“A reasonable alternative is to complete a piece that incorporates two different assignments for a sum total of 4 or more Credit Units.” 

So I did the ‘I can read movies assignment’ and ‘the one story 4 icons’ assignment in one cover. The electricity in my tree house is on for another week as I am clocking 6 Credit units and another 2 for the extra hard work to combine two assignments into one. Although to be fair, I took this on thinking it would be easier than doing two. The new number two is clever with words. A reasonable alternative, indeed. I think I should get an extra 2 Credit Units for doing the whole thing rather than just one episode, but that might be pushing it a bit. 

Behind the scenes

I wish I had used my notebook as I intended to keep up with all that I tried. A little like our resident artist  futzing was a key ingredient. 

I started with the idea that I wanted the cover to embody the sense of ambiguity  that is the hallmark of the series. I read an amazing blog post today that spoke about the series as it “constantly offering us a seeming chance for escape, then pulling the rug out from under us.”  Nothing is as it appears. 

The post explores a Prisoner computer game that never tells you that you can escape the game by pressing the ESC key! The tag line of my cover comes from the end of this game. You win and it tells you: To win is to lose. Sheer genius.

The 4 icons are from our friends at the Noun Project. How awesome are they? I bought them all ‘cause I love supporting their artists.

I have been using their icons in my Prisoner posters series as comas and full stops since this run of DS106 started. It occurred to me that may be the ones I had chosen over time would embody key themes. I was right. 

Birds singing seem happy and free, and yet the noise may attract attention when it is not wanted.

A prisoner in jail might seem a negative icon, yet prison is not always a bad thing. (I will not explain the photo below to avoid spoiler for participants still watching episodes).

The fish escapes the fish bowl and is free then it dies as it lands.

The sad ghost represents death and suffering and yet, if ‘to win is to lose’ may be to lose is to win?

The cover is for book 1 and it contains the story of 6. Hence 6 is 1.

I used Photoshop as usual. Started with one of the covers from the I can read movies series that was cleanest to get a clean black background with the clone tool. I started with a lot more text which disappeared as the 6/1 tension shaped my thinking. I discovered you can search google by ‘type’ of image as well as usage rights and this can find you components to use in a creative edit. The lapels from the jacket came to me that way. I pulled them out of original image roughly with quick selection tool and then added it in with screen blending option to blend in with the grainy black background. My little friend the colour dropper did its job to blend all the colours well. A little blur tool helped me along.

For the first time ever I grouped some layers so that I could line them up properly. The little icons and its background were a group. I used the Emboss Texture blending option to create a rough look to the background.

I feel I have got as close as I can to the essence of what makes this my favourite series of all time. It is to do with the ‘nothing is at it seems nature’ of it. The kind of story that destroys mechanisation by remembering that what makes us human are non-googlable questions such as why. Awesome.

This constant tension is even shown in the way the prisoner dresses. The lapels of the blazer showing that we have a prisoner dressed in a suit, highlighting perhaps that we cannot tell from external cues who is the prisoner and who is the guardian. 

Total time spent: several days to get the bits and this afternoon pulling it together. I wanted to challenge myself so I did my best to attend to small details  I might ignore in the usual run of things. Cool challenge, Number 2. 

Be seeing you. 

See the awesome one at Gfycat as usual!

I decided to try an assignment Michael Branson Smith submitted to the bank a while back. I have been thinking about it for a while. Could not think about the tools I would need and had to read Michael’s own example a few times to understand it. In his post he refers to the subreddit Behind the GIFs which is hilarious! We chatted about it on Twitter the other day and I thought my Homer gif might be an easy place to start creating a comic strip like this. 

This is my result. 

Behind the scenes

The thinking to get to the panels I cannot fathom. Michael was going with the forks but I decided to go with Rover. I thought about actually drawing it IRL. I thought about some app or other. I thought about online generators. I went back to Photoshop thinking it would be easier. Was it hell!

Found Rover’s photos and that part of easy. Yet they all looked different. I remembered I bought a sketching plug in in Photoshop - thought this might unify the images. Bingo. I went with black and red because black and red on Prisoner site. Then I had to get everything in on place, sizing, behind, in front, linking frames so that I could move the gif around, blah, blah, blah. There must be an easier way. Michael suggests using MS paint app, may be I should go with that next time. When I loaded the gif in it had some grey pixels - had to fix that and it looks funny if you look closely. Don’t look closely. 

I promised Christina some ‘footage’ of her last stay at the hospital. Here she is relaxing in the therapy room with other prisoners residents. Her knees got a little tired and so we had to put some bright tape to support the knees and let them recover before she went back to her bungalow. She is much better now and her attitude towards the village as cheery as ever.

The village psychiatrist was inspired by our resident dreamer’s calming morning announcement into creating her first full track of calming music. I have titled it ‘Something mental to aid sleep’.  Here at the hospital we are always concerned with the well being of our prisoners residents and this track should be safe to listen to just as you are settling into bed after soothing day of passeggiata in the village. Enjoy.

Behind the scenes

I have been meaning to learn how to use the new Garageband for a while. So after several tutorials and muttering that the old one was better, I managed to stay with it and learn. It looks like it will even teach you how to play an instrument now. But that is for another day. 

Today I just decided to make on track. I had forgotten how much I like to edit sound. Up here, down here, left a bit right a bit….much fun.

Credits to: Ms Talky Tina with material from the archives, to  Riccardo Colombo for a lovely background to all my craziness from Jamendo. The rest is my own bits an bobs and GarageBand’s own amazing new sound effects and loops. I had like 10 tracks mixing and blending. Rest well after you listen, if you dare. And I note that Ms Tina did actually put a coma in. Who is N1? You are, number 6. Mystery solved as Ms Tina knows the truth. 

And you know what would help us great deal? If both village committees got together and we had to practice the same type of thing each week. This week design in fairy tales and then audio with the prisoners. This shrink is pooped.