Creative Activism: Free Speech, Free Software and Free Time

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Sometimes, a video is worth a lot more, whether it is simply an animated image or a full-fledged movie. Or simply an image that morphs (transforms) into another image. Over the past few days, I’ve been experimenting with image morphing software and posting a few examples of the results in various locations….

If you are interested in checking out any the morphs I created, here’s a linked list of them (I won’t embed ’em again and slow down the dialup users). The source for each morph, if available, is noted and linked in parentheses:

1. Fred Thompson as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer supervillain (concept by John Aravosis)
2. Michael Chertoff as the other member of The Gentlemen (the taller of the two Buffy supervillains)
3. Michael Chertoff (again!), but this time as Jim Carey’s Count Olaf (concept by fraterslibertas)
4. George W. Bush as Bigfoot (concept by Twin Cities Minnesota blog, “Messing with Sasquatch”)
5. Rudy Giuliani and his female alter-ego

The morphing software used is Sqirlz Morph (Google search string), a freeware package. Image manipulation to create the two same-sized starting images was accomplished using GIMP.

There are other good graphics programs out there, too — some are simply for aesthetic pleasure (Sqirlz Reflections) while others allow you to create some great 3D content (Bryce 5.5, free from cNet or FaceGen Modeller 3.2). For me, programs which aren’t too big and are easy to figure out and use are the best.

With a little care and imagination, you can have a lot of fun and perhaps make a statement or two without violating any laws or creating anything offensive or insulting.

Enjoy. 🙂