Here’s what happens when I get creative…

So I spent several hours last week creating a video for a contest for Windows-Now, which was rather fun in and of itself, as it reminded me of being a child. (Well, my behavior always reminds me of being a child.)

You see, many years ago I discovered some neat features on my Mom’s camcorder – one of those giant VHS cassette recorder types – and learned how to use the stop-motion feature. Pretty soon I was creating all sorts of strange animations with any object that I could get my hand on, but one unique feature of those animations was how I took a notebook and proceeded to animate letter being drawn and the paper being torn apart, etc.

When I took some time last week to ponder what type of video I could make for that contest, I kept having those old animations pop in my head, and I finally sat down and started to re-create that style. Mind you, it’s been 12 years since I last tried anything of that sort, and I was hesitant to believe that it still could be done in an interesting way. Plus, that camcorder was long gone, and my DV camcorder died a few years ago, so I only had my digital camera to try things out – which is nearing the end of its life (see below for what I mean). But anyway, I managed to make a couple minutes worth of footage, and threw it all together (with some other effects) in Windows Movie Maker, and produced this video:

I hope you enjoy seeing a glimpse into the strange internal workings of my mind… If you can, please vote and comment what you think on the YouTube page (the competition is over and the ratings didn’t count anyway – but I would like some higher ratings to compensate for a fellow contestant who went through and voted 1-star for every video, multiple times).

I certainly plan on doing more of these videos, only as soon as I can get a newer camera. To give you an idea of just how flaky my camera is right now, here’s a shot I just took of my monitor: