The El Zotz Vessel
So I told ekeppich that I would assist him on the graphics for the Big Ass Paper that he's working on. What I've done is pull several photographs into Photoshop, resized, skewed, and did whatever was necessary to make them all fit together as one long image. You see, the photos are pieces of a single vessel, the "El Zotz Vessel." Its importance is high, though I am unaware of why. Each picture is of part of the vessel, so I'm piecing them together and tracing over all the glyphs. This way Keith will have a single image with a band of the glyphs in a line, as if the vessel sherds were laid down together and flattened.
Now the problems of this are obvious. Making a rounded thing flat distorts the image as much as trying to make a flat map of the earth. But it's okay that the images are skewed a bit, so long as they fit together properly. Each piece of pottery is on its own layer, and the glyphs are on a separate layer still. That way, if I fuck up I can just tweak the layer and not damage the whole image.
I started on this this weekend and am taking a midget break from it right now. I love doing this. Not only does it allow me to do geeky graphic things, but as I delicately trace over these Maya words letting my mind drift, I wonder what the woman working on this vessel originally was like as she (probably) hastily painted the story on the side of this pot. Was she new at it and really concentrating at getting it right? Had she been doing it so long that as she painted she thought about what else to do with corn for supper? Was she worried about her husband in a battle nearby? Were times good for her just then? Did she have children? Were her parents still alive? Did she usually get enough to eat? What was she thinking about as she worked on it?
And K. cannot imagine why I'm actually interested in what he does.
Now the problems of this are obvious. Making a rounded thing flat distorts the image as much as trying to make a flat map of the earth. But it's okay that the images are skewed a bit, so long as they fit together properly. Each piece of pottery is on its own layer, and the glyphs are on a separate layer still. That way, if I fuck up I can just tweak the layer and not damage the whole image.
I started on this this weekend and am taking a midget break from it right now. I love doing this. Not only does it allow me to do geeky graphic things, but as I delicately trace over these Maya words letting my mind drift, I wonder what the woman working on this vessel originally was like as she (probably) hastily painted the story on the side of this pot. Was she new at it and really concentrating at getting it right? Had she been doing it so long that as she painted she thought about what else to do with corn for supper? Was she worried about her husband in a battle nearby? Were times good for her just then? Did she have children? Were her parents still alive? Did she usually get enough to eat? What was she thinking about as she worked on it?
And K. cannot imagine why I'm actually interested in what he does.