Friday, November 9, 2012

How it's made!

On Halloween I posted an animated gif that took Cody and I an entire day, or at least a good 10 minutes to make and I was disappointed by the lack of comments.  Cara did comment, but she was more interested in Cody's reading material.  For the record that is actually Cody's copy of Swank, not mine.  I would not read such filth especially when you can get it online for free. 

When I was back in Cranbrook I found this licensed Jason Vorhees costume at the Salvation Army for only $6 and it was still sealed in the package.  As soon as I saw it I instantly came up with the idea for the picture.  At home when I showed Avery my costume he asked if he could have the "sword" when I was done with it, but his mom shot that down pretty quick.  I also had to tell him that it didn't have real blood on it.  One disappointment after another, the poor kid.


Once back in Calgary, it was time to start shooting and first I had to move everything around in the kitchen to I get the shot I wanted with everything framed right.  I had move all the crap off the kitchen table and then pull it out from the wall into so that it lined up with the hallway.  I used the microwave cart against the far wall and lined that up with the kitchen table and hallway.  I put my camera on a tripod on top of the microwave.

Yep, I had dust off my old digital camera for this one.  GifBoom just ain't cutting it anymore, it either doesn't focus or just crashes.  When I made the animated Willie pogo picture I shot that on my phone as video and then made an animated gif from that instead of using GifBoom because it looked like crap when I used it.  I also had to buy a tripod, a small one, for this too.  I picked one up at Bianca Amor's for $5.

That tripod has like 28 points of articulation, the Bender behind it has three.

Cody doesn't always read Swank, he sometimes reads real books like Freakanomics.  We were going to use that book, but then he suggested the nudie magazine.  We also considered having him reading a colouring book, but in the end stuck with Swank.

We shot the pictures in sequence as Cody just sat and posed at the table while I ran back and forth and took the pictures via the timer.  Taking the pictures only took a few minutes which was good because Cody was eager to get back to playing video games.  Now with the pictures "in the can" it was time to start putting them together.

There are a lot of online websites that will let you create animated gifs for free.  I tried a lot of them trying to get the best looking picture.  Most sites only do pictures while other do pictures and video, which how I did the Willie pogo picture.  You just upload your pictures and pick the size of the finished picture as well as set the speed you want it to run at and then the site will generate the final product.  Some sites do offer more features and some limit the amount of pictures you can upload too.  The picture I posted on the blog was made at makeagif.com.

The final picture was almost what I had in my head when I came up with the idea.  I'm still happy with how it turned out though.  Here is alternate cut of Cody just enjoying some booze and Swank.

1 comment:

Cody said...

Here is fun fact about the Swank magazine. It came from a prison where my uncle works down at the coast. He brought a whole stack of them when he came hunting one year. Guess they didn't need them anymore.