colelini00 Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Hello everyone, my name is Cole and this year will be my second year using LOR products to turn my lights into something worth seeing. I thought I’d post this to give some inspiration to those of you who may be struggling to get going with your lights and give some new hope. First off I’d like to clarify that I am not an expert at any of this and never claim to be. Like I said this is only my second year synchronizing Christmas lights and I still have a lot to learn. In April of this year we moved to a different house, one on a quite busy road where the speed limit is 45 mph (but everyone drives 55) and people could not stop even if they had their heart set on it to look at my lights. This got me super worried how I was going to do my lights! I started freaking out thinking that none of it was going to work out and started biting my nails to figure out if it would even be worth it. It was the complete opposite of our nice suburban house where people could stop and actually enjoy the lights. (I got quite a few lookers my first year doing this!) Anyway, I knew I had to do something if I wanted to keep putting up my lights for the 2016 season. The biggest problem wasn’t that I was down in the dumps about how it was going to ultimately look, it was that I had too many ideas rattling around in my head to make any sense of the situation. I got to work, and immediately ruled out doing any sort of show with the lights being synchronized to music. Cars would just not be able to stop on our busy road to look at the lights, especially at night since coming from one direction requires topping a small hill. I didn’t want to put anyone at risk that would be driving out searching for some Christmas lights. My next step was thinking how I could do this. How can I make something other than a static display stand out? It sounds super simple now, but I decided on taking my controllers and lights and making what I call an “animated display.” I would take all of my lights and arrange them and make some new props and make everything look as good as I possibly could with the lights all on static and then animate things in the software so that it looks all professional in the end. Something that helped with this was the introduction of two 8 and a half foot tall spiral trees that I thought would look good as one of the main centerpieces. Really all this took was some reorganizing - not outside with the lights, but in my mind, how I wanted the final result to look. So I’ve completed hours of planning so far this year, and I actually had some really good ideas before we even moved. I have become less stressed on how I’m going to bring a smile to people’s faces. That’s the thing - this hobby is so much fun because you can do whatever the heck you want with all of these ideas that you have floating around in your head. You can use 5,000 lights or 100,000 lights. All that matters is that you are proud of it and that it looks good to others. I know I am not the first or last person to post something like this, and I know I’m not the first to post something about doing an “animated display” but I thought it would cool to share and maybe inspire others in the process. Pictures from this year’s lights will be posted on the forums, in case y’all care to take a look. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment your thoughts and opinions. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightzilla Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 (edited) Cool write up. Good on you for inspiring folks on. I have been doing musical displays since 2007 and every year I am still learning on how to sequence. Someday I will figure out how to use Superstar Sequencer. I am however having fun learning this stuff. "Fun" .....is the key work in this hobby. Oh & do not take on to much all at once. Edited May 21, 2016 by lightzilla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colelini00 Posted May 22, 2016 Author Share Posted May 22, 2016 20 hours ago, lightzilla said: Cool write up. Good on you for inspiring folks on. I have been doing musical displays since 2007 and every year I am still learning on how to sequence. Someday I will figure out how to use Superstar Sequencer. I am however having fun learning this stuff. "Fun" .....is the key work in this hobby. Oh & do not take on to much all at once. Thanks lightzilla. The sequencing is the hardest part to get down for sure! There's always something to learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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