Showing posts with label picture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label picture. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The 12 Days of Techmas - Day 5: Blabberize

On the 5th day of Techmas, my Ed Tech brought to me... Blabberize! Blabberize is a very funny website where you can add sound and animate any picture you'd like. Take some time to browse through the thousands of pictures that have been Blabberized.

Blabberizing a picture is not simply just for fun. It can actually be used as an educational tool. For instance, if students were researching someone famous, they could blabberize a picture of that person and present their research from the famous person's point of view. Here's a great example of an educational use:



Once you've signed up to Blabberize, click on Make to begin animating your picture. You can upload any picture that you have (again, why not choose a funny one?). You select the mouth area and the degree to which you want the mouth to move.


When adding sound, you have the option of recording through a microphone or uploading a file that you already have (like a song). Blabberize will automatically move the mouth to the sound file. When you're done, click on Save, add a title, tags and a description. You then have the option to make your blabberized picture private (not searchable publicly) or mature (yes, there are some blabberized pictures with mature content - always preview first!). When finally saved, you can share your blabberized picture via email, URL or by embedding it into your page (see below). As an added bonus, you can actually convert your blabberize picture into a video for downloading!


Monday, November 22, 2010

Bring out the Gimp!

I've always been interested in photo editing but never had the opportunity (or funds) to learn how to use Photoshop. Paint has allowed me to resize, crop, delete and edit photos for years, even though it is quite rudimentary and simple. Microsoft Office Picture Manager has shown me that there are more options to do the same painstaking things in less time.

Then one day, I discovered an icon which I hadn't seen before on my desktop. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). In essence, GIMP is a Photoshop-like program with one major benefit - IT'S FREE!

The program itself seemed quite intimidating at first, however, after searching Youtube, I've found a number of handy videos that have helped me learn.

Here are some pictures that I've manipulated using GIMP:



Selective Colorization (Youtube Video):


Cutting out a picture - "Photoshopping" (Youtube Video):

There are a number of other techniques that can be done with GIMP including face replacement, teeth whitening, blemish removal, skin airbrushing, and pop art creation.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Art and Star Wars


An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it. ~Paul Valéry

After watching the latest in a long line of tragic mistakes George Lucas has made in a bizarre effort to simultaneously profit on the gullibility of and alienate his fans (Return of the Jedi on Blu-Ray), I started thinking about art class. I can recall many occasions where students have created wonderful drawings or paintings and, not being satisfied with them, continued to work and work and work on them until they ended up completely ruining what they had done and usually ending up quite frustrated. Not fun.

This past week I sent out a number art websites that are fun. I have personally taken some time to explore these sites and I know a number of other people have as well, including some students. If you haven't yet, I would personally recommend thisissand and flame.

The big question, if you use these with your students is how can we save these works of art?

Watch below for one option.