Uncle DT's Random Image Thread

[Kruger]

Crap, now I forgot what I said yesterday.  And probably got side tracked and never hit the post button, so my brilliance was just lost to the Æther...

At least I had the image still in my downloads and with the expected caption filename...

[Blaze]

Uh-oh, it's that old age sneaking up on ya...

[Kruger]

Shhh, don't say that....  I prefer to think of it as freaking work being work and getting in the way of fun...

[Blaze]

Still image processing, and back then, would have been excruciating. Even at 15 frames per second that's at least 75 images for 5 seconds of video. That's too much work. Audio was our medium...

[Kruger]

Oh, we were young and naive.  I assume the camera was 24 frames per sec, it was on (probably?) Super 8 film.  We cut the army men apart and used wire that we heated up and embedded the pieces together so they were bendable.  That right there was a project.  Then after a couple of days of setting everything up, then moving the men, then using the rest of the film for something else just so it wasn't blank and we could get it developed, the results were, to say the least, a little underwhelming...

[Blaze]

Oh dang. That's some serious work to try for that high production value. You went right for the top instead of just using Matchbox cars that are basic and only need movement on 2 axis (unless you were looking for some Dukes of Hazard type action). In another timeline, this could have been you...

[Kruger]

At one point I even purchased animation software for the ST.  I cannot for the life of me remember what package it was, and even going through atarimania's list it just didn't trigger any memories.  I'm even thinking that it might not even be in that list...

[Blaze]

I tried my hand at searching for the software and the only thing that comes up is Make It Move by MichTron.

I'm not sure if it was either Davey & Goliath or one of the Christmas specials that introduced me to claymation / stop motion...

[Kruger]

I found it, it was Epyx' Art & Film Director.  I do remember this demo that was included, and the manual and going through the learning session in that manual...  While I had fun with that, and doing a few short clips of (I can't remember what), I think I realized that animation was not going to be in my future...

[Blaze]

I was this -><- close to searching the net to find a copy of that and then playing around with it - and then I realized I need to do some other things first, so if I remember later I'll have to see about playing with that. I'm sure it'll be as painful as I imagine it'll be. Video editing feels like such a time sink...

[Kruger]

The download (four disks) and manual are available on AtariMania's page.  That's where I got the confirmation after finding the screen shot of that robot slipping on a banana peel.  The manual has the tutorial and the resources so you can clip all of the images and then go through the exercise to put them together and animate them.  But I seemed to also remember getting the little guy to run across the screen, but maybe that was something that I did on my own after the tutorial was done.  At the very least, playing with that years ago helped me appreciate Adobe Flash a bit more...

Video editing isn't so bad, it can be fun.  It can also be a time sink when you're trying to tweak that alpha channel just right because you set up the green screen and lighting just a little bit off.  So you adjust for what's directly around your subject and then blanket mask everything else, even though it's pretty close anyway.

[Blaze]

I've done some very rudimentary video editing with basic cuts and fades and adding a sound track, but out of all the things that interest me, that interests me the least...