A spark from a Flame

So much of life seems to creep up on you. Even the stuff you know is coming seems to suddenly jump out of the bushes. You startle, and think "Where did that come from?"

In this jenga-tower world stacked of interrobang-flavored blocks of Jell-O, it's rare to be able to point at an event and say, "Here's where it started. It all leads back to this."

Well, I've got a rarity for you today. I can show you a key moment, the weirdly specific time, place, and screen grab, that enabled me to create, despite not being able to draw or program, animated videos which have appeared in film festivals in the US, Europe, and Australia.

As David Byrne said:

And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Well, David, I'll tell you.

Right after the news.

What’s going on?

• Your Parasite and You continues to insinuate its way into the very fabric of the film festival circuit. It can be seen right now in the online portion of the 21st Annual Another Hole in the Head Film Festival. Look for it in Variety Pack #1. AHITH is fun, crazy, and ambitious festival, and this year even includes live performances of EVIL DEAD: Deadite the Halls, which is sure to become a treasured Holiday classic.
• And big news on the subscriber front: our subscriptions just went up 12%! And that increase is because 2 folks signed up. Just two! (Hi, Mike! Welcome, Russell!)
  And that's how easy it is to make a difference. So you, you early adopter, have it in your power to influence the growth and demographics of this newsletter's subscribers. Want to build a core readership of left-handed Whit Bissell fans? Now's your chance. Just forward this email willy-nilly, to left-handers and right-handers alike!

What if I turned this all the way up?

So back in the 2010's, I had a short-form podcast called [1] New Message, "voicemail to you from a more interesting now." They were 1-3 minute comic glimpses into a variety of sc-fi/horror scenarios, presented as voicemail messages. My inspirations included "The Rockford Files," Jonathon Coulton, and Greg MacLaurin's Ghost Phones.

The podcast was heard by dozen of people. That's not a typo. "Dozen," singular. Oh, maybe more, but you know what I mean. Still, those what heard it, liked it. It even won an award. And I had faith in the material. I just had to figure out how to get it in front of more people.

I looked at everything from a writing a stage adaptation to hiring an illustrator for a book. Then I realized I could take advantage of a movement that was sweeping the internet at the time.

I decided to pivot to video.

Video was a perfect idea. After all, we're visual creatures. The internet is a visual environment. So I needed to find an animation tool. I looked at:

• Video game development platforms like Source or Unreal.
• Previz software used in the movie industry to create animated storyboards.
• Video games as machinima platforms, like Halo or Starcraft.
• Animation platforms like Flash (now called Adobe Animate).

These all had the same problem: me. I'm not a programmer, and I'm not an artist. So the learning curve for me on most of these would have been less of a curve, and more like the steel wall at the business end of automobile crash test.

I needed a simpler tool that I could use to manipulate basic shapes, text, and icons. A tool to create something in the family of kinetic typography. Here's a brilliant example of what kinetic typography can do. If I could get anywhere close to this...

Then I remembered PowerPoint and Keynote. And I realized that they had a whole series of built-in animations that could affect individual elements as well as entire slides. But could these animations tell stories, or did they just provide visual interest to that chart of last quarter's financials? I set up some sample slides and crawled through every slide transition and element animation they had.

Keynote by far had the more flamboyant animations. I was particularly struck by the one called Flame.

It's pretty cool, and I could probably find ways to use it. But, as fun as it was, even Flame seemed a little limited. These were all canned animations. How could I adapt them to each story? How could I keep them fun?

Then, I remembered the Duration field:

Every animation starts out at a standard duration. Flame's default is 2.5 seconds. That's what you saw above. But what if I made it more than twice as fast?

It's an entirely different feel. If 2.5 seconds looks like putting a match to some dry kindling, 1 second is the poof of a magician's flash paper.

Then I asked myself, what if I made the duration longer? Like, unreasonably long?

Look at that. As Belloq, Indiana Jones's nemesis, said right before his head exploded , "It's beautiful!" The Flame animation has gone from being an effect to being an environment.

And there it is. That's when I knew. Right then. I knew that the animation effects in Keynote had the variety and the malleability I needed to produce a wide range of effects for the strange tales of [1] New Message.

Crazy? Yes. And thus firmly in my philosophy of Creative Misuse.

And, thousands of downloads and over 20 film festival appearances later, it seems to have worked.

Fun facts to know and share

It's miniature madness in the Fun Facts section!

Culinary Photographers Create Edible Backdrops for a World of Miniature Inhabitants

Against a tasty backdrop of pastries, fruit, and vegetables, photographers Pierre Javelle and Akiko Ida have created a series of humorous dioramas that depict miniature people going about their daily lives in an edible world. Titled MINIMIAM, a play on words that marries miniature and “yummy” (miam in French), the project has been ongoing sinceContinue reading “Culinary Photographers Create Edible Backdrops for a World of Miniature Inhabitants”

ColossalChristopher Jobson

An Otherworldly Animation Adventures Across Galactic Landscapes Recreated in Miniature

In the first two parts of his Miniature Landscape series, director and animator Clemens Wirth (previously) celebrates the vast, awe-inspiring terrain of the earth by adventuring through snowy caverns, across pebbled beaches, and to the green glow of the Northern Lights. With a focus on color and textured elements like rocks and bubbling liquids, Wirth’sContinue reading “An Otherworldly Animation Adventures Across Galactic Landscapes Recreated in Miniature”

ColossalGrace Ebert

Inside Miniature Dioramas, Flying Saucers Drift Across Extraterrestrial Landscapes

Within the confines of a small, ovoid frames, Caroline Dewison, of A House of Wonders, crafts miniature scenes laden with remarkable detail.

ColossalJackie Andres

The UX of LEGO Interface Panels

LEGO interface panels are beautiful, iconic, and great for learning interface design basics. I bought 52 of them from BrickLink to explore the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.

Interaction Magic logoGeorge Cave

And wishing you a cozy, orbital Holiday Season:

NASA’s Rocket Engine Fireplace

Oh, this is so good: NASA has an 8-hour cozy fireplace video in 4K that’s actually a rocket engine (in a fireplace). This

kottke.orgSteven Crozier

Over to you

As you may have guessed by now, sound effects delight me. One of the things about them that delight me: the three timings of the Flame effect not only have a different look, but they also each suggest a different sound.

Go ahead and look at them again. And as you do, what do you hear for each? Which is softest, loudest? Which is most pleasant, most harsh?

Another fun fact: for an animation to look right, sometimes I'll tweak the duration down to a tenth of a second. But for a sound effect to sync properly with that animation, sometimes I need to move them by a single frame (1/24 of a second).

I love this stuff.

Until we talk again, I remain,

Your pal,

Jamie