It seems to be a trend recently for geeks to bash other geeks. I don't think this is something that is new. There has always been an unspoken hierarchy. All geek/nerd subgroup feels they are better than other certain subgroups. Their mantra seems to be "at least we are not as bad as (insert subgroup here)". Lately it seems to have become more and more judgmental. I myself am a female geek. My experience has been different and varied depending on the people I am trying to socialize with. The overall pervasive opinion seems to be suspicion when it comes to female geeks. You are not taken seriously until you prove yourself. You have to be twice as good at things than the guys in order to gain tolerance. I know more people experience this, as is evidenced by Aisha Tyler's need to defend herself for hosting for Ubisoft at E3 this year. She seems to think it is more about an unproven person hosting. I think it is the overall mentality that women, especially beautiful women, are posers and don't play video games, don't participate in geek culture.

Last week a guy named Joe Peacock expressed his disdain for posers in a very poorly worded, sexist and assumptive article on CNN. I am not going to link to it because I don't want to drive traffic to the article, giving it any kind of validity. As sad as it is, he is just expressing an opinion that is pervasive in the geek male - that female geeks can't possibly be geeks, or nerds, or intelligent, or care about anything beyond being popular and wearing makeup. He uses some of my favorite people to pry a rift between those he perceives as real geeks and those that are posers. That disturbs me a lot. I disturbs me a ton actually. It generates a plethora of disturbance.

John Scalzi has written a very coherent and well thought out response to this on his blog. I agree with him. No one has the right to decide who is and who isn't a geek. That is a label that we each need to decide for ourselves whether or not it fits us. We are potentially alienating some amazing, creative people when we indulge in that behavior. So what if a percentage of people are just there to ride the wave of geek culture popularity? So what if people want to draw attention to themselves by wearing cool/sexy/geeky/well made costumes? Isn't that the reason anyone wears a costume? No one dresses up in blue unitard, red underpants and a cape and expects to blend into the crowd. For some of us, cosplay is about showing our geekdoms literally on our sleeves and connecting with others of the same ilk. It is fun, it is creative. Poser or not, I am constantly impressed by the creative approaches to costuming I see. Seeing those costumes inspires me to do things I may not have tried before, even though I am a geek and have been all my life. It also initiates conversation with people who might know more than I do about my particular geekdom, turning what might have been just an exchange of facts into an actual conversation.

I do not see that as a bad thing.

So what if there are posers out there?  We are currently experiencing an insurgence of geek culture in the mainstream. It is all of a sudden OK to know about every little detail of every Superman comic ever written. It is OK to dress up as your favorite character and paw through a box of toys. It is OK to rave about your favorite Sci-fi show without being scoffed at and being dismissed as "one of those".  People who were closet geeks are now feeling it is safe to come out and be themselves.

I don't see that as a bad thing either.

Any mainstream popularity comes with those that are only involved because it is "THE THING TO DO". That is normal. It is rooted in our Jr High selves' need to be included and part of the cool crowd. So we have a small invasion of these people for a few years. So what? In a few years mainstream will move on to the next "COOL THING" and we will be left to our own devices again.

Only this time, we are better. We are stronger and more creative, because we have picked up some awesome people who needed that nudge to feel ok to be themselves. People who might not have been in contact with geek culture are being creatively sparked in ways they might not have otherwise. They will contribute nothing but good to our geekdoms. They will inspire us to be better. They will become part of the attractive richness that is geek culture.

And in my opinion, that is not a bad thing.

Not that I agree with these naysayer negative nellies, but I think I understand where they are coming from. Geek culture has mainly been made up of social outcasts. Maybe not OUTCAST outcasts, but a lot of us weren't popular due to our geekdoms and we looked to our geekdoms as a safe haven from the ridiculing public. After a day of being lonely and alone, watching others in large groups of friends, or after a day of being teased, jeered at, and molested, THIS was our place. The place with others who liked us and who accepted us as we were. People who recharged the depletion of self worth that comes with dealing with that kind of shit all day. A place to replenish your HP. These posers that people are writing about  with such venom epidomize the very thing we were escaping. They are the personification of all the negative bullshit from which we willingly separated ourselves.

To these guys, this must feel like an invasion. It must feel like these people have not only taken over our schools, our workplaces, our gyms, our recreation centers - now they are trying to muscle into OUR thing. They are trying to take away the one thing that is OURS. They are boys upset at their parents requiring them to let girls into their tree house.

I understand.

I don't agree.

I sincerely hope these guys ( I say guys, as the only issues I have seen are of the male persuasion, but it also includes any gender who acts this way), see thier behavior and understand that it is not OK. I hope they see that they are acting like Middle Schoolers, and they need to grow up and behave like adults. In my experience the best way to get rid of those kind of people is to ignore them. Eventually they will get tired and go play somewhere else. Abusing them on the internet is not going to help your cause. It does not make you look like an intelligent, well adjusted adult. It is perpetuating the stereotype of the cave dwelling man boy in his mother's basement who can't deal with people or real life. Let's face it,  that stereotype has not applied to geekdom universally since - well, EVER. It also will provide fodder for those hater when again geek culture is passe, and the "cool kids" have moved on.

Thanks for letting me get in my two cents.

Acceptance (NOT tolerance) and solidarity for all.

It has been 5 days. Yes, that is a long time to take on this project. A lot more than I expected. I thought the majority of my problems with this software were because I was unfamiliar with it. After working and working to try get get what I wanted out of the software I finally gave up.

My first move was to get the manual. I figured any questions I might have would be answered by it. I was wrong. Things it didn't explain that would have been helpful:

-How to join clips
-How to put sound to more than one clip, when you are using multiple clips in your movie (which they suggest you do) and you have one long sound clip
-How to remove audio that you have uploaded. Not from the clips, but from the import queue.
-How to resize your stills

I had several issues while working with this. Again, I am probably trying to do more than it was meant for, but still it was frustrating. As I do not currently have the ability to capture pictures directly into the computer, importing stills was all I could do. As I used my iPad to take the stills, I had no options as to the size or dimensions of the stills. Because they were so large it took a long time to import. I expected this. It would be a lot to ask of any program to make that large of a data import go quickly.

I chose to set the movie frame rate at 24 fps. It is easier to calculate movement with an even number of frames per second. That is something I am still struggling with. When you see the video you will see stilted movement and fluttriness. That is due more to my learning curve for calculating movement than it is the software. Still, 24 fps seemed to work out ok.

Because I plan to break my videos up into scenes, I made more than one clip to test the software's continuity abilities. The first clip is from the TMBG Istanbul video I have been playing with, the second is just a little thing I shot to play around with. I recorded myself playing a simple chord progression on the ukelele for my sound. I am glad, because if I had chosen dialog getting the sound to match would have been way more difficult than it already was.

The first issue I encountered was getting the clips to join up. It isn't clear how to do that. My idea was to take my two clips, put them back to back then add the sound. That didn't work. There is no way to do that. So then I tried to add the sound to the first clip, but then it made the first clip twice as long with a long pause of background, then it ran the second clip. That is where I ran into the next problem. There is no time ticker anywhere. I had no idea how long each clip was exactly. My next idea was to cut the sound into the right length for the clips. Makes sense. Didn't work. I tried exporting each clip separately to figure out how long I needed to make each audio clip. It was off by 4 seconds. When I cut the audio and imported it into AI, each clip was too short. At that point I ran out of patience and just moved the audio so there was a few seconds of silence at the beginning and a few at the end. Having instructions on how to do this would have helped a lot. Having a counter so I knew exactly how long my clips were and how much audio I needed to fill the space would have helped a lot.

I have a bunch more I can say about it, but I think I am going to end it here. I was disappointed. I expected more from Aardman. At the very least I expected to be able to find answers to my questions and not spend 5 days with frustrating trial and error.  I also already stated some things in my last post, and as I did not find answers I will just leave it alone. I am glad it was a free trial and I didn't waste money on it.

So here is my final video:

Obsession. I think that is the word that best describes my relationship with stop motion animation. I think I have also mentioned in the past that I have a secret crush on Aardman Studios. They are the creators of Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, the kid's show Timmy Time, and last but not least, the new movie The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists! (which was changed to Pirates! Band of Misfits for US audiences. WHY??? the original title was SO much better!!) BTW, thier stuff is no longer claymation. It is now all latex. It is a better choice. Easier to keep from getting fingerprints or lint sticking to the models, harder to destroy, imminently more reusable. Imminently more practical.

Anyway, I digress.....

My point is that Aardman has teamed up with some software developers to create an easy to use interface for stop motion called Animate It! It is aimed at kids, to get them started with playing around with stop motion. They have a kit you can purchase that has some plasticine type clay, a mold, plastic eyes, and a green piece of felt that can be used for a green screen. I think you can only get it in the UK. But the software is available online for a 14 day free trial. As it is a free trial, I thought I would play around with it to see how well it works. I haven't played with it very much yet. I must admit, if you are capturing your movie with a webcam or computer connected camera it is easy to use. It does allow for stills import, but you have to really search to find the options for it. It also takes forever to import your stills. It took me 40 minutes to get all 917 pictures imported into the software interface. I also had to import them in batches.  Here's a screen shot:

See the odd looking frame in the middle of the strip at the bottom? That was my attempt to expand the beginning of my animation by replicating frames already in the timeline. I have no idea why that happened yet. I am guessing it has something to do with the size of the picture. I still need to research why, but my theory is it autosizes it when I import but doesn't when I replicate. I am thinking it is something I can overcome if I learn a bit more about the software.

The other problem I am encountering thus far is lag time and responsiveness. Sometimes when I try to do something in this interface, it either takes an unreasonably long amount of time or doesn't happen at all. Again, I need to do more research, so I am not sure if it is because this is a new interface or maybe I don't have the processing power this software requires. I did not see any requirements listed anywhere, so I assumed they had made it usable for the lowest common denominator. My computer doesn't have the greatest processor, but it also isn't that bad.  I can play most video games no problem.

In the next couple of days, while I still have the free trial, I will play around with it and look for forums and answers. I hope to have a good video to show you by the end. The list price on the website is in pounds, so I suspect that it is not available for purchase in the US. that is something else I will have to research. The price for the full version is 19.95. Direct conversion places it at around $30.

I also have yet to play around with the audio options.

Though I doubt that Aardman studios will move from the full featured Stop Motion Pro to this software, it looks like it may be a cheap, useable alternative.

More laters! 

So I did a little playing, and found some interesting things. No, I wouldn't recommend always using iPad apps for stop motion. Seems stupid if you have the money for the real deal compiler software and real equipment. I don't. I have had problems getting After Effects to work, Windows Movie Maker goes in and out of utility, and pretty much everything else out there requires you to be able to capture directly to computer and my point n shoot doesn't allow that.

So now that I have the iPad that was first prize for the Literary Platform Douglas Adams Animation contest, I thought I would research the feasibility of using the iPad. I do not have a Mac computer, so that has been my first hurdle to jump. Apparently they do not play well together. After several tried I finally got the pictures I took with the iPad onto my Windows machine. If I can ever get the software to work for me, that might be doable. At first I was having problems with the camera. Remember, this was made to be idiot proof, which means very little control. I learned a few things about how to get it to work right.

1. Use a LOT of light. The controls are really shitty, so if you want a clear picture you need lots and lots of light. Even if you think you have enough light, add more. The camera seems to work better with excess light than with not enough. Grainy pictures that aren't as crisp as you want them will be the result if you don't.

2. Even when using Focus Lock, double check to make sure focus hasn't changed. If you tap and hold your finger in a particular spot, it will lock focus on that spot and it is supposed to keep focus on the spot until you move it. Well, in the we-know-better-than-you vein, it doesn't always stay in focus lock. From time to time it does the face scan thing, which removes focus lock if the focus isn't focused on what it thinks is a face. This annoys me. I have not found a way to turn the face recognition off yet. That may come, but for now there doesn't seem a way around it, so you have to constantly check to make sure your focus lock is where you want it to be.

3. Keep fingers away from the lens. I know this seems a simple and obvious thing, but when you are dealing with smalls sets as I am and have to keep the camera close in, sometimes I can't help but get my hands or fingers too close to the lens, which breaks the focus lock and readjusts it to the closest thing - me. That shouldn't happen with focus lock, but it is happening just about every picture.

Ok, so now I have figured out how to get the camera to sort of work. Lets talk about the apps I tried out. Most of the animation apps were not for stop motion. They were for drawn animation. I found 3 apps that actually fit the criteria and also didn't require me to buy the full version for a Mac in order to use it. I tried out iMotion HD, StopAnimator and StoMo. I have no idea who created these apps. I am not promoting any of them particularly. I am just comparing them. Remember as I go through these that I am looking to do good quality videos. All three of these would be good if you are a kid and only want to play with stop motion. Someone who is an expert in stop motion and is very skilled at the craft may be able to do a better job than I did. But for what it is worth, here is how it all shook out.

iMotion - This one isn't too bad. It does have an onion skin option, which I like. You can also do time lapse with this app. I haven't tried it yet. Seems interesting. Doesn't do stop mo though, so I will leave that for later. First thing I noticed is you have absolutely no control over the camera. You can't set focus lock, you can't zoom in, you can't do anything. This is fine if you are working in a big set, I guess, but in these small sets it is a pain in the ass. The focus is so not consistent it makes me want to scream. Also, when exporting the video you do not get to choose the frame rate of the exported video. You can choose it in the app, but it ignores your choice when exporting.

Here's the short sample video I did:

Besides being fluttery, which seems to be my issue not the app's, it is way faster than it should be. If you slow it down to the speed it was supposed to be, you can see the focus changing. Annoying!

StopAnimator- This one also doesn't allow for any type of camera control. It also doesn't have any onion skin capability. You don't have any type of frame rate control either. The one good thing about this app is if you set some things in the camera mode, it will hold on to them - though focus lock is not one of them. But if you zoom in via camera then switch apps you can be zoomed in for this app. When watching this one, notice that even though I did not move the camera in any way nor did I set a zoom or unset a zoom, the views are very very different.

Here's this one:

This one at least stayed at a good frame rate. You can see the focus changing. It is infinitely annoying.

StoMo - This has the most controls inside the app of all of them. It keeps track of the number of frames you have taken, it allows you to shoot more than one scene and label them. It also gives you control over how dark the previous image is when using onion skinning and lets you control the fram rate. You can play it back at several frame rates to see which one works best. It is also the only one that allows you to edit individual frames. The biggest problems with this app is again you have no control over the camera and the image you get isn't exactly the image you see in the preview. It isn't always as focused as the actual picture is, so you have no idea what exactly the end result will be. It also has some lag and responsiveness issues.

Notice how much further away it looks than the other videos. I did not move the camera, play with the zoom, nor did I have any type of control over that. The frames in the app look closer to what you see in the other video than to what you see in this video. It also continuously refocuses, and as you can't really tell under the onion skinning and blurriness, I couldn't fix it. That frustrates me as well.

So, I suppose in conclusion I don't really think any of these will work for what I do. There may be more that I have missed. The search feature isn't exactly precise in the app store. There may be ways to work around these flaws. And one day I may have the patience to figure them out. For now, though, it doesn't work. I have limited energy at the moment, so I need to find one thing that I like and really concentrate on learning it. Once I settle onto what "it" is.

Oh...and none of the apps allow you to add audio. You have to find a separate application to do that. That is annoying as hell as well.

I don't have a whole lot to write at the moment. Spent a bunch of the weekend in migraine mode. Today I am getting back to writing. It has been a few days. Job hunting is frustrating me. Lack of good stop mo compiler is frustrating me. I have been playing with the stop mo apps on the ipad. When I get something done I will report back here.

So, off to write. I will leave you with a picture of my monsters. I sat down at my desk this morning and this is what I saw. I like to imagine they were locked in mortal combat before I woke up and made them go into freeze frame.

I am not happy right now. I don't know if you noticed it or not. I spent the majority of the day working on the TMBG stop mo mentioned in the last post. I have been using Windows Movie Maker. I was in the middle of editing when it stopped working and insisted I get an update before I could continue. Before I could save and continue. Yup...I wasn't allowed to save what I had already done. So I complied. Because with Microsoft there is nothing else you can do. Now I can't use it for stop mo. I have been breaking it down into bits to allow me better control over certain spots. If I do that then try to edit the sections together it jumps. Majorly. Black out for a second, no sound then continues. No options to fix it. that is how I did the Douglas Adams video. So apparently they changed something and now it is useless to me. This made me frustrated, but whatever. I still have my copy of After Effects C4. One reason I don't use it is because I am having a hard time getting consistent and unpixelated results from it. But I still wanted to get the video done, so I tried it. 4 hours and 600 pictures into a 925 pictures set, and I find out I didn't give myself enough time in the timeline. And I can't get it to change. It won't let me add any more. So basically, my whole day has been flushed down the toilet. If my roommate's dog wasn't already upset by the fireworks, I would be screaming at this point. The string of expletives going through my brain at the moment would make a hard core biker dude blush. THIS is why I need an income....so I can afford the real equipment. I need to get a better computer, a camera that can be triggered from the computer, and a full paid version of  stop motion software. Well, all those things and a place to live....but shit I am tired of this kind of thing happening. I waste so much time unsuccessfully trying to get things to work. It would also help if I had the money to get someone to teach me how to use these things properly.

OK, time to go crul up in bed with a Pepsi and cry now.

Well, all is moved. I am working at trying to find a job. I don't have myself all set up yet, but at least the major stuff is done. I am working on playing with my iPad as a camera. Biggest issue so far - keeping it from moving. I don't have the money to buy any type of clamp system. Ironically, because the trigger is the touch screen, I no longer have the wiggle from triggering. Just from the handi tac prying up and allowing it to move. I am trying to make them dance to They Might Be Giant's Istanbul Not Constantinople. If I can get it to work, result will be posted here.

Gotta go, but I will leave you with a picture from the iPad experiment: