

Bit’s and Where Froms