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Apr. 11th, 2011 09:46 amPretty quiet weekend overall. I need to stop being so sedentary, especially on sundaze.
A couple of weeks ago was Naomi's 9th birthday and we gave her (among other things) the Klutz book of Animation. It comes with a blob of red plasticine and some googly eyes, and a bunch of cutouts and stuff. The book is basically a collection of script ideas and demos for pixellation (stop motion animation) and rather than being packaged with its own kludgy bloatware, it points to a freeware tool called SAM developed by Tufts U.
http://www.samanimation.com/
It's a simple little interface for a webcam, allows to to take single frames and adjust the framerate for image speed. Then, you can export to .avi or whatever. The neat part is, when you take an image it creates a transparency in the camera view, so you can tell exactly how much you are moving your pieces between frames.
Once I got the software set up, the girls vanished for the entire day. I can't think of the last time they were this consistently engaged with ANYTHING. And the stuff they came up with entirely on their own was mindblowing: speech bubbles, using old keys as guitars, moving mouths, fully furnished sets. I was going to mention LEGO but am waiting to see how long it takes them to come up with it on their own.
Needless to say I am "well chuffed" that a gift was this much of a hit. Perhaps also needless to say, Naomi now has grand plans to be a professional animator for a career.
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In lesser news I made some Sichuan flatbread on Sunday: soda-leavened flour dough with savories (green onion, 5-spice powder) fried in a hot griddle. Perfect baking project for me: quick payoff, minimal cleanup, no sugary fatty guilt. On a related note, I recommend all my cooking friends out there seek out cookbooks by the pair Naomi Duguid and Jeremy Alford. I think their best known book is "Hot Sour Salty Sweet" but their first book is called "Flatbreads and Flavours", a colourful international travel narrative interwoven with an absolute droolfest of flatbread recipies and other dishes. Another one we got from the library is called "A passion for rice" and is a similar international travelogue of rice dishes. Next time they do a book I want to go!
A couple of weeks ago was Naomi's 9th birthday and we gave her (among other things) the Klutz book of Animation. It comes with a blob of red plasticine and some googly eyes, and a bunch of cutouts and stuff. The book is basically a collection of script ideas and demos for pixellation (stop motion animation) and rather than being packaged with its own kludgy bloatware, it points to a freeware tool called SAM developed by Tufts U.
http://www.samanimation.com/
It's a simple little interface for a webcam, allows to to take single frames and adjust the framerate for image speed. Then, you can export to .avi or whatever. The neat part is, when you take an image it creates a transparency in the camera view, so you can tell exactly how much you are moving your pieces between frames.
Once I got the software set up, the girls vanished for the entire day. I can't think of the last time they were this consistently engaged with ANYTHING. And the stuff they came up with entirely on their own was mindblowing: speech bubbles, using old keys as guitars, moving mouths, fully furnished sets. I was going to mention LEGO but am waiting to see how long it takes them to come up with it on their own.
Needless to say I am "well chuffed" that a gift was this much of a hit. Perhaps also needless to say, Naomi now has grand plans to be a professional animator for a career.
______________________
In lesser news I made some Sichuan flatbread on Sunday: soda-leavened flour dough with savories (green onion, 5-spice powder) fried in a hot griddle. Perfect baking project for me: quick payoff, minimal cleanup, no sugary fatty guilt. On a related note, I recommend all my cooking friends out there seek out cookbooks by the pair Naomi Duguid and Jeremy Alford. I think their best known book is "Hot Sour Salty Sweet" but their first book is called "Flatbreads and Flavours", a colourful international travel narrative interwoven with an absolute droolfest of flatbread recipies and other dishes. Another one we got from the library is called "A passion for rice" and is a similar international travelogue of rice dishes. Next time they do a book I want to go!
