Author Archives: Sydney Says Things

Shoot for the Moon – “Moon Graffiti”

In Moon Graffiti, written and produced by Jonathan Mitchell, is a fictional retelling of the moon landing where Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong crashed and became stranded. Matt Evans and Ed Herbstman played the two astronats. The story is inspired by the speech written for Nixon by William Saffire in the event that Aldrin and Armstrong didn’t survive the journey. After crashing on the moon, they realize they are stranded and spend their last two hours unable to do anything about their impending deaths. They try to place the flag, discuss the future of space travel, and kill time before their oxygen runs out.

Audio is used very well in this. From the cracking of their radio systems to scientific equipment beeping to sand flying through the air after a kick, every one of the many layers of audio creates a rich atmosphere. I tried to listen to the background as much as possible. They used long humming, static, and beeping at tense moments and kept the background clear during the calmer moments. The techniques were very simple, but effective. I started listening without looking at the description, so I had no clue what was about to happen. In the first ten seconds, I was able to understand that these men were in some sort of space-related emergency.

I enjoyed this more than I expected to. I haven’t listened to many things like this, but found it very compelling. I had a clear image of everything going on without description. They did a great job on this and I may have to listen to more.

Below is a link to the story. Some sections I found particularly interesting are at 2:48, 8:08, and 11:35. These are places where I found the sound editing particularly impactful and detailed. Specifically the footsteps at 2:48, the flag sounds at 8:08, and the breathing and background noise at 11:35.

Making Images and Looking At Images – Week 3, where I thought about art

This week was all about visual design. While my motivation to keep myself organized wavered, I still managed to get everything done and have some fun while doing it.

I did three daily creates this week: Colour In A Classic, Gif Your First Job, and Theme Song. My favorite was color in a classic. I had so much fun and discovered new paintings. I will be using that website again in the future if I need a break from work. You can find my summary post here. 

Next, I also did three assignments. One of them involved testing AI art programs. That made me feel weird, but it was entertaining to see what the AI created. That post is here. I chose to do my next two assignments about my character, Georgia Finch. I used Canva for her business card and Landing for her purse. I enjoyed making her purse and again found a new website!

I also watched and read about book and movie poster design. I found this very interesting and enjoyed explanations for trends I had noticed. My full reflection is here.

I also did the photoblitz. That was the most confusing and stressful task of this week. Anything timed worries me, especially when it involves a new website and challenges that I don’t know how to complete. My full post about that is here. 

Overall, I experimented with several new websites this week. My repertoire of digital editing options is rapidly expanding. 

See you next week!

Things To Watch and Read – Talking About Poster and Book Design

This week I learned about book jacket and movie poster design. Some of the videos and articles I read are below so you can enjoy them as well. (Not all of them could be linked)

Going in, I was interested to hear what professionals had to say about their work. Visual art is something that feels so abstract and illusive, but there are formulas that only the artists know. In Chip Kidd’s TED Talk and Between the Lines interview he briefly discussed how to approach a story from a design standpoint. He explained that the designer’s job is to distill a story to it’s fundamental pieces and then try to relate those to an audience. Movie poster and TV title designers seemed to agree: a designer’s job is to attract readers or viewers.

There are many ways to convey an idea or emotion through book jackets and movie posters. James Verdesoto explained how different colors are tied to genres and the purposes they serve. For example, red text and a white background are often used for comedies, especially in the early 2000s. These colors help to focus the viewer on one element of the poster, which is usually a staged photograph featuring key characters. Posters with yellow backgrounds signal that the movie is indie or otherwise has a small production budget, as yellow quickly catches people’s eyes. He explained how many indie posters get inspiration from vintage posters and punk rock graphics.

Graphic design has many tactics to gain attention, but ultimately a design is personal to the story, time, and artist creating it. I think it’s important not to forget the care put into posters and book jackets. While there are trends and methods to catch eyes, this work is first and foremost about the stories and the people behind those stories.

A Kid’s Guide to Graphic Design by Iconic Designer Chip Kidd

Executive Level Business – Create Your Own Business Card Assignment

I chose to do the Create Your Own Business Card assignment for my character Georgia Finch. If she’s going to become a super important software developer she needs a professional business card. Unfortunately she doesn’t have an eye for detail like Patrick Bateman, so her business card is not incredibly astounding. When she is important enough to hire people to help her maybe she’ll get a new one.

(Also, just to cover my bases, her phone number is fake)

Things She Carries – What’s In Your Bag? Assignment

I chose to do the What’s In Your Bag assignment. I did this with my character, Georgia Finch, in mind. I used Landing to make this collage. I had seen Landing before online and thought this was the perfect time to finally use it. I had a ton of fun and will probably be making a thousand more collages very soon.

For as organized as Georgia may want to appear, she is a quite messy person. This purse shows all aspects of her life. She takes this purse to work, to hang out with friends, to get groceries, and everywhere else. She has filled it to the brim with everything she’s ever used. Georgia never cleans it out and probably never will.

Creating Things – I make some robots do art for me

Today I experimented with two AI softwares to create art. This is based on the Demystifying AI article. The two softwares I used are Microsoft Bing and Craiyon. Before this, I hadn’t used AI for anything other than grammar (I am referring to Grammarly), so this was new to me. In general, I have been against AI art on principle, but I have to admit that playing around with it was fun.

Below is a table to compare my results. I would say that the Craiyon pop art style photo is the worst – I’m not sure what Craiyon thinks pop art is. I think Microsoft did better in general, but I appreciate both versions. I also find it interesting that the two Microsoft images with people are framed the same way.

Program New York City Broadway actor New York City Broadway actor New York City pop art style
Microsoft Bing
Craiyon

Life Imitates Art- Daily Creates Week 2

This week I did three Daily Creates.

1: Colour in a Classic

For this one I used Google’s Art Coloring Book to color in my own version of The Watermelon Seller by Hafidh al-Droubi

2: Gif Your First Job

I chose this gif to represent my job as a counselor at a children’s ceramics summer camp.

3: Theme Song

My theme song is Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes by Jimmy Buffett. As I say in the original post, this is more of a goal, because I am almost never as relaxed as he is about change.

Something In The Wind – This Week’s Work Amidst Confusing Weather

This week, my main challenge was keeping up with everything we were supposed to do. Organization has always been a weak spot for me, so I created a little to-do list and started checking things off. Every day brought new weather and a new challenge!

First, I did the character assignment. I’ve always loved making characters, so this was a lot of fun for me. One of my friends is also taking this class, so we worked together to make characters with a shared backstory. I even made our characters in the Sims 4 (I played a lot of Sims this week). You can find that post here.

Next, the daily creates. This was typically the first thing I did when I woke up each day. It was a good way to start my morning, even if some of it wasn’t my greatest work.

The three assignments took up the most amount of time. After looking through tons of possible assignments, I chose a photo editing assignment, a writing assignment, and one gif assignment. The writing assignment was probably my favorite as it garnered the funniest results.

I also read The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. It was definitely a new read for me, as I’ve never read a manifesto or such a specific opinion on technology. My review can be found here.

I think this week went very well. I feel good about my work and I have gotten more comfortable with WordPress.

Figuring Things Out – The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

This week I read The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen. From the first line – “We are being lied to” – I had an issue with the tone of the article. I agreed with the ideas presented but the entire thing came off as pretentious (maybe that is just the tone of a manifesto?). In the manifesto, Andreessen breaks down the ideas of Techno-Optimism, of which there is a wide range. He goes through everything from the use of technology throughout history to the general idea of capitalism and the free market. He throws in several philosophers and theorists (Ray Kurzweil, Paul Collier, Friedrich Hayek, and interestingly, Andy Warhol, to name a few) and brief discussions of their ideas, sometimes with quotes. 

My other issue is that he provides very little support for some of his claims. For example, he says “Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago, even without nuclear power.” He does not state where this information came from. It was hard to find any support for this online, although a few sources agreed. Besides, even if the US carbon emissions are lower, what about the rest of the world?

In general, I agreed with most of his messages but struggled with reading the manifesto otherwise. I think that we should look at AI in a much more positive light, but that light has to come from something other than speculation, which a lot of this is.