Preface

I’ve been working on this animation for my BA Illustration module entitled ‘Image Manipulation’. The module has been interesting, not least because I watched a nice, gentle man who probably doesn’t use Photoshop much — he didn’t seem particularly fluent, is all —show a group of mixed experiences how to use the paint bucket tool. MSPaint jokes were indeed passed around.

My favourite part must have been later on, around the time when it was explained to us that we should be using the animation feature in PS to create our slideshow. Ambitious. My sarcasm precedes me, I know, but really, I’m not sure what kept me from dying every Wednesday this year up to this point. I was disappointed, to say the least, but I am aware that a handful of students on my degree have zero experience with computers, let alone Adobe Creative Suite.

Not willing to produce utter crap, I opted to make a slideshow at 12 slides a second, also known as an animation, to a web standard. I’m not the most adept in Flash but by golly I was willing to learn it — and quickly.

The original idea was to take a character lost in the woods, lost and confused, only to eventually find his way — by aid of helpful PS tool characters — to the magical paint bucket. I realised soon enough this may be in bad taste…insulting and such. Instead, I came up with some metaphors for working in PS. Mixing digital with analogue, since we did some work with cyanotype printing. Once I’d found this lovely track, Twinkle Echo by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, I was set to start.

Breakdown

We begin with a blank screen, usual. Zoom in, have a scribble. Okay, some magic, with the magic wand. Please note that I am not trying to appeal to elitist PS users, the magic wand selects nothing. Make some stars, they’re supposed to be ideas, perhaps. The moon appears, I think we’re just running with the night sky theme, but we can call it a ‘strong idea’ if you like. Clouds, oh clouds, clouds of judgement, and to make matters worse, PS is hanging. That little wristwatch appears because we’re working with too many layers. The glimmer of hope as the zip pulls, and another hang. Unzip, blank canvas, all is well, we have a reasonably good idea and the sun rises. Like, sleeping on it. To end, we don’t save. Why? I thought it would be funny. That and I’m sure I’ve never hit ‘Save’ when asked for confirmation.

Thoughts?

I didn’t really want to break it down and waffle like that, but it seems to help me make sure I’m not completely insane and the metaphors work, theoretically. I really want feedback, if you’d be kind enough to give it.