A Newly Improved Boo

REVISED version of “Boo” animated Anaglyph-A-GIF by @aforgrave, based on p8 from Geo. Wither’s Emblemes (1635)

Interesting.

In revisiting the “George Wither, page 8, ‘Boo’“ GIF in order to update the misspelling in the “view with Cyan-Magenta 3D glasses” text, I have uncovered another issue and made another little improvement.

I had originally provided a transparent background for the full image. My thinking was that a uniform, white background might telegraph to the viewer the actual size of the image — and thus raise a question of “why the empty white space?” before the larger skeleton makes his appearance there. With a transparent background, the natural background colour of the page would border the smaller art image, and folks would assume that edge to be the boundary within which to expect motion. I think that remains the case.

However, in the intervening day, I’ve noticed two things.

As originally published, there appears an unintended black “shadow” extending upwards from the top edge of the page scan, appearing behind the skeleton when he emerges to his “boo” size. It’s somehow an artifact of the transparency that only appears when viewed with the anaglyph glasses.
When viewed on Mariana’s Jux page, the black page behind emphasizes all kinds of jaggies around the large skeleton, and also around the “view with Cyan-Magenta 3D glasses” text.

In both instances, it’s noisier than I had intended. And noise (aural or visual) can be a distraction to the art.

Experimenting with a white background layer in Photoshop seems to do away with the “shadow” behind the skeleton. It also decreases the emphasis of the jaggies around the skeleton’s head and hands — allowing for a fuller appreciation of the scariness!

FIXED “Boo” on White Background, previous jaggie “Boo” on Lux site.

I’ve also selected and inserted the finalized Anaglyph-A-GIF badge. I replaced the Propaganda font from the draft badges with the cleaner Arial Black. It’s still a bit blurry for smaller resolutions, but not as much as with the stylized font. So the GIF at the top of the page has those two changes — a white background, and the updated badge.

And now, I’m off to finish the next George Wither piece …