A. Aronsson's WeBOLLog

I have never been much of a Christmas decorator. Last year I bought a few metal stars to hang in my windows but otherwise I have almost nothing. This year I noticed a computer Christmas decoration contest over at Sweclockers.com, sponsored by Alina Systems. As I dislike my computer pretty much and the prize was a crazy machine it was not hard to decide to participate. I began looking for decorative items a week or so prior to actually trying my hand at it. In total I went to three shops to get everything I figured I could have use for. Then after the Christmas craze I spent a day decorating, shooting and de-decorating my computer space, on the 26th. I had a vague plan in my head so I went at it without hesitation, but much was made up on the go. You can see a time-lapse of the process and the end result in the video below.

Here is a detailed list of what items I used for my decoration.

• 2x small metal stars with bulbs inside
• 3x extension power cords
• 3x power strips of different sizes
• 3x rolls of masking tape with different widths
• Roll of yellow string
• Battery powered RGB LED figure; inside the gingerbread house
• Smoke machine; to add some atmosphere
• Winter themed candle holder with four red cups with lit candles in them

• 1x 12m outdoor light chain with 480 lights
• 2x 8.7m indoor light chains with 144 lights each
• 2x RGB LED USB lines with eight santas on each
• 1x large paper star with a bulb inside
• 2x 2.0 m green/silver fuzzy garlands
• 2x 2.5m green glitter garlands
• 3x 4.5m glitter garlands entwined (gold, silver, red)
• 4x 4.5m silver glitter garlads
• 5x large chocolate santas
• 8x small chocolate santas
• 9x chocolate eggs
• 3x chocolate bombs
• 60x+ Christmas tree decorations clumped together

• 2x soft santa dolls
• 3x seven candle electrical stakes
• A bunch of cotton under the gingerbread house
• Advent candlestick holder with four red candles
• Battery powered golden bell
• Christmas coronal with a red bell
• Christmas crib with Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus, three wise men, shepherd, three sheep, a cow and mule and a well.
• Electrically lit church
• Electrically lit poinsettia
• Embroidery saying “God Helg” (Happy Holiday)
• Gingerbread house
• Programmable LED sign saying “GOD JUL!” (Merry Christmas)

It appears I am following a theme with my Christmas cards. This year I picked some suitable pictures from Pixar’s latest movie Up, again supplied by /Film, and I did a similar job as last year. The final picture is actually my second montage this time around. I made the first montage with photos taken in my apartment. I was not satisfied with the end result so I swapped the background and started over the next day, then outside.

On december 13th, a Sunday, I went to my parents place and placed my DSLR on a tripod on the roof of their garage and had my younger brother trigger it via an RF-remote. It was chilly outside, around 0°C, though the days after the temperature went down to -8°C so I was lucky to get it done the day I did!

After thawing my hands and looking through the pictures to ensure I would have something usable I went home and started working on fitting myself into Up. First I extracted myself from reality and put myself in the background. I decided my hand would not fit so I extracted one from another photo and transplanted that onto my arm. I adjusted colors and sharpness, added shadows and clouds and finally the text. I also decided to add some glow to make the image seem more genuine, to soften up the edges between me and the background.

The editing was actually spread out over two days, Monday and Tuesday, this because working full time sadly leaves me with little time to spare for my creative activities. The Swedish mailing service had the 16th of December as their deadline for mail that should be delivered before Christmas Eve. This had me frantically print the cards and write a personal message on each after work that day. Then I ran off to the store to buy stamps and drop them into the red Christmas mailbox, they had not emptied it yet so I was in luck! I actually got to send some of the cards the day after as I had not gotten my hands on all the addresses on time, but they also made it in time, interestingly.

Ever since I stumbled upon anamorphosis I have wanted to make one for myself, to decorate my home with, and especially something that would spook visitors. This specific idea formed in my head about six months ago, but it was not until recently that I got to realizing it.

To keep this simple I will not try to retell my entire thought process, as it spans over months and months, but instead what I ended up doing and why.

Planning

I made up my mind to put the anamorphosis in my bathroom, so it would be visible when sitting on the toilet. This because the picture only looks correct from one specific viewing angle, and as I have such a small bathroom you have to sit down no matter what you need to do.

The print would go on the wall next to the seat, opposite the door. Because I wanted the picture to be highly distorted face on, which almost is the whole point, I wanted the real observation point to be almost from the side. This meant putting it on the wall would be perfect. To make things even more interesting, you actually look at the wall through the mirror above the sink.

With the help of masking tape I quickly deducted that the image could be 67×67 centimeters and still fit into view. I made it perfectly square for easy editing later on.

The motif would be myself visible through a window in the wall holding a camcorder, as to make the experience not only wondrous, but also a bit traumatic. This picture would also look like it was an actual hole in the wall, with the right perspective in the image. A fun detail is that I did not own a camcorder when I decided this, I got one just before summer this year, for general purposes mind you.

Execution

I positioned the camera where I thought people would most likely have their heads while sitting down and took a picture of my tape square, this is required for the editing later. To be able to recreate the camera angle and lighting of the scene I measured the position of the camera in relation to the wall and ceiling, as well as the position of the only light source in the room.

When I happened to have a friend over and nothing else was planned, I used him for the photo shoot. We went into the cellar and looked up a nice spot. With us we brought the following:

• A work light with breaker – to see what we were doing
• A detatched desktop lamp with bulbs – for lighting the scene
• Frosted glass from a ceiling lamp – to dim the light
• My DSLR including a cable remote
• The camcorder
• Extension power cords and a power strip

At the location we rigged the camera, measured the position, tried out the lighting and snapped a bunch of photos. We actually got it wrong the first time and had the camera looking into the corridor instead of facing the wall, so we had to redo it. The second time we emptied a storage room just inside the corridor and crammed my friend and the camera including tripod in there, a tight fit! This way we could get the correct angle while keeping the right distance.

Back at the computer we picked out the best photo, being the one with the least blur even though I had better faces in some of the others, and distorted it so it would fit the marked area in the bathroom. I had to clone a part of the wall to fill out a corner, nothing too complicated. See the below representation of the steps to get an idea of what I mean.

To get the anamorphosis to work while looking at it through a mirror I had to mirror the image before printing. I used my B&W A4 laser printer to try if it would actually work, and it did!

You need to have your head at the right place, but then it looks quite convincing! It is a bit more sensitive to your viewing angle than I expected, this due to the short distance between you and the picture, but hopefully it will startle at least someone :)

Below you have a short video depicting the process, also available at YouTube.com!

I came up with the original concept for this project more than one year ago, but it was not until now that I got around to realizing it!

My initial idea was to either print and attach a photoshop job to the door, making it appear transparent, or to paint it to get the same effect but with a more imaginary motif. For this I would mount a board on the door, to avoid making it a permanent modification, instead of using the door surface directly.

While looking through my stuff I found a few door peep holes which I had planned to use to make a fisheye adapter for my pocket camera, but I never came around to doing that. It then hit me that I could mount a second peep hole on my door to enable stereo vision peeping! This was a concept that was easy to accept due to my first peep hole being located near the edge of the door, so adding another one closer to the center would hardly make it look worse!

Very close to the realization of this plan I decided to skip the board because the borders on the door were not perfectly angular, and I was uncertain how well I could get the board to fit. Instead I decided to make an ever changing door, in inspiration from my neighbor who has done it to a door in her kitchen, by painting the door with chalkboard paint and make it a chalkboard, on both sides!

The main ingredients for this project were…

Stereo Vision Peeping

• Power drill
• Drill stand
• 14mm wood drill
• Two new door peep holes

Chalkboard Door

• Sander incl. sandpaper
• Paint scraper
• Chalkboard paint
• Paintbrush
• Masking tape

Below is a time-lapse video which shows just about the entire process in a very condensed format.

I have made a short summary as the video can be a bit confusing to follow. It is a fairly straight forward project with pretty basic steps, as you might have noticed, just a bunch of work.

1. Remove old peep hole, and mirror (!)
2. Measure and drill the new hole
3. Sand the surfaces
4. Fix dents with putty
5. Sand again
6. Tape borders
7. Apply chalkboard paint
8. Mount new peep holes
9. Draw!

The whole sanding procedure took me ages, and was what caused the project to take way more time than I had expected. The cause was that I had a layer of soft matte paint on top of old and very hard glossy paint, and the matte paint had a tendency to peel off at certain spots, but not everywhere! I figured that if I left it as it were the chalkboard paint might peel off with it when drawn on, so I sanded and scraped until my fingers hurt.

So far the paint is intact, but I was nervous to try it out! Actually, I was not the first one to draw on either side of my door, people managed to sneak in messages and drawings before me!

All in all I greatly enjoy my new door functionality! In the beginning it was quite spooky to have a black hole as a front door, but as soon as I drew something on it the illusion of a hole broke and it became a solid door again, luckily!

A fun part with having a door that can be drawn on without ruining it is that people can leave messages, if they have chalk. Though, as I now have drawn all over the outside I guess nothing will end up there until I clean it again.

The stereo vision is also interesting, though the view is seldom exciting, as it is often just a pitch black hallway. So far I have almost solely used it when I know people are coming up the stairs to visit me :)

A month ago, December 1-5, things were very hectic. The week before that I had been pondering what I should dress up as for a masquerade Christmas party at church. The theme was characters out of the Disney show that traditionally is broadcast on national TV on Christmas Eve here in Sweden. I had a few stupid ideas from the start, though they seemed like too much work to be finished in time, but in the end I used one of them anyway.

I was going to dress up as the jack-in-the-box character that is the last toy to jump into Santa’s sack in the short movie Santa’s Workshop from (gasp) 1932, available for viewing at Youtube. My other ideas were the propeller airplane that wrecks chaos on the shelves or an almost fully painted chessboard both from the same movie, but I decided those would take too long to design and realize, and be even more cumbersome to wear than the jack-in-the-box costume.

The party was on Friday, December 5th, and I had decided what idea to us the Monday night the same week. On Wednesday I bought whatever was needed and planned how I would make it, and I spent Wednesday and Thursday manufacturing the outfit. A total of 11 hours of manufacturing, a bit more than I expected. My kind parents let me do it at their house, as my apartment lacks the necessary space and machinery.

What I used:

• ~3.75 m² green cloth + green thread
• ~0.8 m² white cloth + white thread
• ~0.15 m² black cloth
• ~1.5 m² thick cardboard
• ~3m string
• ~2m thick steel wire
• ~2m thin steel wire
• 4x rock rings
• 3x cargo straps
• A red Santa hat + red thread
• A black Christmas tree ball
• Stuffing
• Yellow face paint
• A few lolly sticks

To create:

• A green ring dress
• A wearable box
• A stuffed red hat with a black ball
• A white curly collar
• Two white curly sleeves
• Fake black hair
• A yellow face, ending with tender facial skin

I started by fixing up the hat. It was a red Christmas hat with the white cloth removed, instead I added a black ball, elastic to make it stay on my head and stuffing to make it fluffy.

Then I started working on the green ring suit. It was a bunch of sewing to make it, the top and bottom edges had canals for strings and then it had to be a large tube to contain the rings. I got some help to attach the rings and add the shoulder straps.

The white collar is white cloth with steel wire in for the wavy shape and elastic to keep it in place around my neck. The sleeves with the same design was just white cloth with the same elastic. My mother was kind enough to make the sleeves while I was hacking away at the box.

The box was made out of a quite thick cardboard, my hands were really worn out after cutting and folding it in several ways before I ended up with a good result. I also sawed PVC pipes to reinforce the construction. It was kept together by thin steel wire which me and my father pushed through the cardboard, around the pipes and then twisted, a few around lolly sticks to spread the stress. I wore it by cargo straps through the belt loops on my trousers.

Last summer I got some weird face-paint when getting a burger meal at Mac Donald’s (hurgh) which had been lying about on my desk since then. A desk that never seems to get organized. It seemed transparent when I applied it, but it ended up looking pretty good anyway. The problem was getting it off, the oily stuff was hard to even get off my hands! Which explains my pose in the photo below. Around midnight when I was home I spent an eternity scrubbing my face, since I just wanted to go to sleep. My skin ended up like after a bit too much sunbathing the next morning. The next time I get the bright idea to paint my face I will use something better and make sure to have good chemicals to remove it with afterward.

The end result: I got a box of chocolate for my efforts! Apparently they liked my costume enough that I won the grand costume prize. Still not sure if it was all worth the stress, pain and discomfort that it brought with it, but at least I might have put a smile on a few people’s faces. Now I just want to forget it all, hahaha.

Update: At 2009-05-29 Aftonbladet published an article about a small girl who had used the same McDonalds crayons to paint herself, and the paint is just about impossible to remove! They [the parents] even consider that she will have the colors when grown up! Apparently the crayons become like this as they age. Originally they were givven out for the European Championship in Soccer in June 2008, so when I used mine in December 2008 they were about six months old, and the color was _VERY_ painful to remove. In the article they had gotten the crayons just now, which makes them about a year old, so that particular McDonalds were handing out old toys, amongst them the blue and yellow face paint crayons. Suddenly I feel a bit lucky.