Hot Air Balloon Gifts

Daryl Surat says:

I thought I already mentioned the details on that one. It's Saturday evening (opposite the costume contest), and the lineup will be essentially the same as what I ran at AFO.I wanted to make a flyer myself, but ran out of time. I was envisioning it being pretty simple, somehow incorporating a shot of Walker, Texas Ranger (any one that comes up when you do a Google image search for “walker texas ranger” would work) along with the phrase “Stiffly Stifferson” on it, like for example “No Stiffly Stiffersons Allowed!”Then the idea started thinking too complicated, and I was imagining I could do a clever redesign of the box art for the original DOOM or DOOM 2, with the idea being that I could reuse it for future panels. My lack of Photoshop skills put a quick end to that thought, so I toyed with the idea of making several simple ones each of which would require little enough effort that I could make different ones without much hassle. There was going to be about five in all: one with a still shot of Walker, one with Mr T, one with Jem, one with the mother/daughter from “It's Wonderful Being A Girl,” and one with Sonny Chiba about to smack some fool (or perhaps it was Jim Brown firing a pistol, or maybe it was Samuel L. Jackson sitting comatose in the comicbook shop), each of which would have cartoon dialogue bubbles and captions which would relay the panel information. I even took the requisite screencaps and everything, but the plan ground to a halt when I discovered that I couldn't configure the cartoon balloon Photoshop tool I downloaded so that the balloons would face different directions. The stupid things couldn't even be flipped/rotated right with the . . . flipping/rotating menu option deal.It ended up being for the best that I didn't make a flyer, because the AFO con rules strictly forbade anyone from putting up flyers on walls and no bulletin board was made available anyway. Best I could have done was tape the flyer to the freebie table, which I didn't even see until near the end of the convention since it was in the middle of Artist's Alley and not by Registration. Anyway, if you can make something reminiscent of the style you used for the Hell flyer or this school one, that'd be ELECTRICOOL.

arnold says:

Well, I vow that no tax dollars will be used in the great balloon photo experiment. And if my camera lands in your backyard, please send it back care of arnoldcam.

cyphunk says:

Nice. There are also some diy options you might like.

* Kite based rigs. Would need to get the hang of keeping the kite steady but you can produce great pictures. Engadget has a tutorial on modifying a cheap digital camera to add a trigger (i'd be willing to deal with the electronics if you wanted). Also, these people sell a cheap stabilization platform. And there is a whole group devoted to this type of photography, with example photos.

* Remote control airplane rigs. With this solution you could do a nose dive to deal with focus and not have to worry about Brian falling out. I imagine a bit more expensive though.

* diy balloon photography. Someone here wrote a tutorial on using your own balloon to take photos (again, willing to deal with the electronics). This is basically the same method as the kite tutorial from Engadget with a balloon instead of a kite. If you really want to go crazy, get this remote control blimp for $130 (200ft max distance). On second thought, not sure that paticular blimp is enough for outdoor use.