PlaymoFriends

Creative => Story-Telling => Topic started by: Little Jo on December 30, 2006, 18:56:03

Title: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Little Jo on December 30, 2006, 18:56:03: To celebrate the 1st birthday of the PlaymoFriends forum on November 10, 2006 (cf. here (http://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=1130.0)) I set up a BBQ party with all those avatar figures I had at this point of time in my PlaymoFriends avatar collection (http://www.playmofriends.com/forum/album/thumbnails.php?album=30).
Finally I made it, to shoot all the photos, finish my bi-lingual story board PHP template, and caption the photos.

Klick on the photo below
... to view the story (well, actually it's not a "story" but more a pictured report from the celebration activities :-[).

(http://www.jr-x.de/playmobil/projekte/bbq_10.jpg) (http://www.jr-x.de/playmobil/projekte/bbq.php?lang=en)

Note, step-wise navigation and switching language (English <-> German) of the story can be found below the photos.
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Sylvia on December 31, 2006, 01:38:58: Wonderful photos, Jochen! :wow:

And what a beautiful setting we had for our BBQ. I couldn't imagine a better place to host our first birthday celebrations! :D

Thank you for taking the time to present the event in such an entertaining way, and for all your help along the way with the creation of the PF mascot klickies. (More on that later in the other topic! ;))

I really enjoyed the humorous touches, especially Pete and Rob's behaviour and the firemen keeping a close eye on certain things. Very witty! ;D
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: playmofire on December 31, 2006, 02:43:31: Truly amazing, Jochen, with the attention to detail in the posing of the figures, what is happening in each photo and the detail in the scenes. You've surpassed yourself! :)

The whole story must have taken you hours setting it up and photographing it,let alone the time in planning it all. Many, many thanks for taking the time to do all this and share your work with us.
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Captain Henry on December 31, 2006, 03:17:22: Jochen, that was amazing. Truly a wonderful photo story that embodies the spirit of this board. Thank you!
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Little Jo on December 31, 2006, 09:24:12: Quote from: playmofire on December 31, 2006, 02:43:31
The whole story must have taken you hours setting it up and photographing it,let alone the time in planning it all. Many, many thanks for taking the time to do all this and share your work with us.

Hm, not as many hours as I thought first. Making the photos and the setup does only take a few hours which I distributed over two days, and anyway it was a lot of fun (I should do more of this stuff). But truly saying I was thinking about the story itself for several weeks, so planning took quite a while, but this has been no explicit time but was an "ongoing" task done during showering, teeth cleaning or driving on the autobahn ;D. However in the end I have taken much more pics than originally planned (I was thinking of about 5-7).

Most work was building up the stage, not only for this purpose but hopefully also for future photo shootings. With this "permanently" installed stage I hope that I can provide photos and stories much fast than in the past. I've found a little corner in our house (in the basement, or to be concrete in the heating room :-[) where I can install this little stage without "disturbing" my wife too much >:D :P

The stage is built from pressboard; the lawn lays lose on the floor board to be exchanged for other ground materials. The sky is fixed with permanent spray glue to the backdrop board. It's exchangeable so that I can use different backgrounds (at the right hand side of the referenced photo below you can see another background scenery). On my standard sky I finally added some hill silhouettes, because my wife always criticizes, that my standard flat horizon without any landscape rise doesn't look very natural -- and she was absolutely right. I also installed two neon tubes with natural light (from the aquarium supplies) for the lightning. Although I'm still not satisfied 100% with the light, it has become much better than every other light source I used so far; it can be seen quite good in the historgramm of my painting software that this light uses nearly the whole color spectrum of the natural (sun) light.

I hope I do not spoil the story when I provide here (http://www.jr-x.de/playmobil/projekte/bbq_stage.jpg) a photo which has been shot from "a few steps backwards" to show the setup . For those who do not want to see it: don't klick the link ;D ... for those who are interested in HOWTOs -- like myself ;D -- take a look. (Somehow the shine suddenly vanishs not looking thru the lense anymore, but on the surroundings :lol:)

Also bigger efforts have been preparing the bi-lingual "slideshow" PHP scripts (I implemented it by my own) and scaling/cropping the photos together with captioning them. Especially the last mentioned task took even longer than I expected.
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: playmofire on December 31, 2006, 09:42:55: Quote from: Little Jo on December 31, 2006, 09:24:12
But truly saying I was thinking about the story itself for several weeks, so planning took quite a while, but this has been no explicit time but was an "ongoing" task done during showering, teeth cleaning or driving on the autobahn ;D.

The same way I tell teachers to write the units of work for their students and as I write my sermons!

Thanks, too, for all the information and the extra photo of the setup. It certainly doesn't spoil things for me, just makes me all the more impressed with what you do and how you do it (and maybe slightly jealous. I hope when we move that we will have space for a permanent Playmobil area.).
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Robbie on December 31, 2006, 10:11:37: Jochen, you are truly brilliant! I really enjoyed this story and all the thoughtful details. :D
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Tiermann on December 31, 2006, 21:37:37: Wonderful series of photos Jochen. Very entertaining. I also find that a lot of the time is in the setting up. Once that is done I want to take lots of pictures since I know I will be moving things again to something else.
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Richard on January 01, 2007, 14:10:14: Wonderful, Jochen!

I really felt like I was actually attending your wonderful barbeque!
(I would have replied sooner, but I was exhausted after all the work you got me to do} ... ;)

Thank you very much, Jochen!

It is also time for me to begin using my splendid NEW avatar that you created for me!

Thanks again and all the best in 2007,
Richard
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: socrates on January 03, 2007, 10:11:42: It is a brilliant story... :D
I pretty much enjoyed attending the barbeque, even
though it got a little cold in your basement after a while... ;)

Do you mind showing some closer pictures of the matches?
I bet you did again something fancy and build a very realistic
matches box... ;)

I love your meticulous setups... :love:

best,
socrates
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Pete and Rob on January 03, 2007, 11:40:10: "»Hi folks!«—Sure, Tiermann is also with us."
-> Very good. :D

And, of course, we like the connection: "Pete & Rob - beer - Sir Gareth" :lol:

This must have taken you some hours... Well done.
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: arab warrior on January 03, 2007, 14:20:18: Quote from: Richard on January 01, 2007, 14:10:14

I really felt like I was actually attending your wonderful barbeque

Are you kidding i remember it was a very bright an sunny day, i wish i had take off my turban, too hot ;D

Very well done Jochen.

Rob
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: polylerus on January 03, 2007, 17:07:04: Too bad I can't play the fiddle in real life! ;D Thank you! That was great!
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Morgan on January 03, 2007, 18:24:35: Wow!! Great idea and splendid story ;D I even saw myself in there :)
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Knightmo on January 04, 2007, 02:47:24: I really liked that! I went back and forth reading it several times it is so cool. I think you should do more of these, indeed! ;D
Title: Re: PlaymoFriends 1st Birthday Celebration BBQ
Post by: Little Jo on January 04, 2007, 12:52:29: Thank you all very much for your kind feedback. Such feedback actually should encourage me in doing more of this. I will see what I can do. (The scenery and the members/actors shouldn't be an excuse anylonger ... now I have just to invent some nice stories.)

Quote from: socrates on January 03, 2007, 10:11:42
Do you mind showing some closer pictures of the matches?
I bet you did again something fancy and build a very realistic
matches box... ;)

;D Yes, actually I have taken a real matches box as template and "shrinked" it a little bit (not on a special ratio but so that it can be hold in a klicky hand). It attached a zoom from the story and a 300 DPI resolution template in PNG format (originally it has been made in OpenOffice; SVG format export possible).

The matches box is full functional (w.r.t. to opening/closing, not stricking a match ;)) and it contains three real live matches ;D

BTW: has anybody a good idea how to customize a ligther? (Personally I prefers lighters but in lack of a good idea I have to go for matches in my Playmobil world.)