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!
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!
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:
National Pets Day
Secret Agent Story
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.
This is the trailer for our final project. I’m in a group again with Emily H., Sam H., and Brigid W.. Since I edited together the clips for the radio show, Emily edited the clips this time, and put them together for the movie trailer using OpenShot video editor. I sent in clips of my cat, Daisy, for my character D41SY, some with her looking normal, some with her “glitching” (I used a tiktok filter, lol)… Emily used what we all turned in to create this! We had a Zoom meeting Thursday night to discuss our ideas for the final project, and agreed on our different roles in producing this, and we scheduled a Zoom meeting for Monday to write a script. I’m excited to see how it will turn out!
Hello and welcome to another weekly summary. I had a pretty good week, I got to listen in on the radio to hear the radio show my group and me created this week on Wednesday which was super cool. Here is my blog post about that:
This will be pretty short because I’ve talked a lot about what the actual process looked like in creating the radio show. Getting to hear the product of my work on a radio show was super cool and I felt pretty proud of myself and my group. Getting to talk on the radio was super cool and I felt like a celebrity. I have no idea who was responsible for naming our group (I think it’s Noir News?) but I liked the title and realized that we should have brain stormed that earlier, lol. It was also cool hearing the other group’s, my favorite thing they did was a commercial for a dating app ad (and the algorithm was AI?) it was very funny and I thought it was a fantastic premise. Overall, it was a really cool experience!
It’s crazy that we are in week 10. I don’t feel so much like I’m fumbling around on this website now. So that’s a definite improvement. Most of the work this week for me was putting together the audio and recording my own for the radio show, so here it is:
And now my daily creates!
Day 1:
Can you find all 18 faces?
Day 2:
It’s true! I have 4 younger siblings, but she’s the baby My favorite time of year is the 6 day period where she and I are 10 years apart (10 and 20 was pretty cool but what I’m really excited for is 20 and 30).
This is what we’ve been waiting for, the radio show is here!
In order to have the 3 commercials with a group of four and an evenly divided amount of work: we decided to have thre of us did commercials and one of us put all of the audio together. I was the one who put the audio together. It took a bit of figuring out and converting files to mp3, but I did it! I became very close friends with tracks, align tracks, and align end to end. One thing about me is that I procrastinate as much as I can, but because I was working with other group members I knew it would not be fair to have it ready really late, so I did it as early as possible. Which, admittedly, was not super early, but better than my usual things. I wanted to use an AI voice recorder because it can be painfully difficult to record things using my own voice, but nothing worth using is free, unfortunately. Because of that, I recorded myself reading it out loud, and I think that this was the hardest part of all. I tend to choke on my words and stutter when I’m reading and recording, so that happened quite a few times. I ended up recording it in pretty small segments so I had one sentence (or so) to record, which made it a lot easier. I had a script that I followed. I felt really inclined to cringe because I don’t love my own fictional writing, but I told myself that I was lacking whimsy and pushed through. I recorded my audio on Audacity and edited the clips together there. I somehow struggled with downloading the radio show, but I was able to upload it to SoundCloud, and now it is there for the whole world to see! Again, I worked with Emily, Sam, and Brigid. They were all terrific with the process and I was the one who procrastinated the most, so hopefully that wasn’t too frustrating for them, lol. Overall, it was very nerve-wracking to record but cool to say that I can now create a radio show (or podcast).
Sometimes I wonder if the titles of my weekly summary are the most creative thing I have on this website. Hopefully everyone appreciates them like I do, otherwise, this is pretty embarrassing.
I decided to try an intermission, just to add something interesting and additional to the radio show. I incorporated this with my commercial. As a child, I always loved the idea of getting to call into the radio to answer the question, so I thought this would be a good way to do it! Because I struggled with reading out loud the previous one, I found an online voice generator to read out a script I wrote, recorded it on my phone, and then uploaded it to SoundCloud. I think it’s funny, I hope you will too.
My favorite time of year is the 6 day period where she and I are 10 years apart (10 and 20 was pretty cool but what I’m really excited for is 20 and 30). 
