The Girl by the Window gets an SOS #EdvardMunch #GIFITUP2021 #GIFtober #ds106 pic.twitter.com/or1o8uX7h5
— paul bond (@phb256) October 12, 2021
Several weeks ago I was out for a walk and the proprietor of the neighborhood vintage clothing boutique called out to me and asked a barrage of questions about my t-shirt. “How old is that? Is that an original? Can I buy it off you?” It was a shirt with a reproduction of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, one of the more famous works of fine art. He has many other interesting works though.
So when I was looking for something to play with for this years GIF It Up competition, I was happy to find The Girl by the Window. I guess the story in this GIF is that lightning gets the young woman’s attention, then she sees the flashing in the window, then turns on the lights.
It took me a while to figure out what to do with it. It would be a challenge to move anything and make it look right, given the nature of the brushwork. I could play with illumination though, like lightning flashing outside. Then I thought about having the light in the window in the distance flash on and off. But to what purpose? This gave me the idea to use Morse Code. I googled for Morse Code for SOS – 3 dots, 3 dashes, 3 dots. I could do long and short flashes in the window. I darkened the interior of the room by adjusting the saturation and brightness, and turned out the light in the window with a content-aware fill, using Photoshop functions. To get the long and short flashes, I adjusted the frame timings to 0.2 and 0.8 seconds, while leaving the other frames at 0.1 seconds.
It came out okay. I think it would have been better to have more lightning flashes interspersed with the window flashes. I could revise the GIF, but I already submitted it so I’m not too inclined to bother.
I love how eerie it looks. I think the flashes only enhance that, because it makes it look like lightning is flashing. Perhaps they are signaling during an incoming storm? Maybe they’re using it as a distraction to call for help? Whatever it is, it’s the set up for a good story!