Althouse: Last night's lotus...

September 14, 2012

Last night's lotus...

... animated by our dear Chip Ahoy.

(The de-animated original is here.)

19 comments:

Chip Ahoy said...: I told you not to look at this. But I cannot be made cross. Tonight I was, though, quite cross, and so called Comcast and complained bitterly like a bitter old bittery bitter person who drank a bottle of bitters and the guy said, "okay," and made my connection 50X faster and now all is well.; 9/14/12, 9:14 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Oh dear. Someone in Chaguanas,
Caroni, Trinidad and Tobago searched "five things about hummingbirds" and was directed to my page about hummingbird soup.; 9/14/12, 9:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Heading tomorrow to Chicago HQ on Air Force One. Am asked to give a pep-talk to the troops. We are told to get the election victory as a mandate to make massive changes.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/0df7cc4a-fd35-11e1-a4f2-00144feabdc0.html

Romney, you do not even know what is coming at you, right now.; 9/14/12, 9:35 PM
Patrick said...: Chip, when you posted that you had animated this, I looked (only briefly, I will admit) and did not find it. If I recall, you said you didn't like it.

Nonsense. This is cool.

Have a nice weekend all.; 9/14/12, 9:38 PM
Patrick said...: AP, do you guys only hire persons of pallor?; 9/14/12, 9:40 PM
Anonymous said...: No, we are open to everyone. Every-one can serve the Committee to Re-elect or CORE.

We are going to win, baby! You better believe it.

NB: A thousand-thanks-to NYT and the bloggers.

POTUS HEARTS U!; 9/14/12, 9:49 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Love the lotus anim!; 9/14/12, 9:51 PM
edutcher said...: Nicely done, sir.; 9/14/12, 10:14 PM
bagoh20 said...: One of your best, Chip. It looks like it was hard to do.; 9/14/12, 11:37 PM
bagoh20 said...: "(The de-animated original is here.)"

I hate when people come here just to plug their own own blog. Althouse, work harder and maybe you'll get some traffic around this wet jigsaw puzzle of obscurity, but stop leaching on Chip's fame.; 9/15/12, 1:01 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: You see, * arm akimbo, points * In Photoshop and in GIMP you can use the pen tool to create a selection. * pulls down shade printed with Photoshop work area *

Enlarge the image to ridiculous proportions and set a path of dots around the outside edge of the target area leaving room to fudge, dot dot dot dot dot dot dot, hundreds of them if necessary and when you circle around and touch the original dot then boink a path is created, you can save the path and name it. Turn the path into a selection. Taaa daaaa. That right there is quite impressive and handy but here is how you eliminate seams. Since you made your path with fudge room, you can feather by that amount to blur to the desired outline. Selection --> modify --> feather.

When you copy, the feathered selection goes into the computer's clipboard. Delete the selected area which leaves a blank that must be reconstructed. That's what takes the time. the space vacated by the flower shows. Imagine what goes there, and replace it. Use the material around it to replace it. Push it in with blur, clone it, copy/paste into new layer then compress the layers. In this case a reflection of a window was created by copying/pasting portions of the good window and adjusting them. It was a bit of a bitch.

The portion of stem is copied, pasted, stretched, compressed, that addition copied, pasted, and stretched, then blended.

That's the background.

Paste creates a new layer of the feathered flower stored in computer's clipboard that can be moved copied and adjusted. So to get the flower to shrink, the flower layer is copied, selected, squished, copied, selected, squished, copied .... to five times until it is a ball the size of the seed pod.

The flower fly apart layers are similar, progressively worse like that, one is adjusted, then copied and adjusted more and copied then more and so on to five.

The balls were purchased from eBay, originally owned by Mitch Miller.

Copy reconstructed background to 41 times. Arrange layers in order. Attach a background layer under each flower layer retaining the order and the layer's name. Tricky because all other layers must be closed, and there's a big tall tower of them, so you have to scroll up and down looking for wayward layers. It's helpful to be a touch schizophrenic or possibly even possessed of a slight case of dédoublement de la personnalité, to keep track.

* tugs shade, snaps back into a roll *; 9/15/12, 2:53 AM
Toad Trend said...: Lotus petals may be tasty, but from most accounts, they don't make you very smart. Must be a dem staple food these days.

Each day I am more convinced of how divorced from reality the current regime' and the fawning MSM has become. As if teh won's very words are sufficient in any situation. Results be damned, just trot out there, apologize and throw bystanders under the bus.

And someone, for the love of God, tell Hillary that speaking as slowly and deliberately as she does as America's top supplicant, does nothing for our image.; 9/15/12, 5:24 AM
Aridog said...: Very amusing AP, you're top of form today....a room full of white people working under signs that say "African Americans for Obama." Cute.

PS: Your reference to "CORE" has a double meaning, right? You do know CORE as a political action acronym was taken long ago, and has some roots in Chicago.

The satire foo is getting weak or what over there?; 9/15/12, 6:38 AM
Rusty said...: Slightly remeniscent of the animation of Monty Python.; 9/15/12, 6:50 AM
Anonymous said...: CORE stands for COmmittee to Re-Elect the POTUS: the greatest and the best.

Look at the NYT: Every-headline says this: Obama is going to win, etc.

Look at the WashPost: Every-headline says this: Romney must apologize.

Look at HuffPost/DailyBeast/Time/CNN, etc: Every-headline says this: Romney has lost his head.

What do you think a voter would do when she reads, listens, or hear this:

Ergo, Q.E.D.: Romney is BAD, Very, very BAD Man.

So, We in the WH, love the MSM. Who made this happen?

Chicago HQ.

SO, I am going to be there by 12 PM to motivate them so more.

This election is not just defeat Romney, but to gain the edge in Senate and the House.

We want more acts like the Health care in the 2nd term.

YOU HAVE SEEN NOTHING YET. NOTHING!

ROMNEY, Who are you? Forget you.; 9/15/12, 7:02 AM
test said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/15/12, 8:19 AM
Nichevo said...: Why not CORP? Then you could be a CORPsman. Pronounced "corpse-man," of course.; 9/15/12, 8:36 AM
wildswan said...: The photo apps for the iphone/ipad are revolutionizing photography for amateurs because they replace expensive equipment and replace many different items with just one iphone/ipad. You can do timelapse sequences with just an ipad or the ipad can control your camera to do timelapse. And figure out for any place, any time, when the moon will rise and what quarter it will be in. And have an Audubon wild flower field manual so you can name the flower you take a picture of - no more "little blue flower17".

But you cannot replace chip ahoy's imagination with an i-magination app. And you can't replace the mind's eye with an imind app. (however I picture an app that creates filters based on several pictures from a given photographer just the way they know have a Monet filter); 9/15/12, 9:25 AM
Aridog said...: Americas Politico .... usually you're kind of cute, even funny in a satirical way. However...

CORE stands for COmmittee to Re-Elect the POTUS

...you are neither cute nor very bright regarding historic acronyms. CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) was founded in Chicago in 1942, long before you or your Obamessiah were even born.

None-the-less, all considered, with your progressive pretensions, one would think you would know who CORE was and is, and would respect it. It is NOT some damn committee to reelect squat diddly....that is just childish ignorance.; 9/15/12, 11:58 AM