Our lastest project (after the book cover) in Photoshop Basics is to re-create a movie poster. I chose the poster for Shadow of the Vampire, as it's just about one of my favorite posters out there with its sepia-toned art deco feel. It's entirely do-able, yet is still posessed of a decent amount of technical wow-the-teacher skill in reproducing the gradient bars at the bottom. Anyway, I was taking pictures of Chuck for Willem Dafoe, and myself for John Malkovich. I realized that I needed a large wall, bright light, and somebody to pose in a robe with fingers splayed so I could photograph the shadow. That's not very practical for somebody with my limited resources, so I opted to make my own miniature cardboard cut-out Nosferatu so I could photograph the shadow. This was the scene in my hallway last night:



We had guests over. There was much belly laughter at the sight.

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I bought a two-pack of those Vanish tablets that makes your toilet water blue. For some reason, that always amused me. Unfortunately, one tablet only gave it a nice sky blue color, and that just won't do. I put the second tablet in the tank. Now, after a good day of being gone and letting the Vanish dissolve in the tank, when I come home and flush, the water is damn near cobalt.

This pleases me.