Category Archives: ds106

Week 14: Final Project

M. Marshall 4.28

It is crazy to know that the semester is in its last week. I will probably never forget this class and some of the things that it’s taught me. I think going into it I did not have accurate expectations for what the course would be, but that’s a good thing. Over the semester, I’ve really honed in on my digital drawing skills, which was extremely beneficial for my final project that I animated. Even looking at the difference between my first daily creates artwork and more recent artwork I think there’s been a major shift in my understanding of and abilities at this skill.

I don’t even want to show it, it’s so bad!

I get really caught up on the fact that my work isn’t perfect or that I could’ve done better if I had just done something another way, and I think that is great for growth, but in this reflection I really want to appreciate how I’ve grown. I learned a lot about shading and color theory. My growth in understanding color theory is well represented by the Adelson’s Checker Shadow Illusion. If you can believe it, squares A and B are the same color

I can’t believe it either, don’t worry. That aside, the reason is our perception that there is shadow over a “white” tile is because our brains are filling in information. I cannot prove to you that what I am telling you is true, but I’ve used an eye dropper tool, and it is definitely the same. The best way to know is to check for yourself, but here’s the best way I have to show you. I drew a line right over, did not stop. It’s freaky.

Another thing I honed in on was my story telling skills and creating a world and thinking about nuances within that world. Toward the beginning I relied on things like other TV shows I had seen and couldn’t really go far beyond what I had come up with.

I honestly feel much better equipped in my creativity and storytelling. Over a relatively short period of time I was able to let myself be free to create ideas, even if I cringed a little bit.

I also worked on my video editing skills, which was really fun to learn about. I think I should create a vlog YouTube channel. I am honestly very proud of myself for some of the stuff I’ve made. I did some photo editing, and I really tried to challenge myself, but it was mostly just to be funny, here are some examples!

Video editing

Character Movie Trailer

Get Ready With Me!

Photo editing:

Propaganda

And last, but certainly not least, work on my character:

My character

Trading card

I worked really hard to have my character be consistent but also ever improving, hopefully, the viewers will feel that she is!

Let’s talk about my work timeline:

Week one:

I drew a lot to see what kind of thing I was aiming for and how it would look, the preliminary sketches definitely look very different from the end result. I focused on watching animation videos (which had really interesting techniques that ended up being too complicated for my level of knowledge). I would watch my cat as I drew to see how she looked at different angles. I wrote down the story and I spent a lot of time drawing out what I wanted the background to look like, where characters would move, all of that. I considered the story aspect a lot and the moving parts of how to make people committed to a character in a (very) short film. Toward the end of the week, I started on animating.

Progress update!

Week two:

This is the bulk time that I spent animating, I had scenes, lines, beginning drawings, just not a finished project. I became best friends with the layers section because it allowed me to move things around more easily, I could erase writing but not the speech bubbles behind it, I could use the lasso tool to move a character but not everything behind it. I probably spent around 20-25 hours animating it. It was no joke. It ended up only being about 2 minutes long, but I hope you can see the effort I put in to the quality of the drawings. For things like crying, took a slide, copied it, edited it a smidge, copied that, edited that a smidge more, until I was able to show a character crying. The scene that took the most work was definitely the laboratory scene.

Originally, I wanted it to have audio, but my voice does not work very well to be a guy, and I think that the meaningful thing here is that people can relate to the characters, and I thought that my voice would pull people out of the scene. I tried to add music, but I really struggled with the copyrighting policies of YouTube and finding music that I liked, so unfortunately I ultimately had to scrap that.

Previous knowledge of my storyline is definitely beneficial to understand the plot. In the radio show, the ending was more depressing. I think that this would have been more long and drawn out and show more characters, but by the end I was running very low on time, unfortunately we cannot win ’em all. I was thinking a lot about how I wanted to show the intersection of humanity and technology. In the story, the animals gain human like cognition from the combination of artificial intelligence and the animals’ pre-existing sentience. In this, the government is mostly able to stop emotions in animals because it restricts the parts of the brain creating them, like the amygdala. In the end, that combination of artificial intelligence and sentience is able to save D41SY because she recognizes her owner and the love that she has for him overrides government interference. I really feel proud of this project because it really wouldn’t be me if the end of the story wasn’t something about how love perseveres and real love can’t be broken by technology and the government.

Thank you for tuning in to my creative process! I hope you enjoyed!

Final Project

Wow the last project. This is actually very crazy the semester went by so quickly. I want to start with a reflection of the semester. At the beginning of the semester I mentioned that I wanted to learn new tools to implement for after I graduate. I definitely achieved this goal! I got to play around with audacity, adobe, and get even more familiar with Canva. These are all great tools that i’m happy to have experience with especially being a Communication and Digital studies major.

This class has really broadened my creativity. I enjoyed the daily creates and the different array of audio, visual, and written assignments I completed this semester. These assignments pushed me to be creative with implementing my class character Krysta while also adding in my personality and assignment requirements.

For the final project myself, Martina, Coni, Macie, and Olivia all worked really hard at creating our own tech noir version of the hit series “The Real Housewives”. I loved working with these ladies, it was truly so easy and fun to work work them.

Last week was primarily brainstorming the project, creating bumpers, and putting together the trailer. This week was all focused on the final cut of the show. We started filming on last week on Wednesday, we decided to film 4 different short scenes Wednesday. These short scenes in the film are a lot of the house and bedroom scenes.

With it being the final week of classes it was hard to find time to film scenes, but we got it all figured out. We filmed all of our confessionals in the show this week on Monday. We got them all knocked out within an hour. I filmed my portion of a phone call scene with Coni Monday as well.

My favorite scene that we filmed was the fight scene. This was really the main portion of the show so we spent the most time on this scene. It was thankfully nice outside, but it was definitely very hot as well. We made sure to stay hydrated throughout the afternoon. If you watch the show you can see some were more hydrated than others…

The fight. scene was tedious but so fun to film. This was also the last scene we filmed as a group. The rest of the scenes were done by ourselves and edited ourselves. I edited the Pinot Grigio commercial on Canva. I now have Canva pro which has really helped me implement some fun graphics. The commercial was primarily just Canva and I recorded and edited my voice over on audacity. I used Freesound for the background music, which I found through other reading other classmates radio shows and seeing how they created their bumpers.

The hardest part of the assignment was actually the uploading process. We had aproblem with the video being extremely blurry. Other than that the project went fairly smoothly.

Overall this was such a fun project and class to take I will definitely be recommending it to other Comm majors. I still have so much to learn and prefect, but this class provided me with a great starting base with working with audio and video editing apps. I loved seeing how everyone’s websites, bumpers, and final projects looked. Everyone is so creative in this class it truly blows my mind.

Here is our finished project

Real Housewives of Cyber Manhattan

Thank you everyone for reading my blogs and watching my work.

Sincerely, Kristen

Project update

M. Marshall 4.24

I am really excited to show this! I have learned about the pains of animating, but I really appreciate a free place to do it (I will update the name of the app in the morning lol) that has good (enough) drawing tools. I drew out backgrounds for the scenes and each scene has a short drawn out animation (I will provide three examples from the beginning because there are quite a few) to show what the idea is.

For example, the drawing above, you can see the living room sketch and the cat walking sketch.

For this one, you can see the D41SY and her owner watching tv (I’m working on animating steam from the mug)

And other cute things! It definitely has been and will be quite a lot of work, but I feel good.

I have been wondering if I could more effectively convey this with music, but there’s too much to convey without words, so I’ve been considering how to go about it… Only time will tell!

I have really focused on creating a design simple enough to redraw, but complex enough to look nice. I think it’s gonna look good.

It is late and I am sick, so I will update tomorrow with my weekly summary, my final project, and my final project discussion post!

Preparation for the last week :(

It’s crazy that next week is the last week of class. I’ve really enjoyed the creativity and tools i’ve learned to use in this class. This week was pretty essay in terms of prepping for the final project.

The fearless femmes and I agreed to meet on Sunday afternoon to brainstorm how we wanted to film the episodes for Real Housewives of Cyberpunk. We brainstormed ideas and agreed to meet and film scenes on Wednesday. During our meeting we also established who would do bumpers, edits, and commercials for our show.

We filmed about 4 – 5 scenes on Wednesday which is great progress. We still have a lot to still film but, we’v planned out our scripts and agreed to meet again Monday afternoon to finish the scenes. This ill give us plenty of time to edit and focus on filming bumpers and commercials for the show throughout the week.

Overall I think it was a very successful week. I really enjoyed watching other classmates trailers and i’m very excited to see how everyone’s turns out. I love working with the Fearles sFemmes! We work together really well and have so much fun while working. It’s really easy to bounce ideas off each other and we end up with a great final result.

See you guys next week with the final and finished project!

Sincerely, Kristen

Weekly Summary #13: Taylor Swift’s Lucky Number

M. Marshall 4.18

I cannot not mention that 13 is Taylor Swift’s lucky number on my thirteenth weekly summary, so here it is.

I did a lot of work toward the final project this week. I went into it more in this post:

Progress update!

But here’s what I’ll say here: I’ve been watching all the YouTube videos on cat animating that I can find (admittedly, not as many as a girl could hope for). I’m in the beginning stages of animating, it’s not perfect but I’ve been working on my drawing skills this semester. And I’m about halfway through with a script/plans for the pictures. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of substantive things to say about it that I didn’t already discuss yesterday. So that’s the week 13 update!

Progress update!

M. Marshall 4.17

A huge part of this class is talking about what you did and how you did it and why you did it and how it worked out. One thing I am more challenged by than talented at is communication. Part of the holistic liberal arts education that Mary Washington appeals to is why I came, and also, no employer is going to hire someone who says “I’m a hard worker and I am qualified for the job, but I cannot communicate for the life of me.” So as I work to explain my thought process more, bear with me.
For my final project, I’m telling my character’s story. I want the story to shine through because D41SY is based on my own pet, who is very beloved to me. I also want the story to into three categories: I want it to matter, I want it to make sense, and I want it to make the viewer feel something. My bonus category would be that I want a really good rainy scene because I love the rain.
I think one problem many story tellers run into is that they feel a personal connection to their character, they care about that character, and they don’t realize that other people don’t have that. I want there to be moments that show the importance of her character in the plot, and to feel happiness when she feels happiness, so that the audience will feel sadness when she does too. I want to design her to be aesthetically pleasing, because people are naturally attracted to things that look nice. I also think people will enjoy a good swish-y tail, maybe that becomes more rigid when she becomes a cyborg and then swish-y again when she is returned to her owner? She also needs a goal; I think saving the other animals and reuniting them. I want the story to have a happy ending.
One issue: I don’t want to base a character on me, I’m not a writer, so I’m not going to say I know everything about the process. I do know that self-inserts are often difficult because everyone wants to be liked, so it’s harder to show nuance. I think I’m going to make D41SY’s owner a guy to create a stronger sense of separation in my head between myself, the owner, my cat, and D41SY. Any self inserts will be much more akin to Stan Lee from Marvel, preferably.

What have I done so far? I’m so glad you asked.
First, I considered my strengths:
When I was 12 I was really intro drawing
Then I considered my weaknesses:
When I was 12 I was really into drawing

Jokes aside, I know that I would be most proud of myself creating an animation, so that’s what I’ve set out to do.
I have an iPad and an Apple Pencil, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to utilize that. I’ve downloaded an app called FlipStudio and started sketching. Of course, while not terrible, I perhaps overestimated my drawing skills

Although disappointing, knowing my weaknesses is an important part of the process. The eyes look like human eyes. No good way around it, the drawings are a little stiff and while there is artwork that is very simple that I find to be fantastic, my own is simple in all the wrong places.
I looked into YouTube, because it has everything, and looked for how to animate cats and found this:

It’s not the art style I’m going for, but I was really impressed at how much good information this short video conveyed.

Back to the drawing board (get it, because I’m focusing on drawing again? Okay.)

One of the things I really clicked with was viewing the animal as multiple parts of a whole, rather than one part. Which I believe is conveyed well in the highlighted colors and parts of the cat that are highlighted.

Most importantly, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be a reflection of my effort in this course.

I hope anyone reading enjoyed my post, and I’ll be back tomorrow for a weekly summary!

To Walk of Life and Die in LA

It’s been a while since I contributed to the Walk of Life Project, and an even longer while since I watched To Live and Die in LA, so why not kill two birds with one mashup? As far as Walk of Life endings go, this one doesn’t do much other than add to the list. Mostly I just wanted to get a picture of adding a second soundtrack in iMovie:

What I did here was import my video file and my MP3 soundtrack, then overlap and align them in the editing window. I split the video with Cmd-B where I wanted to second soundtrack to take over, and dropped the video volume to zero after that point. I split the added audio at the same point and reduced the volume a little before it.

Week 12 summary

This week was calm and fun. My group got started with the trailer really early in the week which took a lot of the stress off the trailer. Our trailer turned out great! Martina did great with the editing. The Fearless Femmes had a really fun time creating the trailer and I’m so excited to see what our final project. To see more of our process you can check it out here.

Trailer

This weeks creates were much more exciting than previous week I Feel like they actually called for more creativity than recent weeks. I completed three this week and these might be the last, but we’ll see. Here are my daily creates for the week:

Daily creates

This was a pretty short and easy week, but i’m excited to see the outcome of everyone’s final projects as well as my own groups.

See you next week,

sincerely, Kristen

Final Project Trailer

I absolutely loved filming the trailer for the final project. The Fearless Femmes decided to get together again and make the final project and trailer. We all loved working together on the radio show and decided to work together again.

First we met on Wednesday the week before the project was due and brainstormed ideas. It was a bit difficult to settle on an idea for a while but then we settled on “The Real Housewives” concept we were all really excited and fans of the show and started throwing out ideas that could relate to cyber and tech noir.

We met Monday to film the trailer, we filmed in the green screen room in the HCC. It was really fun and creative. We had a fun time and just bounced ideas off each other. The only problem we ran into was getting the camera to focus, but we figured out pretty soon.

Here is he finished project, we’re still brainstorming the actual show but i’m very excited to see the outcome.

Trailer

sincerely, Kristen

Weekly Summary #12: Final Project Looming Overhead

M. Marshall 4.11

This week has also been on the lighter side, similar to last week, which I’ve been thankful for. Unlike last week, the final project is now impending, so my group for the radio show (Emily H., Sam H., Brigid W.) decided to work together again for the final project! We had a Zoom meeting to discuss ideas, and Emily edited together a very beautiful trailer using footage/pictures from all 4 of us, which you can read about here. Or just go straight to the page on YouTube.

I also did 3 daily creates, here they are:

  1. National Pets Day
  2. Secret Agent Story
  3. How long could I make it in the wild with the proper tools?

How long could you survive without a ds106 post? Not long! Cause its #4life.