Contest The Great Triathlon Challenge Three: Angel's Lore

Oh....my.... well then
...where do I start

 

This sounds great...but I've never made a GIF before in my life. How does one go about it?

 

Oh wow, I can't believe my random stint at trying bookbinding a few years ago is gonna pay off. I still have all the tools and materials.

 

Cool! I am so happy to be working small!!!!!

 

Yes!!! I got this!

 

I think I just shed a tear of joy over the fact that this project will be physically smaller than the last one . I'm sure to be terrible at this, but somehow it sounds like the most fun out of the three!! Probably because we have to include challenge 1 + 2 in the photo... it'll be fun to tie it all together.

The only thing I want to know is:

Does this have to be zoomed out to show the entire niche? Because if so, the books of some participants... who happen to have very large niches... may not be visible. @_@;..

 

omg

i don't even

what

 

What if you WORK at a printer/copy shop? Would it be allowed to print parts of the book there, since I'd be doing it myself on my own time? (They're just really nice laser printers, and a $20 budget won't buy much of a printer for home...)

I'm thinking I'll be hand-making as much as possible, but it would be nice to print a few things (photos, perhaps some text?) to incorporate into it. My handwriting is terrible, and my drawing skills are nonexistent.

Boy am I glad my sister is a papercrafter with an overflowing craft room!

 

Sorry to already be posing a question, but should this story be about the dolls ACTUAL persona or a persona invented for the challenge? Because while I made the wings specifically for my doll, they don't actually fit into the mythos of my dolls character ie the character would not normally have wings, particularly like the ones I made.

 

...If it helps... I made a quick tutorial last year on how to make a GIF...
You can find it HERE

 

Oh. I was not expecting that.

 

Well, I was taught about book making for one school project, so it shouldn't be too bad. But gosh, still so much work involved... Well, I guess with prizes like the ones offered up this year, they really want to make the winners work for it.

Question: Does it have to be a traditional book with pages, or can it be an accordion style book?

 

I once made a book, roughly ten years ago in school xD
so my binding skills may be a little on the rusty side, but I'm genuinely excited for this challenge.

 

I second this request. Anyone have tips, or program suggestions?

 

Question about our book's content! Is it text only, or can it contain drawings/artwork/photos of our doll?

 

Oh dear. A GIF? Don't you need photoshop for that? I'm in trouble then...

 

For those of us with...less than stellar penmanship, are we allowed to print our pages at home to make sure everything is legible?

 

Ditto! I think I'd rather make another pair of wings.

 

omg，such a funny activity.

 

Oh boy. I've never made a GIF before. I have bound a book, however! Can we draw the pages digitally and print them out?

 

I LOVE THIS CHALLENGE. (Especially since I'm not going to need a huge workspace for it.)

 

Yeah...I'm more afraid of making a GIF than making a book. Crafts I can do, but computers me no likey. Is there a way to make a GIF without photoshop?

 

Well, I already thought of my story XD;. But it was under the assumption that drawing was an acceptable way to make the pages. If not I'll have to re-think :B.

 

My question exactly! And the way my computer's been acting lately, trying to make something like a GIF is going to be fuuunnn...once I know how to make one, that is. >.<

 

You should be able to find online GIF makers too I did a google search for best online gif maker and got a lot of results, so hopefully something out there works well! (I just don't have any specific sites to recommend, since I have the Photoshop.)

 

I hope you don't need photoshop or I'm out of luck.

 

Hopefully! Thanks for checking. ^^ Now if someone could just recommend a good one...

 

I know you don't need photoshop, because I made a gif for last year's triathlon. I think the site I used was makeagif.com...? Or that may have been for personal gifs. Either way, it's an option.

 

If you don't have Photoshop (which is NOT necessary to make animated gifs), try Gimp. It's free and it has a tutorial for making animated gifs that walks you through the tools to use.

 

Okay, questions! Do we have to use text/words in our book? Conversely, can we choose to only use text/words? Also, must it be a narrative/story book? Like, does it need to be a 'once upon a time' book, or can we do a scrapbook, or a non-fiction/history book, or a short play, or a collection of sonnets?

 

Wow. I am stunned. and I have lots of questions for this one.

I'll repeat a question about printing that lots of people have been asking, but only because my next questions depend on the answer...

Can we print out our pages?
If so, can we use photos of our doll?
If so, can we use old photos of our doll not specifically taken for this challenge?
If so, is it okay if these old photos have been posted on DoA?
Thank you!

Anyway, on a non-question note:
This is quite a twist...and a bit of a departure from previous triathlon final challenges. I'm looking forward to it.

 

Question: must each page be hand-scripted and illustrated, or can the book be digitally created and printed and then hand-bound?

 

Are illustrations/pictures inside the book allowed?
What percentage should be text? Is no text allowed? @_@

Edit for another question: Can we write the doll's name inside the book? If it's my doll's story that might seem an important detail, but it might endanger the anonymity aspect of this contest?

 

I have a host of questions as well, many that have previously been asked. To add to the queries, I am curious to know what it means that the book may not be larger then the doll. If the doll is say 60cm then the book should obviously not be taller then 60cm but surely the book can be wider then the doll? Other wise most book will be very narrow. I don't want to be extremely literal but it would be nice to know what size the book could be if one decided not to do a doll scale book....

 

Oh my gosh thank you for that! Ok, now I can stop freaking out. XD

 

I'll await answers because it seems like everyone is asking the same questions I had. I do photostories all the time so if it can be something like that, I would be less worried about finishing this challenge. Now off to find out what a GIF is and how to make one..lol

Edit ok nevermind that tutorial won't help me because I don't have photoshop...guess I'll do a search online hopefully there are other programs out there.

 

Wowz... I went through all the trouble of building this monster niche, it'd be a shame to drop out without trying, but I've got a lot going on this week and this is quite the challenge.
If I don't drop out, geeze, I should write and anthem about how I totally should have chosen a different doll, the favorite was such a terrible choice, and with each challenge the terribleness of choice multiplies. XD

 

Ya know, I'm not a crafty person at all, yet, when the challenge of making wings or making a niche came up, I was like "Yeah! I can do this somehow!". But with this I feel absolutely stumped!! And I'm a writer!! D: Really looking forward to answers to all the questions so maybe it seems a little less ahhhh!

 

Thanks AlphaCow for the link to this Gimp tutorial~

 

Okay, I'll have to re-read a few things here since I just woke up The writing shouldn't be much of a problem. The GIF on the other hand....never done that. I took a quick peek at the tutorial and it looks daunting. But do people have to be able to scroll through it themselves, or should it be a totally automated book that runs by itself ?

 

Gifs don't allow flipping thru like a book, you'll have to time each frame giving enough time to see/read each frame because it runs on its own.

 

The tutorial above is great, and there are even GIF making apps like the Photobucket gifmaker. I'll scrounge up some more links tomorrow.

There will be close up photos so that the book can be seen in detail. The shot of all three challenge components should give viewers the full effect, whether the full effect is Durer's Melancholia 1 or Read or Die fan art is up to you.

Make a book you want to make. If you think it would be fun to use the invented persona, go ahead! If you'd rather have a keepsake that is about your doll and their actual persona, that is great too! Maybe he's just wearing wings as a favor to a friend.

If you work there and you're doing it on your own time, that's just fine! They are tools to which you have access and know how to use yourself.

An accordion style book is a traditional book binding technique. Just don't neglect the cover boards!

The book should not be longer in any direction than your doll. We thought about putting an actual maximum measurement, but these contests are so much more fun when there aren't a lot of arbitrary limitations. So if your doll is 80cm tall you can make a massive tome, and if your doll is a puki puki you can make a pocket devotional.

At this point, if someone really wanted to know who created which entry they probably could track that information down somehow. I think that most voters are genuinely voting for the entries that impressed them the most. Everyone seems to be behaving themselves offsite. So you may use your doll's name and old photos in your books.

Your books can be scrapbooks, comic books, photo stories, reams of poetry, creepy handwritten diaries, ship's logs, model's lookbooks, whatever has meaning for you and your favorite doll.
You may hand illustrate and hand letter. You may design your entire layout on a computer and print it. All of these techniques require a skill and some planning, and that's really all we're looking for here. Do something cool, get emotionally invested, spoil your doll, give yourself a pat on the back.

If anyone wants to share their favorite GIF makers or bookbinding instructions, please feel free to do so here!

 

Woohoo, thanks for the answers &#65340;(&#65342;&#9661;&#65342&#65295;! Since drawing's a go I'm all set! Never bound a book before but I'm sure I'll manage with the tutorials online. I've always wanted to try anyway. For anyone worried about the GIF part, don't! It's not difficult! I figured it out when I was just a kid with no tutorials at all on ancient, non-photoshop software.

And for those worried about the doll's name, how about using a made up one just for the purpose of the book? I'm just going to use a fake name like my contest alias because there's really no other option. It's not my doll's real story so I think it's ok to use a name that's not real too .

Now I'm off to Google the meanings of Durer's Melancholia and Read or Die XD;....

 

Okay, so just to show you what the easy peasy possibilities are, I made this GIF using the Photobucket app on my iPod touch. I snapped some quick square photos with my iPod, opened up my Photobucket app, selected GIFmaker, tapped the photos in the order I wanted them to play and then dialed back the frames per second to just about the lowest setting. The entire process took me maybe five minutes total.



The book is something I made many years ago using coins leftover from a trip to Italy and a photocopier (it was before the days of PCs ). The blank backs of the coin pages are glued to one another and the spine is a bit of metal repair tape. The endpapers are glued directly to the coins that make the front and back covers.

So don't fear the GIF! And don't feel like you have to reproduce the Book of Kells. We don't even require that the book be made out of paper.

 

This is what I used last year and it's really easy, just take a lot of photos, upload them in the order you want them press create now (you can also change the speed/size as well).

http://www.gifmaker.me/

It's so quick and easy to test out too, can just try putting random photos into the gif maker (or ones from a photoshoot) to see what it's like.

Don't need photoshop either, since you can just do cropping and brightness on photobucket anyway.

 

That looks excellent, Psywave, thank you!

Also, isn't it great how everyone is so helpful and encouraging? You almost forget it's a competition because it feels like everyone's on the same team.

 

Friendly competition is the best. The more people who participate, the more eye-candy/inspiration everyone gets ! (really... I still want to know how a bunch of those wings were made..).

 

Wow! this is so cool!-is super excited-

 

I probably know the answer to this already, but I'm going to ask it anyway just in case anyone else has the same question:

I'd like to compose my Great American Novel full-size for scanning and/or gif-ing and then print it out reduced size for actual binding. Does that work?


The hardest part is the first: getting started with a story (because I babble a lot. How to choose?)

This is terrific! I may just use that, because it's been so long since I've done one on Photobucket that they've moved the controls half a dozen times on me.

Truly! Besides, since only a few people will win, the vast majority of us are just in it for the heck of it even if we'd like to win. So why not have fun along the way? I've loved watching everyone cheer everyone else on, this time.

 

Ummm. I know you said that we are allowed to use the doll's name in the book, but my doll's name is also the name I use for my forum name (she's the shell of my oldest and dearest roleplay character, whose name I use everywhere). Does this mean I should make up a different name for her since it's the same as my forum name and thus even more obvious than mentioning dolls by name?

 

Is there a size limit for the individual pictures that make up the gif? Such as the 600 x 800 maximum for the last challenge?

 

Hello mods, I have a question about endpapers. The GIF contains one photo of the front end papers and one of the final end papers - but the binding technique I was hoping to use doesn't have 'end papers'. It's a soft cover binding. So um, help?

Thanks in advance!

 

Can we use (older) photo's of the "challenge doll" with other dolls?

 

Absolutely - the whole atmosphere this year has been great. Everyone is so excited to see each others' work and are so supportive of each other to keep going each step of the way. The prizes this year are amazing, but it's really cool to see so many people focusing on and enjoying the journey rather than the destination.

 

Yes, that's perfectly acceptable! You can get a lot of fine detail by doing it that way.

Well, now that you've mentioned it, you probably should choose a different name. I wouldn't have made the connection, and I doubt the thousand or so people who are following along would have either, but now you've kind of spelled it out.

For anyone who wants to use their doll's real name but fear's it would be too revealing, you could also blur the name in the text. It won't affect the story.

I knew I forgot something! Let me confer and I'll edit the rules.

Let's discuss over in Ask the Moderators.

Yes.

 

Thank you! All the info is really helpful! I woke up this morning knowing exactly what I want to do, and seeing this confirmed it for me ^.^ Can't wait to see everyone's stories, it's gonna be fun

 

Since we can use photos of the challenge doll with other dolls, this is probably OK, but I'm going to be overly picky and ask anyway so I'm not paranoid about it later. One of my dolls that is important to my challenge doll's story is off topic here (solely because she's not resin). Can I follow forum rules (she has to be with an on-topic resin doll in any photos) and include a photo or two of her in the book?

I was kind of disheartened when I read this challenge, it seems like so much to do! But I've been brainstorming all day and I think I've got a plan, now.

 

Yes, you may have OT dolls in photos along with your fave doll.