Artistic Effects with Stretch

may be by 1918underwood

Muzy’s Stretch app is fun for making distorted pictures of your friends and enemies, but that’s hardly its only use. The Stretch app can create fascinating artistic effects as well and can be used with drawings and collage with equal success as photos.

The image to the left is one I drew on Muzy when I was apparently feeling like some bright and cheery colors. One of the things that makes this image a good one for Stretch is the high contrast. It has distinct areas of color, and so the shape of those areas can be easily manipulated with the stretch tool. I’ve stretched out the figure into a larger head and heart-shaped body, and stretched the dots into elongated shapes.

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Enlarging and Shrinking Features in Stretch

Muzy’s Stretch app can create a lot of fun effects. One of the best is distorting faces by enlarging and shrinking features. To do this, first you need a photo of a face. The best photos will have well-defined features that you can stretch and push to distort. Ears are good. I’ve pulled back my unruly hair for this webcam shot to give me an ear to distort:

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Making Simple Shapes: Star, Cloud, and Sun

Cloud, Star, Sun

Here are some more simple shapes that you can make on Muzy.

Star

What did your teacher stick on your paper when you got an A? A gold star, of course. Muzy is a gold-star kind of place. So let’s look at how to make a simple star. Read the rest of this entry »

Making Simple Shapes: Heart and Flower

Want “stickers” to put on your photograph? Why don’t you make your own custom one? After all, what is collage but a super-sticker machine? Here are some simple iconic objects that you can make in Muzy collage to stick anywhere, using a little shading and a few simple 2-dimensional shapes.

Heart

Let’s start at the “heart” of things, as it were. Hearts are everywhere. There are plenty of hearts on Muzy, but why not make your own? Personally, I prefer the swirling, free-style hearts that are off-center and tumbling over themselves toward something amazing… but let’s start with a balanced, geometric heart. Read the rest of this entry »

Textures, Patterns, and Fabrics

concrete by smws. Click to view.

Muzy has acquired many textures, patterns, and fabrics that have exquisite uses. There is always room for more. Look around you: tabletops, chair backs, your favorite pair of jeans, the sand at the beach, the wall or ceiling or floor, the intertwined twigs of an empty winter tree… all of these things are fascinating textures and patterns that can be put to creative use on Muzy. You’ve got a digital camera somewhere, right? On your phone? How about a webcam? Find the intriguing patterns and textures around you, and send them to Muzy. Read the rest of this entry »

Making Simple Shapes: Three Dimensional Shapes

3-D Shapes by 1918underwood

Three dimensional shapes are the real-life objects we see around us every day. This is the world that we interact with: height, width, and depth. If you can draw simple three-dimensional shapes, you’ve got the building-blocks of drawing the three-dimensional world.

Cubes and Rectangular Solids

A cube or rectangular solid is like an extension of a square or rectangle into three dimensions. Rectangular solids surround us: buildings, filing cabinets, stereos. Read the rest of this entry »

Color Palettes

Color palettes come in many styles… as many styles as there are artists’ imaginations. Luthien created this color wheel to demonstrate the relationships of colors in her post on The Color Wheel & Contrasts.

I thought I’d talk a little more about the palettes you can generate and use from the color wheel. Here are a few types of palettes to get your creative juices flowing. Read the rest of this entry »

How to Make Annoying Toaster Pets

"Sparky - The Annoying Toaster Pet" by Cooperweb. Click to view.

Is the era of the Annoying Toaster Pet on Muzy gone? Perish the thought. What, a new Muzier might recklessly ask, is an Annoying Toaster Pet? The name is self-explanatory. An Annoying Toaster Pet is a pet, such as a fish, bird, dog, or less identifiable small creature, that is (1) annoying and (2) a toaster.

One of the first Annoying Toaster Pets was Sparky, the Annoying Toaster Dog, but more soon followed. Muzy is filled with animals of the annoying toaster variety, including elephants, cats, fish, birds, and snakes. Read the rest of this entry »

How to See Who’s Using Your Items

"river of blue" by madisonmorehead. This was made with 19 items, including one of mine... I probably wouldn't have found this lovely collage, if I hadn't been looking for collages using my items. Click to view the collage on Muzy!

Where does all of your karma come from? You get karma from items that you’ve created and that other people have used. It’s eminently gratifying to see the creative works that are propagated from your own works… and those works may in turn inspire you! So here are some tips on how to find and learn about the creative works that are made with your items. Read the rest of this entry »

Fun Activities: How to Make a Remix Activity

Activities make a great way to get people to use remix kits and see all the responses. "Tinker Toy Kit" by Cooperweb. Click to view.

With the advent of Muzy activities, remix activities or kits are now easier to make and participate in. Remix is a way to open up a collage with all the layers (or items) present, so that you can move, resize, raise and lower, and quite simply remix them.

A remix activity (or a remix kit) is intentionally put together for people to remix, by mixing up and manipulating the parts. By creating an activity on Muzy for your remix kit, people will be able to find the activity, easily go to remix, and see all the results in one area. Read the rest of this entry »