What to do for Someone Special Online
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A special day is coming up? Whether it's the holidays, a friend's birthday or an anniversary, you have to make something to let the people you love know how important they are to you. But what if that person is on the other side of the globe? Deliveries not only take too long, they're also expensive, and we know it's not always easy to just buy the gift, let alone ship it and risk both your credit card info and whether the item will arrive safely, or if it will arrive at all. Flowers, food baskets, chocolates, cute greeting cards, they all have their charm and a more personal touch than any e-card you can find, no matter how elaborate. Well, what if you could send something just as personal and more thoughtful, for free? You could even send a rose or a teddy bear.
All you'll need is:
- A camera. Any will do, I don't even have a digital camera so I did this with the cheapest webcam I could buy. In fact it was so crappy it broke just 10 minutes after I finished making my gift, but the low quality image makes little difference in the final result.
- Some paper. Again, any kind will suffice. If it's plain it'll work better.
- A lamp. It doesn't need to be too powerful but you must be able to point it down and focus the light just in front of it. This is optional if you're using a camera with flash, but don't use natural lightning.
- Some color pens, pencils or markers. I used only two color markers, with barely any ink left, but they were enough.
- Around 40-50 minutes, some patience and a pinch of creativity.
Here's how to do it:
The first thing you'll do is set everything up on a table or desk. You need to put the paper on the table, with the light and the camera pointing at it, making sure it doesn't move. The way I did it was to put part of the paper below my computer's CPU so that it stays still. To the side I put the lamp, and on top of the CPU I put a tin can with some coins in it to add weight, and attached the webcam to the edge of the can, pointed down at the piece of paper.
Now you must draw or write. This is up to you and what you think the other person will like. Whatever you choose, pic a color, and draw one small line, a few milimeters long. This will be the beginning of your drawing/writting. For example, if you're writting 'I love you', you'll start at the top and make a small vertical line, it'll take around 5-7 lines to complete the 'I', depending on the size of the paper. Don't worry about being precise or too careful, just pay attention that the area in which you're drawing/writting is within the camera's focus. Once you've made the line, take your hand away and take a pic. Then continue the line just a bit more, and do the same as before. You'll have to repeat this a lot of times. Be creative and you'll find it to be much fun despite all the repetition involved. Once you're finished, take all the pics from the camera, make a folder in My Documents or wherever you like and put them there.
We're done with the hardest part. Now download JPGvideo and install it, it's pretty light so it shouldn't take long. Open it and click 'Configure': in 'JPG Directory' put the folder where you saved all the pictures, in 'Output Directory' choose any location, the same folder as before will do. Now before you click okay you want to check the frames per second (FPS). This, along with the quantity of pics you took (171 in my case), will determine the duration of the video. There is no rule for this, so my advice is to experiment: first put it at 5, save it, change its name to '5FPS' so you know later, make another one at 10, 15 and 20 and then watch them all and see which one seems to flow more. You'll be amazed at how the final animation looks like. When I first made this, I was mad when I discovered that some pictures took longer to shoot, and my hand ended up in many of them, but it didn't ruin the result in the least, in fact I think it adds a cute touch to it.
That's it, I guarantee this will get you at least a smile or a big "awwwww" :)
