ClicksyPicsWiggle animations and anything old timey!

Above is my progress so far on this animation.  I like the colors, but they’re too monotone and the bag is too blue.  I’m working on cleaning up the colors on the second frame, they’re a bit out of line.  Most of the faded areas have been lightened or darkened with level adjustment layers.  I’ll probably clean them up a little more, especially around his belt area where there was a bit of extra scratching.

While cleaning some scratches and spots, I noticed that dot (left) on his hand was on both frames. It’s a fly, I could probably have a little fun with that, there’s not much room for any other sort of environmental movement.

I’ll probably crop it a bit closer, but I like to keep it big until they get closer to complete.  His hands will have some pretty drastic movement, at least compared to what I’ve done so far.  The blowing movement with his cheeks will also be an interesting challenge. Then the movement of the bag, potentially with moving layers of the pipe and hands above… but that might be too much.  Perhaps I can just adjust the shadow around his arm to create the illusion of inflation/deflation.

I’ve shied away from too much movement for a couple of reasons.  Mostly because the way I create the movement.  I’ll be tracing his hands and making a new layer of them two times, one for each side of the stereo - I’ll just call them frames since that’s what they become in the animation.  Then I make a new layer for each frame recreating what would be under his hand if he’s moving - the background.  Otherwise, when I create the movement, you would see his original hands under the moving hands and well… I’m not really into sci-fi animations yet.  I don’t know if that makes much sense, but when I get to that point I’ll use the animation to illustrate.

The other problem is the movement itself.  I’ll have to work his fingers like like cut out dolls, piecing together joints and creating new skin in the bends then softening up the edges.  Sometimes I’ll warp them but for this that will kill the quality because the amount of warp it would take, the definition would be lost, shadows would blur, etc.

That’s getting a little deep into it, but that’s where I’m at so far.  Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

I played with fire.

Don’t let your Christmas tree do this.  Go in there and smell it a few times a day or something…

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This image has only a bit of restoration work, it doesn’t need my help.  This is one of those rare images with movement, one photo was taken then another a moment later.

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1900-1920 - The Samaritans of Nablus (Shechhem). Samaritan smoking the narghileh.

I know what you’re thinking…  but he’s probably smoking tobacco.  For a long period in many areas in Europe they were quite a status symbol, and it was common to be photographed with the narghileh (aka hookah).  They would often mix the tobacco with sweets like honey, and sometimes used a bit of rose oil or other liquids to alter the flavor.

It’s important for me in this work to remain respectful.  So many pictures I’ve imagined these people doing some pretty goofy things, but on most, I won’t do it.  I wouldn’t want to see one of my passed on relatives being made to do something silly (even if it would make this website way more popular).  Sometimes the photo is taken in a humorous way, and with those I will be more liberal, because that was the intent when the photo was taken.

I think I’m finally getting the hang of adding more animation within these images.  It was hard to grasp… here you have two frames, left and right.  Within those two frames you may have several areas with movement.  For each movement, it’s done once for the left frame, and then again moved for the right frame - or the animated area would lack wiggle and look wrong.  This way I am able to add more movement outside of the main focal point of the image.  Above, the focal points are his face and the hookah, those are the two places on the image that are most in focus through the wiggle.  This is because they are about the same distance from the camera, and it’s lined up at the points of interest.  But the hand on his lap has a very pronounced wiggle.  I haven’t tried movement that drastic yet, but eventually the right image will come along.

Some of you may be wondering why I use so many photos from the middle east.  This is because there are so many good quality images, dry plate, available from the Library of Congress from that region.  The above image was taken in the American settlement in Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was a place that many wanted to see, so it not only educated, but it sold a lot of stereo cards.  Likewise, Egypt, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, all of these places have a huge selection.  But the dry plates, many in the collection are of exceptional quality.  With these I can spend less time restoring the images and more time animating.

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I hope you’re not getting sick of the wave animations, I’ve been practicing to get them more realistic.  At first I had the fellow in the boat wave, and that just looked cheesy.  So I settled on moving the oar, but then it was boring, so I added the bird.  I think the main problem with this animation is that it’s limited to 6 frames.  I wanted to try to trim them down (I’m sure load time on this site is already a bear for some people), but in this animation it was just too limiting to make for fluid movement.  I guess the best option would be more frames and a smaller size.  I’m not totally pleased with this animation, but I learned a lot!

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1904 - Willie, "the terrible," under grandma's care for a few days in the country. (Small boy with geese and ducks, with reflection in pond.)

5 sections on the geese were cut out for movement here.  Then they were cut out again in the reflections and lined up to match the animation on the top.  Then my brain exploded.

I would have liked to animate the ducks to the left, but the wiggle is so strong there I don’t think it would have been very realistic.

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Between 1898 and 1914 - Arab woman wearing embroidered coat

One of the problems that comes with animating between two panels is the likelihood of these animations turning out looking like cut out dolls.  Monty Python comes to mind.  So I made this image to practice integrating more fluid movement between the two panels.  So movement in the mouth becomes more realistic with movement of the cheeks.  The eyes were challenging because the light being reflected in her eyes, if not altered between frames, just looks like a big… oh gawd I’m going to say it… eyesore.  Literally like a bump on the eye.  Not pretty, and one of the reasons I chose her was her beautiful eyes.

Have a great weekend everyone, I should have another up Friday or Saturday evening.

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1900-1920 - Bethlehem and surroundings. Well of David .

*Just wanted to note the new ratings system at the bottom of these posts.  You don’t have to register to rate or comment, just click away…*

I finally got it down to two repeating background frames.  This stereo was in excellent condition, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.  They tend to get large faded and darkened areas, which I have to mask out in order to eliminate the flashy effect it creates.  With this one I had maybe 10-12 level adjustment layers, that’s about 1/4 of what I usually have.  This image is a total of 8 frames, I lost count of how many layers after I hit 70.  It took about 6 hours total to create.

There was a lot of great detail lost when I shrunk this image down.  There is a cross at the top of the well (colored in bright blue), as well as writing down the side.  View the original image here.

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