The DOT Group Blog

Frosty Consequences - The Full Story

2009-03-31T15:00:00.008+01:00

We have finally got our act together and gathered all the images from our most recent game of Consequences here on the blog, and in our Picasa Web Album
For those that do not already know, we all started off with the same picture (chosen this time by Pat), and we each did a manipulation on it and passed it on to the next person. They then performed their magic on the image and passed it on again. So it went on until everyone had worked on everyone elses images.

The aim of the game was to get everyone exploring their own software on a regular basis, and therefore grow in understanding and confidence with their package. This helps us all to more effectively use the computer as a design tool, but it also gets everyone contributing to the group, regardless of level of expertise. It was NOT a specific aim of the game to produce beautiful designs ready for textiles at any stage of the process, but we all found ourselves delighted by some of the images. Individually we might well use some of them to develop further for our own textile work, however we each choose to express it.

If you want a more complete explanation please see some of the earlier posts, or check out the April issue of DesignIT, the magazine of the Computer Textile Design Group (CTDG)

The slide shows below give you a flavour of what we have been up to, but the best way to understand the transformations is to visit our Web Albums and click on any image to enlarge it.

Pat's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Erica's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Lesley's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Liz's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Jenny's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Ros's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Hilary's Frosty Story

View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Frosty Consequences

2009-03-09T20:06:00.007Z

Pat supplied this lovely image for us.

Our latest round of Consequences whizzed round the group without a hitch. There were some lovely images created, and some of us had trouble working out what to do with them as we liked them just the way they were. But that is not the name of the game, so we carried on making our changes and passing the images along. Once again it was amusing to see how often we almost reversed a transformation done by the previous person, without of course knowing that we were doing so. Pat had suggested that we retain the "frostiness" in our manipulations. This was very hard to achieve, particularly as we got further in to the game. Occasionally we threw the frostiness out of the window in favour of something summery or just plain lovely, but distinctly warm. At other times we managed to drag back a bit of winteriness, whether that was frosty or not is open to interpretation!

As we have 2 new members to the group (Welcome Jenny and Lesley), we decided it would be too time consuming to replicate everything on the computer so we worked through the A4 sheets without the aid of the computer, but we made notes of things people were unclear about or wanted to see demonstrated. After all the images had been considered and we had our long list of things to explore, the computer was turned on and we demonstrated (fumbled and bumbled) our way through the queries so that everyone was clear (!) about how things had been achieved. This was a much more efficient way of working, and concentrated the mind and exercised the brain cells all afternoon.

Rather than posting everything to the blog this time, we thought that we would upload the images to Picasa Web Albums and everyone can see in more detail the progression of each image. There are currently 3 peoples work to link to, but hopefully we will have every one's up and running very soon.

Go check out Erica's transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/EricaMThomson/DotFrostA4Sheets#

Ros's Transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/roswillis58/FrostConsequences?authkey=Gv1sRgCNHQ5JCzm6j_ggE&feat=email#

Liz's Transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lizziewelch01/DOTConsequencesFrosty#

When everyone has posted their images we will need to gather them together into the right "stories", but in the mean time you can follow each story by looking at the Web albums in the following order: Pat, Erica, Lesley, Liz, Jenny, Ros, Hilary. Start with one persons image (eg Frosty_Liz) and move to Jenny's web album (when it is up) and find Frosty_Liz_Jenny, then to Ros's web album and find Frosty_Liz_Jenny_Ros, and so on. If you do this for all 7 starting images, you can see that there are 49 A4 sheets with iterations on, and that is a lot of information - too much to put up on the blog in full.

The image below is the final iteration of my starting image, and as you can see, there is nothing recognisable left of the starting image, but having been transformed into bright colours at one stage of the game, it was dragged back into the appropriate winter season to finish up as a snowflake - most appropriate.

2009-01-05T13:09:00.003Z

The story of my shell image is in the picture below. I used the magic wand to select some of the shells, and then turned them a bit pink. Erica tidied them up and made some more of them. Pat went wild and funky and Hilary obviously did not want so much green! She introduced a ripply filter which Ros then dribbled down the page and Chrissie made it into a mosaic. We all had fun, and everyone learn't a little bit more about their programmes. Slowly, slowly, we are all feeling a bit more in control; well, at least I think we are!

Hilary's Shell Image

2009-01-02T23:13:00.003Z

This is my shell image as it travelled around the group. Ros built on what I had done but then it took some surprising twists. Like the others there is not much 'shelliness' left, but I love the colours of the last piece.
Hilary

Pat's Shell Image

2008-12-18T16:36:00.001Z

The journey of my shell image took some surprising turns. I love the way Hilary developed my first work on the image, this was then built on by Ros. After Ros the image became a bit of a mystery until it was brought back to 'shells' by Liz in an extremely ghostly manner. Erica then strengthened the 'shelliness' - lovely image, but it does rather look like a plate of tasty mussels !
Pat

Shelliness

2008-12-17T18:14:00.003Z

As everyone soon realised retaining the 'shelliness'

became more difficult as we passed the images on.

If you haven't already done so I would be interested to

receive your A4 write ups of how you achieved each image.

I like the transition of my shell and the final image which

reminds me of a flower. Well done everyone.

Erica's Shell Image

2008-12-11T17:08:00.002Z

Here is the story of my Shell image as it travelled round our group. Some of the images are very watery and Liz's transformation reminds me of ocean waves.
Erica

A New Game of Consequences - Shells

2008-12-11T16:49:00.002Z

This time it was Liz's turn to choose an image for our next game. At the beginning of September, Liz selected this photograph and this time there was a little extra challenge - the idea was to try to retain some of the "shelliness" during our transformations.
We are all learning so much about our computer programmes and we really feel we are making rapid progress. So for the last 3 months we have been working on "Shells". As each of us assembles a page of our own "shells" picture as it was worked on in turn by all of us, it will appear here on the blog

Hilary's Temple

2008-10-21T12:13:00.009+01:00

The original Temple photo was one I took on holiday in Kyoto a few years ago.

It has been great fun to see what can happen to this photo as it travels around the group of six for transformation, and quite amazing when all the sets of consequences are put together as on the Blog. Thank you everyone.

Hilary

My First Try at Blogging

2008-10-12T16:42:00.003+01:00

With the able help of my son I am now going to try and write my first blog.

This is not about 'Consequences' although I am very much enjoying the experience.

I thought I would share with you some of my present work - I am involved with "Kickstart" and the subject we are exploring is Canals.

I am going to try and include an image from my preparatory work. Wish me luck - here goes -

Erica's Temple

2008-10-06T15:58:00.002+01:00

This is the story of my Temple picture as it travelled round the group. The actual temple image is mostly absent but does reappear amid the swirls in the last image.
Erica

Pat's Temple

2008-10-06T15:43:00.003+01:00

As a comparative newcomer to DOT, my contributions to "Consequences" take the form of "What happens if."

However, by remembering to take notes on what I do, and believe me, this is a skill in itself, the temptation being to just hit buttons and see what happens. Anyway, now that I have started to discipline myself, slow down and think about what I am doing, I now realise that I am learning so much.

The three monthly meetings help us all to explore not only our own work but that of the rest of the group.

"Consequences" has been good fun as well as providing me with a steep learning curve.

Hopefully, the curve will begin to flatten out over time.
Pat

The Consequences of Experimentation

2008-09-24T15:27:00.009+01:00

Having concluded another round of Consequences we are beginning to upload the images that tell the story of the Temple picture that Hilary provided for us to play with.

As before with Cactus Consequences, we each started off with the same image (this time the temple above), and made some adjustments before passing it on to the next person in the group.

No one knew exactly how the image that they then received had been manipulated, all they could do was set to work on the received image before passing it on again.

We each kept a record of what we had done to every image we received and passed on. Then at our meeting in August at Pat's house we produced our A4 record sheets and worked through an image from the original through all of it's iterations to it's conclusion. Using a laptop and Photoshop Elements 2 to show how each iteration was produced.

This way of working kept us all involved and learning. Everyone picked up new things to try out, but we also learnt that we needed to keep better records of what we did!

Below is the story of my temple image. Pat's final manipulation was quite spectacular.

One of the consequences of this exercise is that for our next round of the game we are going to try and retain the essence of the original image. It is so very easy to allow the software to create wonderful manipulations, but they often move so far away from the original inspiration that we loose control over the design process. So our challenge for the next round is to try to hang on to some morsel of the appeal of the original image and hopefully end up with some images that we might use as inspiration for stitch: whether they are the final images or steps along the way.

Ros's temple

2008-09-13T12:14:00.003+01:00

Hi everyone

Welcome to my temple.

I particularly liked the inclusion of text this time.

I had been wondering about using it myself.

Looking forward to seeing the other temples

on the blog in due course.

Ros.

Hilary's Cactus

2008-06-10T20:16:00.002+01:00

This is the sequence of Cactus HH around the group. It didn't really change a great deal apart from the colours, as the four cut-and-pasted cacti continued all the way through, although at the end Erica did some fancy work with displacement maps. (Erica has posted this for Hilary)
Hilary

Ros's cactus

2008-05-10T12:51:00.003+01:00

Dear Dotties

This is my first post although I've been a member for several years. I welcome you to the 'story' of my cactus. Some transformations are more obvious than others but I am very pleased with the finished result.

Arrived At Last

2008-05-03T15:00:00.014+01:00

Rather like announcing your safe arrival on holiday with a postcard home ,this is my safe arrival postcard to fellow members that I have arrived safely back on the DOT scene after an absence of over 3 years due to mental illness of which I am recovering (hopefully).

Slower than I used to be but twice as keen.I am not ashamed of having a mental illness and it is true there is always a way back through the maze

I will now start posting my new work from Consequences to the block .

Cactus ET the story

2008-05-02T17:53:00.004+01:00

Here is the story of Cactus ET as it travelled around the group.
It is interesting to see fairly constant colours almost throughout and the different ways we found to distort the images.

From the original cactus photograph, I copied it, applied a gradient map and blended the 2 layers using difference mode. I replaced all the blue tones with green and cropped a square from the part of the image I felt worked best.

If anyone else would like to share how they made the transformations, just send it in a comment.

Cactus LW - the story

2008-05-02T16:51:00.004+01:00

Below is the story of CactusLW and it's transformations as it went around the group.
It began as a cactus, moved through pop art to misty planets, dancing eggs or a string of beads, into a very surreal jelly mould and back to cactus colours and a neat, symetrical pattern, then reverted to the blues and purples and began to twirl. I wonder if we will be able to detect individual styles by the end of this exercise?

Sometimes it is hard to work out exactly what was done to achieve a particular image, but hopefully, next time, we will all have printed sheets that tell the story of each transformation. Trying out some of the ideas on the computer as we went along highlighted things for all of us that we could learn from and explore for ourselves.

Cactus Consequences

2008-05-02T11:21:00.003+01:00

Cactus Consequences was it a game, or was it a challenge? We all started off with the same image (above), a beautiful picture of a cactus taken by Erica at Wisley. Everyone then had to make some sort of transformation to it and pass it on to the next person on the list of members. The image had a restricted size of 1mb and was to be about 10cm sq, approx 150ppi. The reason for the restriction is that not everyone in the group is on broadband (download times etc).

We each recorded what we did to the image, and sent it on as a single layered jpeg so no one could see the previous transformations and be influenced by them. Each week we passed on the images, but it soon became apparent that not everyone was sticking to the rules of engagement! We had some very interesting shpaes and sizes of image and quite a range of file formats too, which made it a little tricky for some to bring the image back in to line! It all added to the challenge though, and I think we all learnt more about how to change file sizes, ppi/dpi, layers and their implication for file sizes, and also keeping records and naming layers.

Below is my record of a transformation I made to one of the images.

Everyone had kept some sort of record of what they did and we followed one image around the group as it was transformed again and again. Whenever an image got to Erica it seemed to turn green! Chrissie was excellent at creating unusual shapes, Pat was in to pattern and Ros was keen to try out something new each time.

By listening and trying out peoples transformations on Ericas computer we all learnt things we did not know before. In fact I think we all had information overload as well!

Hopefully we will all post an image of the stages that transformed each one of our starting images into the end images that we received as they finished going around the group. Mine is still travelling at this point, but I hope to have the finished one back soon.

I am looking forward to the next one, Hilary has kindly supplied us all with another image to work on.

Thanks Erica for being our host this time, and thank you too for your origami skills!

Erica's Folded Books - Template

2008-03-23T19:30:00.002Z

I have put a template on my website as a pdf file, you can download a copy from here.

Erica

Erica's Folded Books

2008-03-12T11:21:00.002Z

The folded books are delightful, very inspirational. I have just today found my practice one after our move, so I'll have to make a proper one.
Hilary

Foil Tube Photo

2008-02-01T21:28:00.001Z

This a one of my photos taken down an iridescent foil/film tube.

The foil or film as it is called was rolled up and stored inside a cardboard tube. I was simply carrying the tube through the house and happened to glance down at the tube. I noticed the ever changing colours - depending on what was visible through the tube at the far end and how much light was entering the tube. It was a sunny day, so I pointed it at a cushion sitting in a sunny spot (if you click on the photo, you get a much larger picture and if you zoom in, you can see the cushion!) . Then I wondered if it would work if I took a photo down the tube - this was the result.

I actually took loads of photos, some with an open end and some with a clothes peg holding the tube closed - all good. I bought the film from Paperchase where it was sold as wrapping paper, but I know you can buy it from lots of craft places to do all sorts of interesting things to it.

I have posted this photo using the "Blog This" button in Picasa. That was very easy to do.

Erica's Folded Books

2008-02-01T12:19:00.000Z

On our first Friday meeting ever (1st Feb 2008) we shared the results of our endeavours. Folded from a sheet of A4 paper with 3 cuts, Erica's amazing mini books were an exercise in being precise! Some of us used Publisher, and others Page Plus. Erica provided a template and we all tried to create the books and import words, images backgrounds etc to create personal little books to treasure.

hello to all

2006-06-18T21:20:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone this is just a quick message from me ,hopefully you will all be able to pick up.Thank you for all your kind thoughts and messages.Liz has let me know that everything is going well at DOT.
Hope to see you all before another year is over.
Chrissie