[Kraellin]

just a gift to all who browse

and wander sleepness through the night

aiming high, a rose for you

in hopes it brings you some delight.

Craig

[Marthig]

Craig,
How very nice of you to post a gift to us "night owls". Nice image and the poem too (did you write it ? )
Thank you

[CJ Swartz]

Nice poetry, Craig, and a lovely moon-rose.... but, I was expecting animation!

[Kraellin]

thanks, martha, cj

yes, i wrote it as i was posting last night. i've been playing with this same image now for a while. i've got easily over 60 different looks for this thing and several composite layer files i've saved. it's one of my pics i got from my 35 year old negatives i scanned into the computer to clean up. i also printed this out on a 6x4 glossy paper. looks nice.

if i ever get a decent flash program or better slideshow type program that i can embed music into, i'll probably do all these images of this same flower up as a slideshow/animation, so there's where the animation part would come in, cj. though i suppose i could make this one wink at you, cj

Craig

[Kraellin]

cj,
here is your animation

click here

this is a large file, so 56k'ers be warned.

i've changed the address and location of this file. it was on a friend's server and using more bandwidth than i wanted to use from him. he never complained, but i knew it was consuming a fair bit, so i moved it.

where i moved it to is now a web server on my own machine! this is pretty cool. the server software is called 'Abyss Web Server' and allows a window's based machine to BE a web server. since i have a static ip address and a decent bandwidth that WON'T go down with use, i've put it here. however, i shut this machine off at night, so those trying to access it at night (central standard time) may find they get an error message.

Craig

[CJ Swartz]

Craig -- I am (almost) speechless!!

I hope that many others here will be able to access your animation -- it deserves attention in return for the attention you paid in creating it.

I lost count of the different images and transitions -- which are made all the more intriguing by the timing to the music. Don't know if you just grabbed music that was handy, but I love your choices -- "The Rose" always gives me goosebumps, and Conway Twitty's growl always gives me goosebumps!

Thank you for sharing your beautiful creation -- creations. Well done!!

[Kraellin]

thank you, cj

no, the music wasnt just a random choice. i'd been planning this for a while. the picture was part of those i cleaned up from negatives. i really wanted to do something with those and just kept altering that one to get the many renditions.

and since joining RetouchPRO i've been resurrecting a number of things i own. the music was on a casette that i wanted to convert to digital. i finally found the means to do that and now have it on my harddrive. so, the lightbulb finally went off that the two, the pictures and the music, deserved to be together. the biggest difficulty was in finding something to do this with.

i had used macromedia's studio mx 2004 demo before and that would have been my preference, but the cost of that program is a bit steep for just hobbying, so i had to find something else. i asked around in the forums, but nothing else i found was really satisfactory. i had played around with microsoft's moviemaker, but it's a far cry from studio mx. still, it had enough of the basics that that's what i ended up using.

and yes, the timing was tricky. MM (moviemaker) is fairly primitive in what it can do, but it does have a timeline that can be adjusted. you'll notice that the file name is the_rose_5. the 5 refers roughly to a version number. and about the last three versions were having to do with tweaking all the timing. not an easy thing to do when the program keeps locking up and you have to kill it

microsoft mm is a somewhat weird program. it's a freebie that comes with XP, i believe, and i can see why. no one would ever buy such a thing. what i cant figure out is why they dont upgrade it. it has potential. but the interface is a bit clunky and the whole program feels like it's just not finished. oh, and it locks up, especially after an auto-save. thankfully, it just auto-saved and it usually does recover its own save. i suppose i have no right to rant. i mean, it is free and i did produce this animation with it. still, it would be nice to see an upgrade.

anyways, thank you for the kind words. it was fun to produce

one last thought on this. i've done a couple of these now and where they may not be of commercial quality and are certainly using copyrighted works by others, the thought of producing these things for sale is intriguing. but, who would buy these and how would you sell them? they are great for putting on a web site and fun for viewing here on RetouchPRO, but is there a market for this sort of thing? i dont mean the traditional 'music video' where the music is the main emphasis, but rather photo collections and particularly photo art collections that are set to music where the art is the main focus. and in what medium would this work best as? would anyone go to wal-mart and buy art cd's or dvd's for playing on their cd/dvd player? is there any kind of stand-alone hardware for viewing things like this? it seems like something of a neglected area. we have computers, dvd players, tv's, tv's that hang on walls, laptops, hand held computers (pda's) and so on, but where's the digital picture frame that could play animations/videos/music?

at any rate, thank you, CJ

Craig

[Kraellin]

wow. 73 views since i posted the flowers 'movie', and only one comment. come on, folks, i'd almost rather have you spit on it than say nothing! ...(almost) i do know the site was down for a while, so i know that was part of it, but when that's the case, tell me!

Craig

[Marthig]

Indeed Craig, it is so beautiful ! one wonders how come so many watched it and no more comments than that from CJ, I plead guilty of not having said anything though. I remember seeing it right after you posted it and also was very touched by the combination of the music and the transitions of the rose and the variety of colors.

As a defense I can say that it was very late in the evening and I could barely keep my eyes open, left the reply for the next day and I guess forgot to do it.

I can realize the work it involved and also the love you put in creating it.

Again thank you for sharing it with us

Regards - Martha

[Nanls]

Hi Craig,
Thank you for sharing. It is truly a lovely piece and it is obvious how much time you spent creating the images and putting together the slide show. Nice to have so many talents.
~Nancy~

[Kraellin]

thank you, martha, and thank you, nancy

i also realize some of those views are from guests who cant post.

Craig

[deadants]

Man, that Rose movie is awesome. I just sent the link to my next-door neighbour. She is 75 and a terrific artist, mainly still life and birds. She is mad keen on doing slide shows with her iMac but I don't think it has occurred to her to put all her paintings in a slideshow movie. I just know I shouldn't have sent it; she will be around here asking never ending questions about her Macintosh. But she is a great neighbour.

Ants

[palms1]

Craig

I knew you were clever this just proves it, what a nice way to get up in the morning ! ! !

As for selling etc I could see that there would be a market with wedding 's and special occasions or presentations, but not down wal marts (Asda here)If these where burnt to cd or dvd would they work ? I have seen one done but not sure what software was used.

Again when we upgrade our pc we will be attempting to use moviemaker for our digi cam ( it is supposed to be one of the best and easiest programs for this )

It does get a bit down heartening when nobody comments (especially when you KNOW you have done good work ) but we got there in the end, hopefully


Palms

[Duv]

a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
how trivial and how trite

you see one rose, you've seen them all
the thorns, what a nasty bite

on second thought, I've seen Craig's rose
with it's many colors bright

i think I'll spend a little time
finding my softer side tonite

Dave

[Bob Mc]

What a talent - and what patience to put this all together.

It's a long download but truly worth it folks.

Don't miss this - and don't forget to thank Craig for all the hard work.

Regards

Bob Mc