Playing With Image & Text Generators

Yes, I know. I'm tackling the Things out of order again. (Hangs head in shame.) What can I say? I like to play. And image generators are a lot of fun to play with... Don't believe me? Check out what I've been up to lately...

Create your own beautiful word cloud at Wordle . Plug in any text you like, a delicious username, or the url of a page with an RSS feed & away you go! The only downside to Wordle is that there's no easy way to save the code for your creation or the image itself--screenshots are your only option. (Hello MS Paint, my old friend, how've you been?)

Here's my first attempt at Wordle art, created using Neil Gaiman's short story "I Cthulhu."



Wordle's awesome. It lets you change the appearance of the layout of your cloud (this one's half and half with straighter edges), the color scheme, & the font. And boy are there some exotic fonts (Grilled Cheese, anyone?) to choose from.

Here's another, created using tags from my bookmarks at http://delicious.com/holyexplodingshark:


Seeing as how any Wordle image is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution License, Wordle's got some neat programming & publicity possibilities for the library... (And yes, I actually followed the link about licensing--so long as we give credit where credit is due, e.g. the source of the text & the program used to generate the image, we could even make money off of our wordle art! How cool is that?) Me, I want to make up some manga & graphic novel posters for the teen area...

And speaking of manga...here's a WordHeart I made using some of my favorite manga and anime titles:

You can create WordHearts of your own over at http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/WordHearts/. WordHearts is yet another site that has no built in tools to save your image--screenshots are your one and only option. I really must learn to take better screen captures. I hear Firefox has some great plug-ins...

Here's an eyechart I created using Custom Eye Chart Maker over at http://www.eyechartmaker.com/:

I was pretty disappointed in this--I wanted room for more text. And it took me a while to realize that I didn't need to put spaces between words... (It also made me wonder why if eye charts are this easy to generate, why does my opthamologist insist on showing me the same chart for both my right and left eyes? I mean, my short term memory isn't so bad that I can't remember the line from one eye to the next. But I digress.)

I had much more fun following a link from Custom Eye Chart Maker to Custom Road Sign over at http://www.customroadsign.com/. This appealed to my sense of humor:

I'll say this for both the road sign and eye chart makers, though--they're the first image generators I've played with today that allow me to right click and save the image directly to my PC. Flash is fun, but it's not easy to save.

It was suggested by TPTB that we explore a few "Discovery Resources," the better to get a handle on image generators. I'd already spent a considerable amount of time playing over at FD Toys (see my previous posts RE: fun with Flickr) so I thought I'd check out LetterJames. The following were created using the E-Card Service, right clicking on the finished image, and saving to my PC.






(Don't mind me. I'm having a Stephen King/Stanley Kubrick flashback here. It'll pass. Just give it a moment.)

Honestly, I found LetterJames to be disappointing. Yes, the images are exceedingly easy to save--three cheers for right-click save-as! Yes, it allows you to superimpose your own text over a gallery of 300 images (a huge plus for those of us who don't have digital cameras) to create cards, calendars, posters, and more. The AlphaPictures technology is really neat--it makes your text appear as skywriting, letters in the sand, spray painted grafitti, etc., whatever's appropriate to the image. Just like this:



Can't fault the end product at all. But the process...well, I've got a few complaints about that.

For starters, I reallly would've appreciated a search feature for the gallery. Some of the categories are huge, and I really didn't want to waste my time browsing through 20+ screens. And speaking of wasting time... In order to create each and every image, you're required to type in a super secret security code! I hate those things. I fail utterly at those things. I really don't understand why you're asked for a code just to create. To purchase? Sure. To send? Ditto. But just to make the image? I wasted a lot of time trying to correctly enter codes. (Although not as much time as I wasted setting up my blog...blogger's security code check wouldn't take a single thing I typed. Honestly, I'm not that bad of a typist or a speller. Seriously.)

I also encountered a number of "error during the image processing" messages of doom whilst creating an image AFTER I'd successfully entered the security code and proved I wasn't a 'bot. Sometimes I could successfully "process" the image after repeated tries. Others I abandoned as a lost cause. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else had similar experiences--maybe it's just my dinosaur of a PC or my DSL's speed.

Another problem I ran into at LetterJames was that with some images, the placement of text on the image had little (if anything?!) to do with the order in which the text was typed into the generator. My street sign took some playing with. Despite all the manga I read, I still think in terms of left to right, top to bottom. The image generator doesn't consistently follow this pattern. In this example, it seemed to equate text entry with the SIZE of the text in the final image, not its vertical position. Most prominent (the middle sign)--came from the the 1st & top text box. 2nd most prominent (the one at an angle at the TOP of the image)--the 2nd box in the middle. Smallest--the 3rd.


The ransom note below is another example. To create the image, I could place text in up to 8 fields. I only had enough text to fill 4...so I filled in the 1st four and the 1st 4 only. And retrieved a blank image. Filling boxes 5-8, OTOH, created this warning to any hooligans with designs on despoiling my library's manga collection:

Who knows what would have happened if I'd filled in all 8 fields?

The amount of text that could be entered in a text field varied from "card" to "card." Some were seemingly infinite, others not...as you'd discover when you ran up against the wall of the box at 60 miles an hour. Still others would take scads of text in the box...only to then "hide" it behind the picture.

I really think this site could be improved with some instructions. I expect a commercial site that's trying to sell a service (photo albums, calendars, etc.) to be a bit more user-friendly. Of course, the e-cards were free... I love the special effects, but the site required more trial & error & effort than I'm entirely comfortable with.

Exercising my google-fu, I went hunting for more text & image generators.

I'm fascinated by the typoGenerator. You input text and the generator performs a google image search matching whatever you typed and mashes whatever it finds into something that, according to the FAQ, isn't necessarily readable but "looks nice." It's random, but you can elect to save certain elements (style, colors & background)as you experiment. Here are a few of my experiments/artworks, generated using the tags from my delicious account:













Hit the jackpot with this nifty little collection of links to text generators: http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/Text+Generators! It's where I grabbed the 3D Text Maker that is (supposed to) be animating "Welcome to Thing #10!" at the top of this entry. (Why isn't it animating, why? It should be sliding endlessly to the left.)

And The Graffiti Creator:

And the Logo Maker (in honor of the upcoming Trek movie):

(Hmm. The code button doesn't work for Logo Maker...and no matter what "size" I generate the image in on the screen, if I right click save I just get this itty bitty logo. Which doesn't show off the lovely twinkly stars of deepest outer space the way I'd like it to. Maybe this is a job for...print screen! Or maybe I'll just let it go.)

And finally, because it wouldn't be my blog without another gratuitous mention of "the z-word" (as the niece & nephew have come to call it), I present...Spelling with Zombies!


You could learn a lot from a zombie.

Avatars! , or, Hello Thing #7

From dictionary.com:
av⋅a⋅tar
   [av-uh-tahr]
–noun
1. Hindu Mythology. the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.

2. an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.

3. Computers. a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.

Though I may occasionally have delusions of godhood, we're not talking about definition #1 here. Or even #2. No, this post is all about #3--graphical images representing a person in the internet! Please refer to my userpic on the far right, should you care for a graphic (heh!) example. I started looking into avatars because I lack a digital camera and wanted a picture that looked something like me on my blog. But the more I played with them (that would be learning habit #7 1/2, no?) the more I thought they might have useful applications in a library setting.

As part of my job as a youth librarian, I've been asked to work with other staff and put together some programs involving teens with technology. (Look Mel, I really am working on this year's goals! Really.) One of the ideas that's been tossed around is offering a computer class exclusively for teens in how to get the most out of social networking sites. Making yourself public on the internet comes with some safety concerns, especially for minors. You really don't want to attract the wrong kind of attention online. And posting pictures of your 13-year-old self (MySpace & Facebook both require you be 13 to have an account) may do just that. Avatars let you express the "inner you" while maintaining your privacy & safety. Plus, they're a lot of fun. You can get away with a lot of wardrobe choices your parents would never let you leave the house with.

I'd really like to be able to incorporate avatars into virtual reference. I miss the face-to-face contact over the desk. Chatting with an icon isn't the same, but it does personalize the transaction a bit. Makes it seem a bit more friendly.

Enough with the boring bits--bring on the pics!

This is the first avatar I created:

You can make your own over at Yahoo! Avatars UK & Ireland. This generator was easy to use and I was pleased to note that it offered "Plus Sizes." It's nice to see all body types, including my own, represented.

And this is my second. (I've always wanted to visit Springfield. Or at the very least, Shelbyville.)
You too can insert yourself into the Simpson Clan over at the Simpsons Movie site. Be patient...it may take awhile to load.

(BTW, I first learned about these two avatar generators, amazingly enough, from this year's Cooperative Summer Reading Manual. It pays to read the programming manual, really it does!)

Well, after that, I was hooked. I had to find more avatar creators. I knew I'd seen South Park avatars running amok on the internet and a quick google search turned up Create Avatar - South Park Studios:


Although I liked the avatar I generated, I wasn't thrilled with the ginormous logo that dominated the lower third of the image. And I never did successfully manage to either download or blog the image, despite repeated tries. Instead, I finally broke down and emailed it to myself (email DOES work). I originally edited the image to remove the logo...until I discovered that was in violation of South Park Studios TOS...

A second google search turned up the much more satisfactory SP-Studio which claims to be "the 1st & biggest flash-game to create your characters in 'South Park'style." I don't know if that's true, but it's certainly a lot of fun and offers far more in the way of wardrobe options and whatnot. Couldn't get this one to save, either, but the FAQ helpfully suggested I use a screenshot instead. Here's me, ready for Colorado's impending zombie apocalypse:














Given that every 3rd Thursday of the month I surround myself with tween otaku, I thought I'd try to turn myself into an anime/manga character. I had a lot of fun with Face Your Manga. But given the cigarette, this one's never seeing daylight outside of this blog.

Naturally I couldn't stop here--creating avatars is just too much fun! So I went searching for more generators and found this great article over at Mashable: "Avatars Everywhere: 27 of the Best Avatar Makers"and the follow-up "5 Very Simple Ways to Create an Avatar." (Mashable, BTW, is a very interesting and useful blog dedicated to Web 2.0 & social networking news. I'm finding it so helpful, I subscribed to it via RSS feed over on bloglines...) Mashable pointed me towards scads of fun (& fairly easy to use, too) avatar makers.

Here's me gone all Lego courtesy of The Block Head Iconizer:

Block Head Iconizer is another one of those flash games that requires you to do a screen capture & edit the resulting image in order to save the new you. At least it's up front about it and you won't be wasting your time unsuccessfully trying to save or download.

DoppelMe is a very simple site. Register to save your doppleganger, then click on "quick code" to paste the html directly into your blog, journal, etc. It's even got a facebook app that'll add it for you.



This one's truly WILD. Check out Build Your Wild Self from the New York Zoos & Aquariums. Not only can you create an out of this world you, but you can learn about the animals' you're "borrowing" from. This one's kid friendly, but not so easy to edit--be sure you do your screen capture BEFORE you click on "I'm done"--unlike the pic below, you'll have a much cleaner easy to edit image to work with. You can build your own desktop or email your finished creation on home. The art reminds me very much of David Shannon, for some reason.
Here's a much more tween-friendly anime me:
It was created over at Gaia Online, an anime-style MMORPG.
I always wanted electric blue hair. Truly. Just ask my stylist. She seems to think it might be a bit too extreme a change. Your thoughts?




[Note to self: must check into Face Your Manga & Gaia Online's policies for using your avatars outside of those environments--we've been having trouble finding copyright free images for use in promoting anime club. If these are copyright free... we could have a special program using the computer lab to transform each club member into little manga chibis! Combining teens and tech AND getting us some colorful publicity. Must investigate further!]

Little manga me is a little too cute for my tastes, but not nearly as appallingly cute as this, from WeeWorld. That being said, I thought Sonia would get a kick out of the Team Jacob t-shirt. And for the record, when I'm "live" in WeeWorld...my teeth (wait for it...) SPARKLE!



Here's a caricature of late '80s me sans glasses, created using Digibody's Caricature Maker. This reminds me an awful lot of Terry Moore's art in STRANGERS IN PARADISE. Digibody's very easy to save in a variety of file formats directly to your PC. I was, however, disappointed by the lack of hairstyles/features available to choose from. Hence the '80s hair.

This may be my favorite avatar maker of them all--Mr. Picassohead! (Or at least it would be if it included glasses.) Mix & match Picasso parts to make your very own masterpiece. Flip 'em, flop 'em, plant 'em every which way. This one's titled "self-portrait...the contacts years." This is another flash game, so be prepared to do another screen capture.
(Why aren't glasses available on more of these avatar makers? Why?!)

My most favorite avatar maker to date is probably meez. You can download your avatar directly to your desktop, export it directly to your blog/facebook account/myspace page etc. (just like flickr!), or cut & paste code. All three methods work like a charm. It's very easy to use. (Even if I did get Java errors when I first opened it this evening and tried to change my attire. They resolved themselves after a page refresh.) Meez allows you to select from a variety of body types, includes glasses (huzzah!), and has an extensive wardrobe to choose from. Some of the backgrounds are animated, too...

(This one's for my friend Tania, who attended "Zombie Prom" in Fairbanks, AK on 02/14/09. I was there in spirit, if not in person...)

So those are just a few of the avatar makers available on the web. There are many, many more. Go forth & play! And if you've got a favorite you'd like to share, be sure to comment...using your new avatars of course!