The Most Important Lesson

I was just notified by email that TeacherTube marked my most recent video upload, “Day of Silence,” as private. This means that the video won't be available for general public.

On April 18th, our school participated in the Day of Silence, and I am proud that many of our students had patience to be silent for the whole school day. I have no doubt that these students would never bully, harass or discriminate another person. The Day of Silence is not only about LGBT rights, it’s a statement against any form of discrimination based on race, color, religion, political belief, sexual orientation, national, social or ethnic origin. This is one of the most important lessons we could teach our students today.

Imitating a Scanner Darkly

Recently, I've watched a trailer and read about “A Scanner Darkly,” a vector based movie entirely created in “a licensed software program not available to consumers.” I am surprised that this licensed software doesn’t even have a name (read an interview with Sterling Allen). On Friday, I’ve discussed with my students the “Imitating a Scanner Darkly” tutorial.

Director Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly impressed audiences this summer with a stunning 2D animation style that mixes heavy blacks lines with shapes of solid color to represent a realistic image. After filming the movie live action, we used proprietary vector software to animate directly over live footage, preserving the likeness and performances of the actors - a process called "Interpolated Rotoscoping." This tutorial will show you how I was able to recreate a similar effect using tools in Adobe Illustrator. Using Illustrator's pencil tool and shapes of solid color, you can imitate the graphic novel styling of A Scanner Darkly.

My students mainly use the Pen or Brush tools and a mouse to draw in Illustrator while a “Scanner Darkly’s” technique requires the Pencil tool (I use the Pencil tool only for minor corrections). To use the illustrator tools efficiently, students should have tablets, and I hope to buy Wacom tablets for my class next year. I draw on a tablet Intuos3.
However, I would like to switch to the Cintiq 21UX with a 21" display, adjustable stand, and grip pen for use directly on the screen.
I am sure tablet PCs will become more affordable, and students will be writing, drawing, and animating directly on the screens of their laptops in the near future. This is a HP tablet PC.

Today, I’ve redesigned my index page on cybernaut.com.



I've uploaded to TeacherTube my students’ self-portrait projects.

images: http://www.wacom.com/
http://www.hp.com/sbso/buyguides/pg_tablet_pcs.html