This week was fun! I really liked getting to look at everyones propaganda, PSAs, and newspapers. I think everyone did a good job with their assignments and you can tell they put a lot of effort into their projects. I had fun with the projects this week too and I think they were some of the stronger projects I’ve done this semester.

Daily Creates

For this week’s Daily Creates, I did Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s, and Thursday’s. Tuesday’s Daily create was taking a picture from the opposite perspective. I chose to take a picture of my laptop, which normally isn’t perched on an Adirondack chair outside, but the weather was really nice on Tuesday so I did my work outide that day.

Wednesday’s Daily Create was to make your own Fairytale. At first, I was really struggling to come up with a story, so I decided to look at writing prompts on Pinterest, which is a common fix for me to get out of a writers block. I landed on writing a short story about Hansel and Gretel where the witch is their savior instead of the villain. Writing the short story was hard given the character limit on Mastodon, so it took me a few tries to write it out and edit it down. Eventually, I was able to cut the story down without losing any major parts.

The last Daily Create was on Thursday and the prompt was to showcase your kaleidoscope. My initial idea for the prompt was to take the Kaleidoscope camera from Apple Photobooth, point it at the sky, and call it a day. However, I decided that that choice wasn’t personal enough. I ended up deciding to make an acrostic to better depict what my kaleidoscope would show. I incorporated colors, shapes, objects, and description words into the poem to give readers the best depiction possible.

The Daily Creates were fun this week. I wanted to do Monday but the day slipped away from me before I got the chance. Maybe I’ll try to do some DCs over Spring Break. Maybe.

Assignments

I loved the assignments this week. I found them so enjoyable to craft. The Character Commenting assignment was interesting but also a tad challenging. The hardest part was finding assignments to write about and then coming up with reasons why my character liked those assignments. As the assignment went on, it became easier and easier to get in the headspace of my character but writing the first paragraph was tough. Still, it came out fine. You can view Krissy’s Comments here.

I liked the newspaper assignment, it was fun to portray a fictional movie like a serious event. This assignment also made watching the Terminator scenes different because I was forced to look through a lens of realism. Normally in shoot out movie scenes the audience isn’t supposed to dwell on the lives being taken in the background. However, because I was focused on the events happening in the scene, I was forced to consider everyone who had died. The police shooting scene had so many deaths, I’m not sure anyone was left alive. It was interesting to consider the lives of the people in the background. To make the assignment I used Canva. I included a few easter eggs in the report and on the side, that I’m curious to see if anyone picked up on. I explained one of them in my blog, which you can view here.

The propaganda assignment was my favorite. I think it’s one of the best assignments I’ve done in this class so far. I chose to make my propaganda about egg prices because they are so, dramatically high right now which is really frustrating. One of my favorite parts about my poster is that the coloring I used is reminiscent of pro-America propaganda. I decided to use that coloring in an ironic way because many Americans are suffering while our leaders are worried about other issues. Also, not to toot my own horn, but I thought my slogan, “Crack and egg, Make it rain” was funny and I know it made me giggle. You can view more of the thought process behind the poster here

Comments

People made commenting easy this week. There were so many good posts! Sam’s Club did a great job on his newspaper and we both used Canva to do the assignment. I told them, “This looks great! I love Canva, I use it for almost all of the assignments in this class and outside of class too!” It’s fun getting to bond over having a commonality in your process, it helps create connections in an asynchronous class. I was really impressed with Live it Up With Liv’s Propaganda. I said, “This is so good! “The system protects the powerful. Who protects you?” and “Justice isn’t blind, it’s bought” are amazing lines that unfortunately mimic current events. As always, you did a fantastic job on this assignment!” The wording Liv used to make her propaganda hit so close to home, I was taken aback by how meaningful it was. Flower Bed also did a good job on their propaganda. I commented, “This is so interesting. I think you did a great job relating to technoir themes because this gives me black mirror vibes. Great job!” I can tell that they have a good understanding of TechNoir themes because they were able to effectively capture Black Mirror vibes in their propaganda. Next, I commented on Rylie’s Riveting Region, I told them “This looks so good! I’m really impressed, and I’ll be using this as inspiration for my project. Amazing job!” This comment was in response to the newspaper that Rylie did. It was the first one I had seen that week, and I thought it looked great. Lastly, I commented on You Weekly Adrenaline Rush, asking, “Your photos of Sapphira Mae are all so beautiful and consistent. Do you draw them yourself or get them from a specific place? I’d love to know!” Their character is always consistently drawn and I am curious how they are able to do that. I have a hard time finding a character design for Krissy, so I’m interested to see the process of how they came up with one for Sapphira Mae.

Final Thoughts

Heading into Spring Break, I am definetly ready for a break. I’m looking forward to coming back rested and recharged to finish the semester strong, especially in this class. To say goodbye, I’ll leave you with one more pun to hold you over until I’m back for the Week 8 Summary.

Seven days without a pun makes one weak.

Week 6 is officially in the books. This week was relatively easy which was very much welcomed with midterms coming up. I chose to do the Talk to the Bot assignment so I only did one assignment, while most people I saw chose to do three. I think both options were equally time consuming which is another reason I’m glad that there weren’t many other assignments/

Daily Creates.

This week I did Tuesday and Wednesday’s Daily Creates. For Tuesday, the prompt was deciding what power a light switch had. For this prompt I chose to take it in a literal direction. When the switch was flipped down, the light was on but when the switch flipped up, the light turned off. In case it wasn’t clear, I wanted the light switch to dictate the time of day. It was the obvious choice, but no one else had done so I decided to take the chance. I used Canva to make the Daily Create. In hindsight, I wish I had made the background even darker but I was worried that if you couldn’t see the background, people wouldn’t understand what I was trying to convey.

The next daily create was showing off your safe haven. I have a few safe havens and I wanted to show them all off. The first one is Ball Parlor in Ball Hall. My friends and I hangout in there a lot and no matter what kind of mood I’m in, going into that parlor and hanging out with them for even a minute lifts my spirits. The next one is my Grandma’s house in Leechburg, PA. My family on my dad’s side is very close but my siblings and I are the only ones who don’t live in Pennsylvania. Anytime we see them, there’s always a family reunion. I love seeing them, and anytime I’m there, problems in Virginia seem to melt away. After that, I included my couch as a safe haven. I chose my couch to represent my house as a whole. When I’m home, I don’t hang out in my room a lot, I spend time with my sisters, my parents, and my pets in the family room. Whether I’m watching a TV, having a conversation, or chilling with my pets, my couch is where I’m at. On top of that, it is the best place to take naps. Lastly, I included the stage which I’m aware is so cheesy but I don’t care. I did theatre and chorus in high school so I love the stage in that sense, but mainly I’m more in awe of how a good production can make me feel like I’m in that world with them. An example of this is I hate New York City. Times Square stresses me out like no other, but once I’m in a theatre, I feel like nothing bad can happen to me. So those are my safe havens! Very cheesy explanations to go with all of them, but I’m a cheesy person.

Video Assignment

I chose to do the Talk to the Bot assignment. I chose to use Sims 4 to animate my characters which could have turned out really cool, if I had gotten the lip-sync videos for Dr. Oblivion to work with it. Maybe I’ll try again another day with shorter clips so it doesn’t take so long to load. I ran into a few road blocks with this assignment with the formatting and scripting but I’m proud of myself for persevering. I also want to be clear that this assignment wasn’t all bad, when it was flowing, it was really easy and fun to work through. The roadblocks were a bit frustrating, but nothing impossible. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the video and audio together which didn’t take me too long. To substitute the lip-sync video, I downloaded a stock footage video of audio levels.

Comments

This week was easier to find things to comment on than last week. Many people chose to do the three video assignments as well as the goal revision everyone had to do, so people had already posted some stuff by Tuesday afternoon. I commented on Live It Up With Liv’s revisiting goals and I said, “I also appreciate the freedom this class offers. It’s so enjoyable to decide how I want to apply what we’ve learned!” This is true, I’ve been telling my friends that I really enjoy the assignment bank because it allows me to choose how I want to apply the lesson of the week. I think people revisiting their goals started to make people feel sappy because I read a few touching reflections. On Sam’s Club’s goal revisiting, I commented “This in-depth reflection on your goals was a really great timeline to show how your skills have developed. I really like your website; it’s very organized, so all your assignments are easy to find. I think aiming to improve your skills in sound is a great goal to set, and I hope you find success in it!” Sam talked about his goal about web design which is why I included that I liked his website layout. I appreciate anyone with an organized web layout which is something I hope to implement into my website at some point this semester. Flower Bed’s goal revisiting got deep and so I told them, “I appreciate your honest reply. I agree that it can be hard to challenge yourself when life already presents so many challenges. However, I love that your work reflects who you are, and I think that’s what matters most. ” Their reflection was touching and I respected that they were proud of their work at this point in the semester. The Digital Canvas made a video where they talked to their 16 year old self, I said, “This is such a sweet idea. I love the thought of being able to talk to your younger self to reassure them that it gets better. Especially in high school, it truly feels like everything revolves around those moments, and we often lose sight of the fact that we move on and grow. Great job!” I can relate to wishing I could go back and talk to my younger self and fill them in on how life turns out; it’s probably for the best that I can’t because I wouldn’t want to jinx anything. Finally on Noir You Didn’t’s goal revisiting, I commented, “I can’t believe we’re already a third through the semester. That feels unreal! I love how you reflected on your goals but still want to push yourself to improve. Good luck with your goals.“ I think it’s important to acknowledge, even if you meet your goals, there is always room to grow. I appreciated that Noir You Didn’t recognized they want to continue to better themselves. Everyone did a good job this week!

Conclusion

I did enjoy this week, but I think I liked last week better. Getting to watch the Tony Zhou videos and a Black Mirror episode was a highlight. This week had more freedom, which was good, but I think because I already had an appreciation for video essays, I had more fun working on that. However, this was still a good week, and I look forward to next!

This week was so relaxing! I have enjoyed the last few weeks and getting to try different assignments, but this chill week was very much needed. I feel recharged and ready for next week!

Daily Creates

I did Monday and Wednesday’s daily create. Tuesday was a snow day so I swore off all school work except to watch the Tony Zhou videos. For Monday, the prompt was to extend the rhyme of the magpies all the way to 106. This was a tough one for me because I understood the prompt as writing a poem, but it wasn’t until I finished my poem that I realized no one else did that. The poem didn’t take me too long, but it took me long enough that I refused to throw it away. I enjoyed reading some of the other responses for this. My favorite was by Sarah Honeychurch who said “obviously it’s 106 for life!” When I was crafting this poem I wanted to some jokes into the meaning behind numbers. For example, 101 is used for a lot of intro courses in college, I had it symbolize knowledge. I also tried to incorporate the quote, “all is fair in love and war” so I paired them together as 103 and 104. My poem is listed below.

One hundred is for luck
And even some winnings
Plus one is for knowledge
And lots of new beginnings

One hundred and three is for love
One hundred and four is for war
We know this is where all is fair
From the history that has come before

One hundred and five means boredom
So skip to one hundred and six
This for telling a story
And learning lots of cool tricks

The next prompt I did was to find a photo of a famous building, work of art or statue, cut it out of its environment and paste it into what’s clearly not its proper environment. Because the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, I wanted to imagine what it would look like if France kept her for themselves, so I swapped out the Eiffel Tower and replaced it with Lady Liberty. To make this post, I used Canva and its background remover to make the change look more realistic. I also used Canva’s eraser tool to erase the Eiffel Tower. It’s not perfect, you can see the where the photo is cropped in the trees, however it came out better than I expected because the background meshes together oddly well.

Commenting

This week was a challenge to find things to comment on since there was only one assignment. To remedy this problem, I commented on people’s Daily Creates. This was a good week for Daily Creates too, many responses made me smile. I commented on Liv’s Mount Rushmore Under the Sea, I said “this made me giggle! I love it!” I thought it was a creative take on the prompt, and something about it just tickled me. Next I commented on Cinder’s take on why Bananas keep appearing on the street. They said they think it’s because animals are mentally evolved and they are leaving out bananas so they can observe us; I replied “Hahaha! I love how you turned the tables!” Everyone had really good responses to this prompt but theirs was my favorite. I thought it was so clever and such a fun idea, I want to see a movie or sketch about it. Lastly, I commented on Tflora’s found poem. I told them that their poem was so vivid and they arranged their found words perfectly. Their post made me so curious about where they were finding those words though. Again, this was a great week for Daily Creates, I hope next week is just as good.

Video Essay

For my video essay, I enjoyed scripting and editing it but finding the scene to make the video for was so frustrating. I talked about this more in depth it in my Video Essay Reflection but the scene that I ended up using was the only longer scene that I could find on YouTube, and I found it really frustrating that the scene was blurry, not the full scene, and less importantly in Russian. However the other aspect of the assignments with watching the videos and black mirror, I was fascinated by! The Black Mirror episode thoroughly freaked me out but I still liked it and found it interesting. I really enjoyed the videos from Every Frame A Painting too. Tony Zhou is so well spoken, and the way he talks about movies is fascinating. He was making me want to watch movies that I have never wanted to watch before just by analyzing the camera movement. I enjoyed the videos so much that I have continued to watch his videos outside of the assigned videos.

Conclusion

I love video editing, it’s one of the things that made me want to be a Comm. & Digital Studies major, so I have been looking forward to this unit since the beginning of the semester. I’m even more excited for next week!

Week four was a good one! I love podcasts and music so I knew this week was going to be enjoyable. I was nervous about the workload because having to listen to assignments can take a while but I was pleasantly surprised that the listening assignments were very interesting. Limetown was fun because it combined elements of cyberpunk and mystery, Moon Graffiti, although listening to two people cope with death as they face it freaked me out, was well made and a very good story. Even other students were doing great jobs this week, I was so impressed with everyone’s sound effects stories, radio bumpers, and assignment banks!

Daily Creates

I always try and get an early start on the Daily Creates, if I do one for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it’s off my plate for the rest of the week. Additionally, it allows me to skip a task if I don’t like it or find it too hard, I wouldn’t have this option if I procrastinated everything to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. This week my daily creates included word art, draw a t-rex, and Paul Bond’s brazy look.

The first daily create was word art. Using a website that converted text into a drawing utensil, we were supposed to make a body part and use the different aspects to draw it. Here you can see I drew a foot. I chose a foot because I didn’t trust my ability to draw a hand freestyle. This daily create was frustrating because there was no undo button, so if you really messed up you had to start over. This Daily Create was another reminder that art doesn’t need to be perfect, just done. Apparently I’m more of a perfectionist than I thought I was because I’m learning this lesson every week now.

This assignment was fun and scary. I am not an artist who can paint or draw, so any task with drawing makes me want to close my computer and run away. I decided to give this Daily Create a try because there was a tutorial linked, so I could follow that. I did follow the tutorial and my T-rex still looks funky, but it was a fun exercise and I was able to reference one of my favorite Disney movies.

The last Daily Create was finding a picture that tried to capture the Paul Bond “brazy” look. After some research, I concluded that the term “brazy” means tough and crazy. At first, I tried to take a picture of myself capturing the look, but I fell embarrassingly short so I moved on to a new idea. I love this picture of my cat because she looks like she’s sizing me up, I felt like this perfectly captured the brazy look; she’s tough but in a scary, chill way, like you don’t know her next move.

Assignment Bank

This week the 3 assignments I worked on were creating a playlist for my character, a radio bumper, a sound effect story, and a “Guess the Song.” I had a lot of fun with these assignments, especially because I felt that each process was very different.

To start, I made a playlist for my character: Krissy Ryan. I did this because I thought it would help me understand her a little more as well as other students who want to get to know Krissy’s likes and interests more. The genres that I included in this playlist include country, independent woman, but most importantly yearning for more. I think the most important song on this list is Belle from Beauty and the Beast because Krissy also feels like she was destined for more but doesn’t think she’ll ever get it. This playlist not only shows Krissy’s music interests but mine as well. I love all these songs so if you’re looking for some new music, this is a great place to start.

For the sound effect story assignment, the hardest part for me was coming up with an idea and executing it. Because my only options were what was available in the library, I kept running into walls. At first I wanted to do someone late for work, but I couldn’t find a frantic enough sound effect. It took me a few tries before I landed on Charlie Brown in class, and as much as I would love to take credit for choosing the idea, the idea chose me. I wanted to make what a classroom sounds like but the only sound effects for a teacher talking was Charlie Brown voices. I decided the best thing I could do was act like it was normal because for the Peanuts, it is. I like how the story came out, it sounds average and then the teacher talks and nobody blinks an eye.

This was a fun assignment and I’m curious to see if anyone else did this. I love playing “guess the song” I do it in my free time a lot, so when this assignment offered for me to make one I quickly took the chance. Spoiler alert: The song is “There’s a Hole in the Bottle” by Kelsea Ballerini. I picked this song because I’ve been listening to her a lot lately because I’m going to see on her tour and this song is easily one of my favorites. This assignment was surprisingly easy with the help of AI. The app that I used to remove the vocals is powered by AI and it separates the vocals and the instrumentals. Sometimes AI scares me but it can be pretty useful too, it was a good tool in this assignment.

I liked listening to everyone else’s radio bumpers. They were all so creative and clever, I wanted mine to be just as good. I had trouble coming up with an idea but I was inspired by Defunctland’s Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery. In the video he goes into depth about network identification and bumpers. As an homage to this video, I wanted to incorporate Disney Channel into my bumper. The connection from Disney Channel to DS106 Radio was pretty easy to make and from there I crafted my radio bumper. I used Adobe Audition for all of my audio editing assignments, and I find that it is very easy to use. This assignment was no exception, besides one transition challenge, editing a short audio assignment like this was simple.

Comments

I thought everyone’s takes on the assignments this week were really strong and I loved getting to listen to and read as many as I could. I thought Sam’s Club’s reflection on Moon Graffiti was well done and I could tell he put a lot of thought into it. I said “This reflection was so thorough and well-written! I also found the Moon Graffiti podcast creepy, especially considering that it could very well have been the outcome of the moon landing. I wonder what it was like for the person who wrote those speeches—how it felt to write one celebratory speech and another mourning the deaths of two individuals. Again, great job on this reflection!” The Moon Graffiti podcast left me with a weird feeling because it thoroughly creeped me out but the story was told so well that I couldn’t help but like it. I appreciated what Sam said and I liked being able to bounce my ideas off of his. I also commented on Your Weekly Adrenaline Rush’s radio bumper, I said “Ah! This is so lovely! You did a great job, and I commend you for being the first to do this assignment. I love the dial-in; it’s the classic feel of a radio bumper!” I was really impressed with their courage to be the first person to make a radio bumper. I put mine off as long as possible because I was nervous. Next, I commented on Live it Up With Liv’s Character Playlist, I wrote “This is so cool, and I bet it was fun to make! I see that there’s a trend of older artists and some country music. From what you’ve said about your character, I think she would absolutely listen to Amy Winehouse. I definitely want to try this with my character!” Liv inspired me to make a playlist for my character because looking at her assignment made me start thinking “oh that’s interesting, I wonder what I would do if I did this assignment?” So, I stopped wondering and got to work which is how I ended up with my assignment. Then, I commented on Rebecca’s Radiant Realm’s sound effect story. I said, “Wow! I think you killed this assignment. When I tried doing this, my audio clips were played one after the other, but I love how every sound in yours is overlapping. It creates the busy feel of the office because everything is happening simultaneously or one after the other. Great job!” I was vey impressed with the quality of their story. I felt what Jad Abumrad was saying about the dreamlike state of storytelling; I was in that office, I was hearing those snores. Lastly, I commented on The Digital Canvas and their sound effect story, I wrote “I love this take on the assignment! It’s something that everyone can relate to, and I like how it includes all the elements of an average day: the good, the bad, the great, and the ugly. Putting in different tones makes me feel like I am in this person’s shoes.” I appreciated how they put in all aspects of the day. Showing the realistic side of life made the story seem so real! All in all, everyone did great jobs and I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone better when we do group work

Conclusion

This was a good week! Not only am I proud of the work I did, but I can’t stop gushing over everyone else’s. The assignments were creative and I could tell everyone had an original take and put a lot of effort into their pieces. I’m looking forward to next week!