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Week 8 Is Just Great

Week 8 was a chill, welcome back to school!

Daily Creates

This week I was tasked with three daily creates, and I am ashamed to say, I dropped the ball. I started off strong with Tuesday’s prompt which was to use his RepeatAfterMe project. I used the lyric “I love people I don’t like” from Olivia Rodrigo’s Brutal because it was short and concise, but it’s also a lyric I relate a lot to. I thought it came out nice, and the scattered letters relates to how the song sounds. I also thought it was interesting to see other people’s take on this assignment. I felt that no matter what, the project came out good.

The next prompt I did was Friday’s which was to celebrate pi day. I used a picture last year from when the CRUC was serving apple pie. It was my reward because right before I got lunch, I had gotten vaccinated and I hate needles. The pie was kind of cold, but still good.

This week, I did my math wrong. I had thought I done three, but it wasn’t until Friday that I realized I had only done two. To remedy this, I went back to Monday’s prompt which was “Make a Song Data Graphics.” I used Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up because of the repetitive chorus and to symbolize the repetitiveness, I used a Venn diagram.

Comments

I found it hard to find things to comment on this week. As I mentioned earlier, I thought the responses for the RepeatAfterMe prompt were cool. I responded to Todd Conway’s post, and I commented “I like how this turned out. The black background with the gray falling text makes it look like a word storm. Ironic, because the lyric describes a sunny day.” The picture gave a good visual representation of the lyrics. I also commented on Ryee’s post, I said “This came out so good! It’s interesting because the words on the screen convey calmness (or at least the effort to remain calm) while the art in the back feels like chaos. It looks like the two parts of one mind during an anxiety attack or something of that nature.” The visual conveying the opposite of what the lyric were saying gave the post such a cool look! I wrapped up the week by commenting on Liv’s pie/pi post, I said “My grandma’s apple pie is also my favorite!” Which is true, my grandma makes apple pie for me and my dad every time we go to her house for Thanksgiving. I also replied to Cinder’s post; they said “It’s not pi day without having some pi” so I commented “This is the best way to celebrate!”

Final Thoughts

This week was a great way to get back into the swing of school. I’m excited to work with my group to create a radio show.

Seventh Heaven

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.

Krissy’s Faves

It was interesting to look at these posts through the eyes of Krissy. It took me a minute to gather the posts that I wanted Krissy to react to, but eventually I was able to put together a few that Krissy would have a lot to say about.

Your Weekly Adrenaline Rush

I think Krissy would like this post because Sapphira is an empowering femme fatale. I think Krissy would look up to her in a lot of ways, especially as she progresses into her mission. A lot of people view powerful women as rule breakers and society is made to believe they are villains. However, Krissy would know better than this and even relate to it as she views herself as powerfull. Although Krissy’s archetype is not Femme Fatale, like Sapphira, they are both independent women and I think they would be friends.

Live it Up With Liv

I think Krissy would be horrified and appalled by this newspaper. She would understand being frusterated with people online but to actively wish death on people is terrible. Additionally, she’d be even more terrified of the twist that the people who used the #deathto hashtag would die. Krissy would be terrified of this concept and it would remind her of how scary and powerful technology has become. She would use this as a reminder while she goes off to fight her mission.

Rylie’s Riveting Region

Krissy would be terrified if she heard this on her radio. She doesn’t own any smart home devices because her family thinks they make you lazy. However, just because she doesn’t have these devices, doesn’t mean she doesn’t empathize with the people who do. Krissy would also be terrified for what this means for the future of technology, will people find a fix for this problem or will they just become more sneaky to avoid getting caught. Maybe this is what ultimately leads to the demise of the future.

Not Cracking Any Jokes

Crack an egg Make it rain

I was excited to start this assignment because I think studying propaganda is very interesting. I struggled to come up with an theme at first, I was overwhelmed with ideas, it felt like there were too many options. I eventually settled on the price of eggs, because it’s a point of frustration for me and a lot of Americans. On February 13th, apnews.com published an article “US egg prices hit a record high of $4.95 and are likely to keep climbing” These are crazy prices when eggs are a necessity for most people, and it seems like some politicians aren’t willing to do anything about it.

To make this poster, I used Canva. A big thing I wanted to incorporate into this piece were elements such as colors, shapes, and general themes you would normally see in American propaganda. A lot of American propaganda that I saw when I was looking for examples was very patriotic, but I think this is a low point for America’s economy, so I wanted to use the patriotism in an ironic way. The pan and dollars falling were already on Canva so I added them to the poster. To get the egg, I googled an image of an egg being cracked, uploaded it to Canva and erased all the parts so only the egg shell was left. I then put all the pieces together and I think it came out nicely. For the text, I wanted to have something short and catchy to act as a slogan of sorts.

I’m really happy with how this poster came out, I think the ironic patriotism perfectly compliments the distaste many Americans have for the high egg prices. To make you giggle, here is the tweet that inspired me to make my poster about egg prices.

Back in my day there was so much toilet paper and eggs, that we would throw them at the houses of our enemies

What’s Black and White and Read All Over?

For the Newspaper assignment I chose to do the TechNoir shooting scene, and I included some other easter eggs for Terminator fans.

For this project I chose to use the Bar shooting scene because it had a more diverse group of people to talk about, so I thought it would give me more interesting perspectives. When I started the assignment, I thought I wouldn’t have much to write about but as I was doing it, I had to keep resizing the newspaper because I was running out of space. There was so much more to talk about than I expected, I wanted to include a brief overview of the event, an eye witness report, a statement from the owner of the club, commentary, and more. There was simply not enough room. I used a Newspaper template on Canva to evenly space everything out, I also googled the pictures that I used for each story. The articles on the side are supposed to be Easter Eggs to the movie. For example, I put up a missing poster for Sarah Connor and I made the phone number as close to T-800 as I could so the joke is that he submitted the missing persons report. There’s more easter eggs in this newspaper, Terminator related and not, but I don’t want to give them all away. Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment. It was a good way to get creative and it didn’t take too long to complete.

Week 6 Was A Six-cess!

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!

Krissy Meets Dr. Oblivion

My scene takes places when Krissy gets to the future and is exploring all the new tech products that the future has. She assumes Dr. Oblivion is similar to an Alexa, but she is mistaken and Dr. O is not afraid to tell her why. I used Sims 4 to help animate my idea and my friend was the voice actor for Krissy. The scene is listed below.

The process to make this video was long. To get Dr. Oblivion’s responses, I tried different lines from Krissy and used trial and error to find the best responses. I wanted to showcase Dr. O’s sarcastic personality but ran into the problem that his responses were just a tad limited. I eventually figured out that if I downloaded multiple audio clips, I could edit them together to get the lines I wanted. Once I had my conversation, I used Sims 4 to animate my scene. I thought this was the best medium because it allowed me to have complete control over the character design, lighting set, camera angle, and anything else. I then used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit everything together. A conflict I kept having was the screen recording of the Sims 4 was formatted as .avi, and Adobe doesn’t support .avi, however, I couldn’t go back and find a different method to record because I invested too much time into filming the Sims scenes (it may not look like it, but it took a lot of precise movements to get the camera where I wanted.) After I tried some different methods that didn’t work, I was able to use clipchamp to export the .avi into .mp4. This left me with a little bit of a blurry video, but it was the best option. My friend helped me out by voicing Krissy so she sent me an audio clip and I plugged it into the video. For Dr. Oblivion’s voice, I tried to generate the lip synced video but it was taking 30 minutes per download, and with editing together everything it would have added hours to a project that had already taken the better part of the day. Once everything else was finished, I uploaded the video to YouTube and the rest is history.

Revisiting Goals

I looked over my goals for the semester and they can be boiled down to 3 simple sentences. 1. Improve my skills further than a basic understanding for some softwares 2. Utilize skills picked up from this class to make learning how to use new softwares easier 3. Better my time management

Improve My Skills Further Than a Basic Understanding For Some Softwares

    When I took Intro to Digital Studies, I used a lot of different creative softwares for my projects. I would learn how to use the software, make my project, submit it, and repeat the cycle. This semester is a second chance. I already have a basic understanding of those softwares and can now hone my skills. I improved the most in my audio editing. The software is easy to use, and I like being creative with it. The radio bumper, sound effect story, and Guess the Song assignments took me no longer than a few minutes. I also used it to edit my Video Essay. My voiceover was less than perfect, and using Adobe Premiere made editing the audio complex, but it was a breeze with Adobe Audition! I’m happy to say that I have met this goal and hope to improve more throughout the course.

    Utilize Skills Picked Up From This Class to Make Learning How to Use New Softwares Easier

    Unfortunately, I’m still mastering the softwares that I already knew and I haven’t had the time nor the patience to try out a new software. Therefore, I have not met this goal yet.

    Better My Time Management

    I felt overwhelmed by the hefty to-do lists when I started this class. I remember Week 2 especially was tough. I definitely have improved my time management by utilizing my to-do lists and learning how long an assignment usually takes me. For example, at the beginning of the week, I write down all my tasks on one to-do list, and then I make a second to-do list and decide what my tasks will be for that day. I normally decide what tasks I will do based on how much time I have that day. This strategy helps me stay organized and ahead of my assignments without feeling overwhelmed by the volume of tasks. Additionally, the workload has simply died down. Even on weeks where there’s a lot, it’s still not as much as the Digital Bootcamp Weeks. So, I did meet this goal, but the goal met me halfway.

    High Five! – Week 5 Summary

    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!

    Attack of the Robotic Bees – Black Mirror Video Essay

    I love video essays, especially for movies and tv shows. I watch them in my free time a lot and I really enjoyed watching the Tony Zhou videos. When I was making my video essay, I was trying to emulate what I had seen in the videos before. In this video, I talk about the world building in this episode as well as the movement composure and the audio in this scene. I also tried my best to incorporate that “Therefore & But” method in this video although it was a bit of a struggle. I really wanted to talk about those three things, but I had trouble figuring where the “Therefore” and the “But” went and I had issues trying not so say “and then.” When I was making the video, I recorded my script and added it plus the scene into Adobe Premiere Pro. From there, I tried to cut up the scene so that what I was talking about matched what was being shown.

    Help Wanted!

    The biggest challenge of this assignment was finding a scene I could use in my video. Normally, if I want to use a video from YouTube I screen record the video. However there were essentially no full scenes on YouTube, even this one wasn’t the full scene and it was blurry. I tried to google how to do it, but most answers were talking about using pirating websites. I liked this assignment and I wouldn’t mind doing it again in the future for another class or for a final project, so if anyone has any tips on how to download high quality scenes in full please leave a comment. I need help!