Tag Archives: video

the annual game

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every year (ish) my brothers and i play a game of monopoly; usually, we play during the winter holidays, but last year we didn’t get around to it until january 15 of this year. so this is technically the 2011 game, but since that might confuse people, we decided to call it the 2012 game.

the game is simple: it’s regular monopoly, with $500 in the middle on free parking. as to wheeling-and-dealing property exchanges: any deal that you can convince someone to agree to, goes. really. the only other stipulation is that you can’t conduct deals on your turn—nothing should disrupt the rhythm of play, insofar as that’s possible.

it tends to be a fast-paced, sometimes brutal shin-dig, requiring a whiteboard to keep track of all the deals made. this year was a lot of fun; actually, we agreed that it was one of the better games we’ve had, because one of my brothers had only one piece of property left (waterworks, of all things), but he managed to keep rolling three doubles and landing himself in jail, then landing on free parking on his way out of jail, and then back into jail—before he ever had to pay rent. he didn’t win the whole game, but he outlasted half of us!

some of you have seen this video already (it’s on my facebook), but here ’tis anyway.

if only (my first stop-motion movie)

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we did it! woot! a friend and i made a stop-motion animation-y movie. it was super fun, and i’m so glad we did it. i think i will definitely be wanting to make more of these in the future!

if this is something you think you’d like to try, let me just say a couple things. firstly, i recommend making a silly, basic, easy video (like this one) first, even if its just a few seconds long, so that you learn how you would/n’t do certain things the next time around. although it isn’t hard per se, it does take a lot of precision, and it takes a looong time. i definitely recommend having a buddy help out. it’s almost not worth doing on your own, i think. without two people, it’s really hard to get everything precise (it’s hard enough with two people), and it takes waaay too long to move the items, scurry back, take a pic, scurry back, move the items, etc. but if you have a buddy, it’s wicked fun. and the end result is magical to watch—even when you know exactly how the whole thing got made! :)

all right, that’s enough talking—let’s get this show on the road :) without further ado, here is our movie, if only (i think as soon as you see it, you’ll understand why we decided to call it that).

our next step is to actually teach the clothes to fold themselves for real. and put themselves away. that would be awesome. cos you know folding isn’t nearly as bad as putting clothes away. #idontknowwhy #butiknowitstrue

my first attempt at animation

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i’ve been wanting to make a stop-motion video ever since my friend by r. made this one (seriously, one of my favorite blog posts of all time ever); and recently, inspired by (carrie)meghan’s “about me” gallery, i’ve been wanting to re-do my “about me” page. today’s project was my little attempt at combining both of those goals.

i spent the day making a little video (animation, not stop-motion…one day i will graduate to stop-motion :). you can check it out on my “about me” page. it is by no means amazing. and since it’s so short, it gives very little information about me. oh well :) i had a much more elaborate story in  mind, but drawing all those copies took forever, and i lost a lot of momentum. i saved the storyboard and my drafts, though, and i’m going to keep at it, working towards the full story. until then, this will do :)

here’s a few pics from the progress (drafts and sketches)

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fly

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today i (finally) made it to my second trapeze class. i do not recommend waiting 2 months in between classes–i spent the first few rounds re-learning what i easily mastered the first time i went. that was a little disheartening; last time i was nearly flawless on every fly, but this time… lots of mistakes. however, despite that, it was still super fun. i did a backflip, too, which i loved. and the plan is to go next week for lesson 3. there are already bruises forming all over my legs and my hands are a bit torn up, too. all that being said, i enjoyed this class more than the first. the instructors were a lot  nicer, there were several other people there with us–which made for a great atmosphere of cameraderie–and the fear factor was a little lower. perhaps you recall how frightened i was last time–very near to petrified. and this time, i definitely started out just as afeered. i nearly hyperventilated on my first jump, and almost climbed down the platform, but the platform coach talked me into jumping anyway. it wasn’t an amazing fly, but it got my momentum for trapeze going again, and by my last jump i was almost fear-free :) pics are on facebook and flickr; video below. enjoy!