Project 5 - Tell A Story - Text

Here is the narration to my story: first frame, and last frame of flash movie.

Title: Free fall. By Victoria Richards.

(MUSIC: Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire: Winter Theme 2:45 Hedwig 1:55 - I may change this selection, not sure yet how the melody marries with my images)

Ever since childhood, Bea wished to fly like an eagle.

Each night, her father made her soar before bedtime.

She’d swing highest on the playground

and Ride the Ferris Wheel to be high off the ground.

Today, her dream would come true

and she would fly like the eagle

Free-fall from 10,000 feet.

Anxiously she approached the idling plane

and handed her ticket to the attendant.

She took the only available seat next to another adrenalin junkie.

“Is this your first time?” he asked her.

Incapable of talkin, she nodded.

He told her it was his fourth and not to worry.

The engines roared, and the plane moved slowly.

As the plane gained momentum and took off, her stomach gave an anxious lurch.

The attendant announced, “two minutes to altitude, prepare to deploy.”

Sweat was beading on her forehead, and started to run down her temples.

The others jumped.

Now it was her turn.

She hung on to the frame... and let go.

(FLYING)

(FLYING)

(ROLLING)

(FALLING)

She pulled the ripcord.

Nothing happened. (FALLING)

(PANIC)

She pulled the spare.

Something deployed, tangled, and covered her face.

She ripped at it.

The ground was getting close,

Oh, so close!

No time, not even to scream.

(THUD)

(CLOUD)

(END MUSIC)

(CLOUD LIFTS, FALLEN OUT OF BED)

CREDITS.

Hooray!

It pays to complain,

The last post finally made that ^%&*(##%DS&^ post disappear.

Now I can post the updated stuff, I hope.

This Blog

I am not sure what I dislike more (not to use the word hate) blogging, or working with Flash after months of not looking at the software.

Take my previous post, for example (project 5 - text). I realized that the text was not the latest version. I attempted to edit the post, resave it, repost it, delete it, you name it I did it. NOTHING. The stupid wrong text is still there, and won't go away. AAAAAAGH!!!!!!

Flash .... Flash..... Let's not talk about Flash. Well, lunch is over, got to get back to work.

It's at times like this, that I appreciate working on a 50 page acrobat document in Arabic. So much easier than blogging, or Flash!

Quilting

As I mentioned yesterday during show and tell, quilting is one of my hobbies.

Creating geometric shapes with pieces of fabric is fascinating, more fascinating is creating art pieces with geometric shapes (follow the link to see)

http://www.lenorecrawford.com/

Quilting requires an extremely detailed process, I find it relaxing and once I finish a top I have a huge sense of accomplishment. Aside from reading, quilting is my favorite thing.

This is my quilt titled "trip around the world in red, white and blue" . It is made of 2334 pieces - 2202-1" squares and 132-1" half squares. The finished size is 48"x60". I used approximately 60 different fabrics.

Telling a story

This flash project is by far the most fun project of this semester (for me, anyway). I just wish we had more time.

I love stories.

As a child, I grew up with Max and Moritz, Till Eulenspiegel and Pippi Langstrumpf, and the Fairy tales by the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.

I loved reading stories about adventures or pirates and treasure, like in Shipwreck (Howard Pease), Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson), The Sea-wolf (Jack London), Jungle Book (Kipling), and my favorite of all Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (Twain).

If I had to guess how many books I have read in my life, I would have to say several hundred.

I am looking at several hundred now, lined up on my bookshelfs - books by Cervantes, Shakespeare, Heinrich Heine, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, Stephen King, Tolkien, Goethe, Rowling. And then there are the several dozen non-fiction lining the shelves.

I guess, we can add books to my collectables list.

At some point, I plan on reading everything I have again. Hope I have enough time...

Collectables

(Stacey, this is for you, so you don't have to look at my McD's ad any longer.)

I have tons of collections, most of them from many years ago.

Coins
stamps
spoons
porcelain and stoneware plates
miniatures
crystal boxes
crystal bells

I have stopped collecting most of these, except for spoons. I still buy a spoon whenever I visit a place I have never been. My last spoon came from Canada. Unfortunately, the spoons they sell now, are pretty worthless. I have beautiful antique spoons made of pewter and silver. My favorite is one made of porcelain I bought in Holland.

For the most part, the coins I have are just coins in distribution. I do have some mint proof sets from the United States, and some commemorative coins from Europe. Since most European nations have moved to the use of the Euro, I feel I have some interesting pieces.

I stopped cataloging stamps about 20 years ago. I have a set of East German stamps which are worth quite a bit, unfortunetely the set is incomplete, and I am not sure I will be able to complete it.

My favorite collection are my bells. Having lived in Germany for over 20 years, I had access to some of the most famous crystal manufactures. My favorite bell is a simple bell I received as a going away gift from the wives organization of my ex-husbands military unit when I left Germany. My second favorite is a bohemian green crystal bell with 24 karat gold border.

I guess every item we collect has a specific design element to it.

For coins, someone has to design the image and typography, same for stamps. For other collectables like the spoons and the crystal boxes, there are optical and structural nuances which must be observed. Design is everywhere, when you open your car door, a lable on a ketchup bottle, the writing on the wall.