things are currently in a bit of a “rough draft” format, but here’s a look at a bit of a pseudo stop-motion film project i’m working on: the shadow theater. mainly featuring asian ball jointed dolls, it’s been a project i’ve been both looking forward to and dreading all at the same time. i’ve got so many pictures to cull through, as well as a quite a bit of text i’ve been cooking up since last year.

the little slide movies are currently made up mainly of images that are “raw” in that many of them haven’t been cropped, color corrected or had any photo shop razzle dazzle applied to them. i’m slowly going through all the images and revamping them and you can see these “clean” images in “of the absinthe of ambergris” at www.pixxxiepie.com/thedollhouse.

as i get more time i will eventually re-master the images and slide show films accordingly, so you may see the examples below changing over time. damn hard to find free programs that make really cool slide shows though. i mean, like “the hunt for red october” kind of hard. it looks like if i really want these little movies to shine out i’m gonna have to sit down and do something i reeeeeeally haven’t felt like doing….learning some flash. my photobucket account has some interesting slide show theme options, but they all just fall a bit short of the prize. there’s not a “slide show theme editor” that just lets me set a few simple variables. there’s one theme i really like –an old silent film look– but it kinda sucks because it only seems to be available in black and white…and these images are full blazing color. bright and vibrant. it would be great to get the same old scratchy silent-film look and feel …but leave the images in color damnit!!! and again, the theme sets the slide show to just play the moment you arrive to the page…a start/stop button would be awesome since if you put more than one slide show on a page you get this issue where suddenly the page is waaaay too busy with slide shows playing willy nilly. ideally, you’d come to the page and have to hit a start button to get the film rolling. duh, photobucket. but the themes they offer have no consistency in that certain ones allow for a start/stop button and others don’t. even with a button option you’ll still get multiple shows going all at once when you open the page and you have to manually hit the stop button for the shows you weren’t yet ready to watch. but oh well. enough with the bitching, lol. i realize photobucket throws out this stuff to please the most common denominator: people who have simple needs because their showing off pics of their friends/family on sites like facebook and myspace….not for artsy chicks shooting for the pseudo-stop-motion-animation vibe. i’ll just have to make do until i take some time to sit down and learn just enough flash to pull off what i want.