BACKSTORY : part one

This all started as a thread on the best dulcimer site, Everything Dulcimer perhaps 2 and a half years ago ... more or less. I can't remember who started it or wrote the statement that got me thinking, but basically they said that someone should do a cartoon for dulcimer players. I decided then and there to do this project.

I started by redoing an old cartoon that I had done years ago. It was based on a personal experience, I had been very sick and had been reading the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I had been up late reading and was on the toilet. Because of the accoustics of the room, I read outloud an enchanment for summoning the Cthulu gods. Then the toilet in answer gurgled. Boy! did that startle me. This inspired me to do a piece on a little boy reading Lovecraft under the bed sheats.



I reedited the pictures in both Photoshop and Paint and imported them into Pinnacle Studio 10 but found it lacked the frame to frame control I was looking for. I have later found that one can create a close up of the time line so that editing frame by frame is probably made easier. I like the ease of editing and the use of trasition. However frame by frame even done in Photoshop seemed to be a bit clunky. The problem is this program is really ment for editing and not animation.

For the sound program I used Audicity, a free sound recording/editing program from Soundforge. It works wonders but the sound track's faults lay not in the program but my inexperiance. I did all the voices except for the mother which was done by Yoko, my wife. The music was made with a diggeree do, a small drum and a Casio key board using the soundtrack and glass harmonica modes.

It is a starting point.