A Better Way...

Composed with Poser 7 and PowerPoint
In May of 2006, I started working on the Safety Committee: a voluntary position that was conducted mostly in off hours. The first week was interesting. From 6am-7am on Tuesday ( our regular meeting day and the only times we were paid for the committee work) a small group (3 out of 472) met to plan out the focus for the coming year. I was decided that we would take pictures of some of the safety hazards in the departments. Our committee leader said he could request the company camera from the Lab but could someone else bring a camera just in case. George said he could but the card was full and he didn't know how to get the pictures off the camera was now useless. I asked him to bring in the camera and I
would wipe the card for him so he would not have to buy a new camera. He said he would have to ask his wife. The following Tuesday I bought my camera. We divided into two groups and started off to hunt for hazards. I loaded the pictures I took on my laptop and emailed to our committee leader. On Sunday before our next meeting, I went to Office Max and bought a copy of Office 2003, installed it and opened PowerPoint. In about hour and half I had a presentation complete with pictures and bulleted descriptions of the problem and solutions. I took my laptop to work and set up to show the committee. From there I made several more presentations defining the "mission" of the committee, organizing our plans for the future, etc. I made poster with photographs and compiled material that I laid out in either word or PowerPoint. I signed up for Animation Factory.com and used the premade pics and gifs to illustrate an safety issue or behavioral aspect that related to safety. The newsletter, feedback to the maintenance department and other posting I cranked out on my desk top to support the committee. I also created two characters to demonstrate safety compliance. This is when I really developed an interest in digital media. After using auto shapes and editing pics and gifs to use in a graphic presentation for PowerPoint, I realized that PowerPoint was NOT a good graphics program. It was never designed for that and there were definite limitations. However I continued to design layouts and scenes in PowerPoint and in word (not a good program for posters).

The search was on for a better way to create really cool media. I googled my way to Crazy Talk, DAZ 3d, Poser, Toon Boom, True Space and Bryce. After working through the free trials in one weekend, I bought Crazy Talk (the one I used to animate the doll in a previous post) and Poser. I knew at the time I would not be reimbursed so I tried to be frugal. I worked most of Sunday trying to create something really eye catching for the meeting on Tuesday. The backgrounds I set up in PowerPoint and then imported them to Poser where I added a character, Slim Safely, in various stages of unsafe behavior. Poser had a ton of premade props that I could adapt to the projects and all but a couple were free. The following week I downloaded lots of props and set them up in Poser, saved the scene as a JPEG and took it to PowerPoint and added Signs and other items to create the background. Once I had completed the background, I imported it to Poser and added my characters, posed them and saved them as JPEGs. There was no way to use video or animation other than PowerPoint so most of the stuff I did was of still images. To spice up the presentations, I did use GIFs downloaded from Animation Factory and embedded a cartoon shading of Slim Safely waving but did not delve too deeply into animation.

When the TV did arrive I had already decided to leave the committee for a variety of reasons. Only two animations were completed before December 2006 when I resigned from the committee. I turned in 12 still scenarios I printed out on photo paper for the bulletin board and 4 animated PowerPoint's illustrating a safety issue. Two of the presentations were made using GIFs I downloaded from AnimationFactory and two were done with Poser. I could only find one, that is what I posted last week, when I went to weed out my files. I was a little disappointed that none of the items I turned in after I told them I was resigning were used for the boards or TV.

I made a decision. Digital Media was what I wanted to do and no matter what I was going to learn to do it well. Nestle has a tuition reimbursement plan so there no good reason why I couldn't do it.
About 2am this morning after finally getting the cv curve in Maya to revolve and make a bowl, I did think of a few reasons. After a good nights sleep I have forgotten what they were.