Author Archives: Kelli

Reflection about design

While doing my first readings of this week was about this picture here:

I am a big fan of photography and when I first saw this article, I thought it was going to be the same content as the blue/black dress that went on the internet. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not about the color of a dress, but rather was something more. This article was about how Artificial intelligence took multiple pictures and stitched them together to make one photo for the viewer. I thought this was interesting because I did not know that iPhone took pictures to get the best picture and to decide on which one looks better. You can read the full story about this confusing pitcure here: ‘One in a Million’ iPhone Photo Shows Three Versions of the Same Woman | PetaPixel

The next reading, A Kid’s Guide to Graphic Design by Iconic Designer Chip Kidd – The Marginalian was about Chip Kidd. In reading they states that everything is considered design unless it is nature. Everywhere you look someone had to have designed it one more or another. Kidd address out neglecting culture within the graphic design primer for kids. The word “graphic design” was coined in 1922 by William Addison Dwiggins.

Then I started watching the videos that was assigned to me. These videos were actually very interesting because they talked about covers to books, posters, and movie titles. Between the Lines: Chip Kidd – Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company (oclc.org) talks about the books and how a book cover works in the design community.

To anyone that makes books covers they need to make sure the audience is readable to anyone no matter their language or age. The cover represents what the story is about just by one look. A cover needs at least two parts for it to be readable which would be: words and pictures. The cover is the “first impression” even though the words of the book come first so it is a lot of trial and error before the cover is perfect. It may be a challenge and you might get stuck but try your best to work on one project one at a time.

There are 26 different abstracts symbols that create the alphabet.

Between the Lines: Chip Kidd – Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company (oclc.org)

26 different abstract symbols that when put together can create anything. So the design would be would be having different types of abstract symbols. While storytelling is putting those symbols into telling someone anything. It is very interesting for Kidd to be able to make that connection.

Chip Kidd

Everyone loves the TED talks so here is the one where Kidd talks about books: Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is. | TED Talk Throughout his talk he mentions a lot of great points. It is important to give a book a fun title and then using a picture that relates to the story within. A book cover that was created was called “Dry” and how he created a book cover was simply throwing water and making the word dry, wet so it looked like the ink was running. There are different ways to make a book cover appeal to the audience like making a cover that wraps around to tell a story by pulling it out of the shelf or making all the spine create a full picture with them next to each other. A unique way to pull in a reader would be using texture to a book cover. Everything about making a good book cover is having good design skills. Another connection for design would be movie posters.

When The Art of Movie Posters: View Online 40,000+ Movie Posters & Learn How They’re Made | Open Culture talks about movie posters. Movie poster will always change with the generations. Black and white movie posters will most time have some sort of color to make the viewer stand out to that particular part of the poster. It makes me happy that I know colors have an effect on what kind of theme the movie will have.

  • Red and white is comedy.
  • White space is good because it lets the viewer focus on the main part the designer would like them to see.
  • Blue with someone running is action/thriller.
  • Yellow background- smaller film because it has a smaller budget and yellow is a cheap way of getting attention.
  • Black, white, and orange would be action.
  • Blue and orange would be a surefire approach.

I did not know that there was so much thought into creating a title to a movie, show, or even a book and How Stranger Things got its retro title sequence (youtube.com) dives into how this show created such a eye pleasing and eye catching title into each opening of the episode.

Artificial Intelligence

In The Techno-Optimist Manifesto | Andreessen Horowitz (a16z.com) I would consider all of the lies being true. However, after watching Big Hero 6 I would disagree with some of the lies that this article talks about. First thing I want to talk would be corrupting children.

My first question I asked Dr. Oblivion was, “In big hero 6, are the children corrupted by technology?” This was his response,

I find it interesting how Dr. Oblivion made both sides happy by saying when technology is missed used. Then he also states that it technology can be used to overcome differences and the children notices the importance of using technology as a tool than being corrupt by it.

The same article talks about how Artificial Intelligence can save lives, if we let it. I wonder if we create a nurse bot like Baymax if people would actually go to it for help. From my thinking I made another question for Dr. Oblivion, “If we create a helping bot would people trust it enough?” This was his thoughts on this matter,

Dr. Oblivion states that trust takes a long time to form but with showing it can be reliable multiple times than more people will start to trust the helping bot.

I was skeptical at first about how Dr. Oblivion was going to answer all my questions but, I was surprised at how well and in depth they were answered! He starts all the videos with the same response though which was kind of boring however, the main answer I got from him was very interesting.

Tiring Second Week:

Wow! This week I have been so tired. I thought that working 30 hours a week and go to school full time was going to be a walk in the park. I was very wrong for thinking that because I find myself working from 9am to 6pm and then from 6:30pm to around 11pm I am working on school work. There is just not enough time in a day to complete everything. Ds 106 was just as challenging as week one, with nine items to complete this week. Which means completing more than one assignment a day.

I started with the Daily Creates that we had to complete 5 of them each day they come out. The ones I choose to complete are listed below:

I really enjoyed doing these daily creates each day once I understood I had to login in and do something every single day for this class. After I completed each one then I started on the next item, which was the reading. This Website How To Write Up Assignments Like a Blogging Champ (ds106.us) helped me so much with the look of my two pages I made in this week. I would highly suggest reading if you have not done so already!

Next was the assignment bank in which we had to choose 3 different categories to complete. I did end up creating a page to view all three assignments I created.

Assignment Bank – The Wisdom Well (kelbellz.com)

I had a blast with these until I forgot that at two of them needed to be AI related. If I had followed directions carefully it probably would have saved me a lot of time. Speaking of time, making a website eye catching is more difficult than I would have ever imagined. I had already set up the look I wanted to use last week so that saved me time throughout this week.

Now it was time to create a character. I honestly did not enjoy making up this character because I already feel like we are doing a lot in this course and now to add another character I have to keep up with is a lot. I am trying really hard to keep pushing through this class and I think I am doing okay but I am very overwhelmed. It felt pointless making up someone I know I am going to forget about what I put down has the color they like.

Dr. Oblivion was my favorite thing to do this week. I enjoyed this assignment because I have never seen anything like it before. This is the link I used to ask him my questions about the movie: Oblivion University.

Artificial Intelligence: The New World

Artificial Intelligence reminds me social media in the fact that it is not real. There might be a little truth behind all the editing or picture/ videos we view but most of it was made to make the audience intrigued. Social media has influencers that most of the time have something done to them. Lip filler, nose job, botox etc. Influencers will also use a software called photoshop to delete and or add items to the pictures they post for others to look like. Artificial intelligence takes that one step forward and uses different software and machines to give us a different look than what the naked eye sees behind the scenes. There is no limit on what you can make the audience view while using AI. I have seen artists make dead people speak on how they died with just a picture of a face.

With more people starting to use AI, the scarier it is going to be in the world. The reason I say this is because, it will cause more trouble than entertainment. AI looks so real and that means people are able to create false advertising and information. I would say our best bet would not use AI at all because it can get into the wrong hands. Once it gets into the wrong hands it is only a matter of time before the end of the world. Whether it is robots who will turn against humans or humans will program robots to kill. Either way the world would be a lost cause for humanity and the future. I feel as though we have already come too far from saving the world from oblivion.

San Fransokyo

At the beginning of Big Hero 6, I notice the Artificial Intelligence for this movie would be Baymax. Baymax is made out of vinyl and carbon fiber and is a nurse bot. The difference between Baymax and battle bots is that Baymax is programmed to make his own decisions by using the software he was given, while the battle bots are controlled by the controllers the humans were using. Baymax would be considered AI and the battle bots were considered, essentially a toy.

When Baymax noticed that Hero was sad, Baymax downloaded personal loss to his own software. The creator of this movie made AI (Baymax) able to problem solve without the need of human intervention. You can also take note that Baymax can also adapt to different challenges. An example would be when Baymax could not walk straight, he looked to the side and started shuffling around the room to make it across. Throughout the movie we notice that Baymax can determined if he needs to use the helpful or fighting software in each situation, he has been put in.

When watching the movie, I had noticed that all the characters were diverse. Meaning that each character had their own role to play in making the story continue. The depiction of Artificial Intelligence in this movie was used for good however, not all movies is the AI portrayed as good. Baymax was able to determine the correct course of action during the film.

Beamish Intentions

Reasoning Behind My Logic

I am in digital storytelling to help me grow knowledge in computer editing software and blog creating spaces. Knowing how digital media influences writers, readers, and everyone in between like animation and Artificial intelligence. The digital world is huge, and it is only going to get bigger with more technology coming out in the years to come. I hope to stay on top of the new items coming to the market and/or audience.

One thing I would love to pay attention while watching movies or shows is knowing what digital software, they used to make it look so realistic. Over the past years, different type of technology has been used to give off unique theme to movies; an example would be Avatar: The Way of Water vs. Spider-Man Homecoming. I know after this class I will not only watch the movies and enjoy it but, I will notice how much effect the creators put into their work.

The Weeks of a College Student

The Hardship of the First Week: January 19th, 2024

This week has been an interesting one for me. University of Mary Washington waited until 8:58am to cancel the first day of classes because it has snowed the day before. The kicker of that was they had until 9am to cancel classes. I know they were thinking about opening campus if they waited that long to make a decision. The first day of classes started on a Wednesday; the middle of the week. Yay us! However, not all classes were completely cancelled, like digital storytelling ds106.

When I had opened up the class on canvas, there was a lot of words and directions. I have been out of school for about three years; I got overwhelmed very quickly. I read everything and still figured out nothing at the same time. Meeting with Professor Bond was great at helping me breakthrough each step I needed to complete. I am still crossing my fingers that I got everything completed and sign in.

Once I got signed into most items on the checklist he gave out, I notice things like WordPress started getting easier to navigate. I hope I am going to like ds106 maybe in the next two weeks better than right now. It is proving to be more difficult than I thought the class was going to be due to the fact that I am not good at having so many tabs on my computer for one class. However, I am not giving up without a fight!

The Hardship of the First Week

This week has been an interesting one for me. University of Mary Washington waited until 8:58am to cancel the first day of classes because it has snowed the day before. The kicker of that was they had until 9am to cancel classes. I know they were thinking about opening campus if they waited that long to make a decision. The first day of classes started on a Wednesday; the middle of the week. Yay us! However, not all classes were completely cancelled, like digital storytelling ds106.

When I had opened up the class on canvas, there was a lot of words and directions. I have been out of school for about three years; I got overwhelmed very quickly. I read everything and still figured out nothing at the same time. I wanted to drop this class because I have never done something like creating a website before and it was proving to be quite a challenge. I ended up scheduling a meeting with Professor Bond to hopefully give this class one more chance. Meeting with Professor Bond was great at helping me breakthrough each step I needed to complete. I enjoy meeting people in person but, our circumstances did not let that happen. He reassured me that things will get easier after I get my web page set up. I trusted his words because I know this is his job and I am sure he does not want people to fail his class. So here I was, looking at a list of items I need to sign up for… again.

Once I got signed into most of items on the checklist he gave out, I started working on WordPress. WordPress was horrible for first time users because of how many buttons and not enough directions. The directions given to us was through words with barely any pictures. I am a visional and hands on learner so, I quickly went onto YouTube and looked it up myself on how to use WordPress. After watching the video, I noticed WordPress started getting easier to navigate. I hope I am going to like ds106 maybe in the next two weeks better than right now. It is proving to be more difficult than I thought the class was going to be, due to the fact that I am not good at having so many tabs on my computer for one class. However, I am not giving up without a fight!