Category Archives: spring25bond

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

Bumper to Bumper Commercials

This week for my two audio assignments I decided to make a bumper for our show as well as a commercial for the product I was advocating for last week.

The bumper goes into what the show is about and implies it is logical to listen to it. I also used an AI voice and had it “take over” the broadcast. Here is the bumper:

Next is the commercial. I made it on 3DAI Studio which was the product my character wanted Aggressive Technologies to acquire because it would move forward AI. It is an AI program that can take words or pictures and turn them into 3D models to print from a 3D printer. It is some pretty fun tech, but it needs some work and AT can pave the way. Here is my commercial for it.

So yeah, these are my audio assignments this week and I hope they add some flavor to the show.

Daily Create – 3/22/2024

Today’s daily create was to create a new design for a bicycle and so you can see below that I just added a motor to it. The rest of the bike looks pretty simple with the handlebars and brakes and everything but the legs rests insinuate that an engine is present since they are not pedals like they normally would. The bike even has some shocks on it for some better suspension. I think the image was pretty good and turned out pretty close to what I wanted it to be. Furthermore, honestly, if this bike was a real thing, I would 100% buy it, I mean it looks really cool the longer I look at it.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

weird product ad meets 80s radio show

Create a 30-45 second radio commercial for a product from the 80’s. Add in some background music and/or sound effects to make it sound like a real radio commercial.

80’s Product Radio Commercial

For this assignment, I decided to venture into the realm of nonsense to come up with the most bizarre ad I could think of. Meet the Jetpack Jammies.

After painstakingly putting that vague vision into words, I used Voicemaker to create the narrator’s voice. I then used Audacity to create the old-timey radio effect on the voice and to speed up the disclaimer.

I got my music and the jetpack sound here. I used the same radio effect on both. Finally, I used Lexica to make the weird image you see now.

Dail Create Week 9 #3

For this daily create we had to create a new version of any kind of cycle. I decided to use an image generator to create a bicycle with a flying option in case there is traffic, one can just fly where they need to go. Check out what it gave me below:

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

Daily Create #2 Week 9

Today the daily create was to fantasize about a prompt that was posted on twitter. It read: “A witch smokes a cigarette in a city. She is thinking about the letter “C”. There is a hobbit standing right behind her.”

Very interesting to me and made no sense but I had to make it make sense. Here it goes: The hobbit remained unseen due to its height and tapped the witched, focused on her cigarette, on the leg and scared on kneecap like the doctor does to test your reflexes. Paranoid as the witch always is, she jumped up and yelled “Christ!” Swung around and dropped the burning cigarette in the hobbits eye. The hobbit yelled and screamed and cursed. The witch looked around and saw nobody, so she grabbed her broom and flew away to hopefully turn up free like OJ Simpson, though equally guilty.

Daily Create #1 Week 9

We all know 007, so for this create we had to make agent 106. I always wanted to see a mix on an IP man and James Bond like movie or series, so I made agent 106 Asian and here is how it came out.

Not quite how I wanted but I liked the aesthetic this one made with the dark tones and low face. I would want the Asian agent to be an expression of the Zen culture and use classic fighting techniques and old guns like a revolver and maybe he grew up with Bruce Lee who knows.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

good morning aggressors!

For my first audio assignment this week, I choose to do the Good Morning Message for The Village. I of course had a lot of fun making more ominous brainwashing content for this company and I hope other people do too!

It is always such a wonderful thing to hear a bright cheery voice delivering the Good Morning Message in The Village. Why don’t you bring some joy to the day and to your fellow Residents by creating and recording a wonderful message of community and cheer. Share your audio via Soundcloud and tag it appropriately. 

Good Morning Message for The Village

Making this assignment was pretty simple since we’ve had time to get used to the various tools available.

First I used this text-to-speech tool to generate that cheery voice I knew this message needed. I then found that classic morning I needed music here. After getting both of those I did some quick editing using DaVinci Resolve’s Fairlight. And I know that that tool is generally used for far more complicated projects but I had been using it so much recently that it was where my cursor led me.

Finally, at the end of this assignment when I was about to upload it to SoundCloud, I felt that it was missing a photo for that final touch. So I generated one on Lexica and then edited the text on Photopea.

Week 9 Summary

This week was the start of our DS106 radio show group projects.

I went into the majority of the process in the Radio show progress post below. The main thing we did was get together on Discord to figure out which narrative direction we wanted to take the show, and what to complete for week 1.

Radio Show Progress – Week 1

As an addition to this post, I just wanted to mention that we’re thinking of taking the podcast into a different direction, where the recording process would not be as much of a hassle. I will document this more in the week 2 post if we decide to go with it. We may not be directly having a dialogue with each other, rather, we may have our own segments and splice those together, but we would still be reacting to the other participants.

For the design assignment, I decided to make a poster for our podcast.

Radio Show Design Project – Lots of Brains in this Talk!

In hindsight, I would have added an actual podium, but my options were limited with the tool I was using.

For my two audio assignments, I made a commercial for the show, as well as an audio segment to be used for either the intro or a transition.

Assignment Bank: Sick beat – Making the Logic Pod Intro

Assignment Bank: 80’s Product Radio Commercial – Definitely Not the 80’s but Close Enough?

These were relatively quick and easy to make, but I know that we’re gonna have to make a lot more of the audio transitions and background sounds to fill the show, so that’ll be a challenge for next week. I especially liked writing the script for the Hwei commercial to sell AI augmented body parts, and I think we’ll be doing a lot more of that scriptwriting in our actual show.

And of course, here are my daily creates for the week summed up in a neat package.

Daily Create Roundup: Week 9

All in all, this wasn’t a crazy busy week, but I know that next week will be one of the most hectic in all of DS106 history, as we’re all going to be scrambling to finish our radio shows.

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

Radio Show Progress – Week 1

During spring break, I reached out to Mustafa to join forces in creating a show that would fit both of our characters. As we rounded out the group with Melea and Tyler, I looked through their blogs to see how our characters could get together and interact to create a fun show. I was pleasantly surprised as to how our characters complimented one another, but also how many of our ideals would clash with one another. This made us think of some dramatic interactions that our characters could have.

We met on Discord first to lay out the general outline of the podcast, and to choose a narrative. I was originally thinking of using a plot where Mustafa’s character Rikaro is slowly figured out as a fugitive, but we ended up leaning more towards the talk show aspect of the podcast, where each character will bring in their own topic to discuss for a segment of the show.

Some of the other logistics we discussed were things such as the method of recording, length of show, and the title of the show.

We took a solid 10 minutes to all brainstorm a good title for our podcast, and we ended up with Logic Pod: The Tech Podium. This was a good general title without giving away too much of what the narrative will be

For the method of recording, we were deciding between having a set script or having general ideas and having a more free-flowing discussion. On one hand, having a script would give us full control over what the content of the show would be, but it may come off as a bit robotic and staged. On the other hand, a free-flowing “one-take” discussion brings in awkward silences and miscommunication if done incorrectly. We are currently leaning towards a structured conversation with a full script, but we will continue to monitor the format as we work through the project.

For some of our characters, their personalities and characterizations required voice changers. For Melea, since her character is a male, she wanted to use an AI voice changer for the conversation. We are looking into different tools to make this happen and to implement this in a not so jarring way.

We concluded with sorting out the work necessary for this week, which was to finish the assigned work (which would conveniently give us more content for the show), and to work on the script for our show so that we can record on a night that everyone can meet. Recording will take place in week 2, and hopefully we can edit everything together in a neat little package.

Currently, I have taken on the role of splicing all of the audio together after they are sent to me, including the different commercials, bumpers, and sounds that we want to use as well as editing the podcast itself, and I’ll document that next week as the process continues. We decided on one person to do the editing as it would be difficult to work on different audacity files all at the same time without it being directly uploaded live to a cloud system.

I’m excited to see how all of our work turns out!

dr oblivion is part cyborg now

Assignment Bank: 80’s Product Radio Commercial – Definitely Not the 80’s but Close Enough?

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/80s-product-radio-commercial/

“Create a 30-45 second radio commercial for a product from the 80’s. Add in some background music and/or sound effects to make it sound like a real radio commercial.“

I made a commercial fitting for my character, Hwei. He is attempting to sell AI powered prosthetic body augments with the promise of alleviating pain and enhancing performance. I think something like this is how Hwei would first introduce his inventions to the market, but not necessarily for monetary gain. This type of advertisement, if successful, would slowly introduce his inventions to society, and eventually making all of society accustom to getting this procedure done.

Most of the lines I chose were not sales tactics that you’d normally see in advertisements other than the intro that poses a question and then a solution. That is what makes Hwei’s commercial unique; no upselling, no monetary value mentioned. This also definitely isn’t from the 80’s but I took Professor Bond’s offer of bending assignments to meet our show, so I just did a regular commercial for this.