Category Archives: Assignments

Week 14: Final Project

M. Marshall 4.28

It is crazy to know that the semester is in its last week. I will probably never forget this class and some of the things that it’s taught me. I think going into it I did not have accurate expectations for what the course would be, but that’s a good thing. Over the semester, I’ve really honed in on my digital drawing skills, which was extremely beneficial for my final project that I animated. Even looking at the difference between my first daily creates artwork and more recent artwork I think there’s been a major shift in my understanding of and abilities at this skill.

I don’t even want to show it, it’s so bad!

I get really caught up on the fact that my work isn’t perfect or that I could’ve done better if I had just done something another way, and I think that is great for growth, but in this reflection I really want to appreciate how I’ve grown. I learned a lot about shading and color theory. My growth in understanding color theory is well represented by the Adelson’s Checker Shadow Illusion. If you can believe it, squares A and B are the same color

I can’t believe it either, don’t worry. That aside, the reason is our perception that there is shadow over a “white” tile is because our brains are filling in information. I cannot prove to you that what I am telling you is true, but I’ve used an eye dropper tool, and it is definitely the same. The best way to know is to check for yourself, but here’s the best way I have to show you. I drew a line right over, did not stop. It’s freaky.

Another thing I honed in on was my story telling skills and creating a world and thinking about nuances within that world. Toward the beginning I relied on things like other TV shows I had seen and couldn’t really go far beyond what I had come up with.

I honestly feel much better equipped in my creativity and storytelling. Over a relatively short period of time I was able to let myself be free to create ideas, even if I cringed a little bit.

I also worked on my video editing skills, which was really fun to learn about. I think I should create a vlog YouTube channel. I am honestly very proud of myself for some of the stuff I’ve made. I did some photo editing, and I really tried to challenge myself, but it was mostly just to be funny, here are some examples!

Video editing

Character Movie Trailer

Get Ready With Me!

Photo editing:

Propaganda

And last, but certainly not least, work on my character:

My character

Trading card

I worked really hard to have my character be consistent but also ever improving, hopefully, the viewers will feel that she is!

Let’s talk about my work timeline:

Week one:

I drew a lot to see what kind of thing I was aiming for and how it would look, the preliminary sketches definitely look very different from the end result. I focused on watching animation videos (which had really interesting techniques that ended up being too complicated for my level of knowledge). I would watch my cat as I drew to see how she looked at different angles. I wrote down the story and I spent a lot of time drawing out what I wanted the background to look like, where characters would move, all of that. I considered the story aspect a lot and the moving parts of how to make people committed to a character in a (very) short film. Toward the end of the week, I started on animating.

Progress update!

Week two:

This is the bulk time that I spent animating, I had scenes, lines, beginning drawings, just not a finished project. I became best friends with the layers section because it allowed me to move things around more easily, I could erase writing but not the speech bubbles behind it, I could use the lasso tool to move a character but not everything behind it. I probably spent around 20-25 hours animating it. It was no joke. It ended up only being about 2 minutes long, but I hope you can see the effort I put in to the quality of the drawings. For things like crying, took a slide, copied it, edited it a smidge, copied that, edited that a smidge more, until I was able to show a character crying. The scene that took the most work was definitely the laboratory scene.

Originally, I wanted it to have audio, but my voice does not work very well to be a guy, and I think that the meaningful thing here is that people can relate to the characters, and I thought that my voice would pull people out of the scene. I tried to add music, but I really struggled with the copyrighting policies of YouTube and finding music that I liked, so unfortunately I ultimately had to scrap that.

Previous knowledge of my storyline is definitely beneficial to understand the plot. In the radio show, the ending was more depressing. I think that this would have been more long and drawn out and show more characters, but by the end I was running very low on time, unfortunately we cannot win ’em all. I was thinking a lot about how I wanted to show the intersection of humanity and technology. In the story, the animals gain human like cognition from the combination of artificial intelligence and the animals’ pre-existing sentience. In this, the government is mostly able to stop emotions in animals because it restricts the parts of the brain creating them, like the amygdala. In the end, that combination of artificial intelligence and sentience is able to save D41SY because she recognizes her owner and the love that she has for him overrides government interference. I really feel proud of this project because it really wouldn’t be me if the end of the story wasn’t something about how love perseveres and real love can’t be broken by technology and the government.

Thank you for tuning in to my creative process! I hope you enjoyed!

Week 14 and Final Project.

Here is Carson’s and my final project: https://cybertalks.umwsites.net/

We created a short podcast series on topics like tech noir films, AI, and privacy. We built a UMW site to host all the episodes. This was a really fun project where I got to apply both my audio editing and website-building skills. We recorded in the DKC podcast studio, used Soundtrap to edit the episodes, and hosted them on SoundCloud.

I loved being able to be creative with this final project and produce a mini podcast show.

Here are the podcast episodes in case you don’t want to visit the site.

I’ve really enjoyed this class, and I’m so happy I had the opportunity to be creative. I learned a lot about audio production, graphic design, and video creation. Thank you for a fun class.

Final

After 3 weeks of work and lack of work, I am finally completing my work. I put together a lot of elements for this project, using audio, video, and other storytelling elements to create a short video about AI. Meet S.A.I. (Smart Artificial Intelligence), a cute little AI who definitely won’t turn evil. For this project my main workspace was Canva. I used their make-a-cartoon option and began from there, looking through images and tools that I could use to create this piece of work. It was the easiest, unfortunately, but I found my path in the way of shadow figurines to represent my characters. I wanted a short horror story inspired by the Twilight Zone and two-sentence horror relying on the watcher’s imagination and foreshadowing.

I wanted something creepy, though honestly there are a few more things I wish I added to add depth to my story, more sounds and alternate images to show the passage of time, since there was no sun I would not accomplish this affect. The other tool I used was Audacity trying a few things that I had considered like moving audio. From one side to the other, in the end I edited lots of sounds however I did not end up using everything that I created. I used AI voices to make my characters talk though there were only two. Though I for the AI the voice took more effort I tried to reflect how it was growing and becoming stronger through it’s actions and voice. That slowly became more and more human. Taking on our characteristics despite it’s distaste more man kind.

Choosing the setting was one of the hardest things for me, since I did not want this to take place in a modern setting but was unsure of how late into the future I would choose. However, visual and designs are something that was stressed so naturally I took a while to think about it.

Futuristic road vectors, photos and PSD files | Free download Using a sight known as FreePik.com I was able to find the perfect visuals to use. Looking into a few options for the settings. I decided that most things would simply take place in the main characters office/Lab. So, I did not end up need too many visual items and just had many extra pieces.

  • Week 3 – visual/design
  • Week 4 – audio
  • Week 5 – video
  • Week 6 – video
  • Weeks 7 – design
  • Week 8 – AI tool lab

Above is one of the audios I created but did not have the chance to use, I got to play around with moving audio and what side the sound would come out of. Far easier than the way I attempted to do it originally. I enjoyed making it even though way too much time went into something that’s not even 5 minutes long. Spent an hour a day on audio alone, very ‘fun’

Audio can create a scene of space and scenes invoking memories allowing you to visualize them since there was a visual component the audio did not have to do all the heavy lifting. So, I focused on ambiance sounds instead. I played with filters to give the impression of time moving as well. I wanted to do a spiral into madness, but it did not come out the way was hoping so I didn’t do it.

Although I did not select this one it was a favorite. Sounds nice but like the rest they were rather loud or aggressive and I had to go to audacity to soothe it, quiet it, or just adjust parts I didn’t like. Did that for every audio then remembered I have bad ears so even of it sounds good for me I fear it’s loud for others. Timing was a big thing for me since I needed to feel like the dramatic pauses could be felt, the tension in the air, and the deep anxiety that accompanies the unknown. I ended up using multiple Ai tools like robot voice generator, a picture generator, and Human voice generator. All tools that brought my vision to life.

Link For Canva

You can see a few of the layers there, of what I was doing, creating elements, editing elements and putting it together to tell a story. I write a script and brought it to life that is what creating is. Next is the actual upload hope you enjoy!

Project update

M. Marshall 4.24

I am really excited to show this! I have learned about the pains of animating, but I really appreciate a free place to do it (I will update the name of the app in the morning lol) that has good (enough) drawing tools. I drew out backgrounds for the scenes and each scene has a short drawn out animation (I will provide three examples from the beginning because there are quite a few) to show what the idea is.

For example, the drawing above, you can see the living room sketch and the cat walking sketch.

For this one, you can see the D41SY and her owner watching tv (I’m working on animating steam from the mug)

And other cute things! It definitely has been and will be quite a lot of work, but I feel good.

I have been wondering if I could more effectively convey this with music, but there’s too much to convey without words, so I’ve been considering how to go about it… Only time will tell!

I have really focused on creating a design simple enough to redraw, but complex enough to look nice. I think it’s gonna look good.

It is late and I am sick, so I will update tomorrow with my weekly summary, my final project, and my final project discussion post!

Week 13

This week, Carson and I divided the work for our podcast show. I created a website for our show using UMW Sites, while Carson focused on writing the scripts. Most of our time was spent handling the logistics and preparing to record and edit our episodes so we can upload them soon.

Here is our site:

About us

(The podcasts aren’t live yet, but we do have an About Us page if you’d like to check it out!)

Progress update!

M. Marshall 4.17

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!

Trailer

M. Marshall 4.11

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!

Cyber Talks Trailer

Carson and I started this project with the idea of creating a podcast duo where we talk about different tech noir, cyberpunk, and AI topics. We’re covering things like film reviews, AI for good, and privacy. We used Canva to create the trailer together, and we plan on launching a subdomain where we’ll post the podcast as part of our brand.

It was a bit difficult to make a trailer for a podcast since it’s all conversation based, but overall the process was fun. I’m really excited to see how this turns out and where we can take it next.

Trailer For Final

For this project I used 3 sources a Canva was the main source where I did my best to bring my character to life. Even if it doesn’t have any warmth or a pulse. For my final project I plan to create a story about an Ai that gains ‘life’ an awareness of its existence and what it may mean in the world. To explain it is a young life that has been created like a baby. Not fully fleshed out yet but that’s what the next few weeks are for!

I really wanted to make it smoother however I am not a professional animator, so I am not going to stress about it. Still another thing is that I wished I centered it better, but I forgot my computer sits to the side, so it only seemed center till I UPLOADED IT ;-; Aside from that I like how the sounds came out. I used iMovie and had a select few options but with volume control and clipping it came out just right!

ALSO

MIKU BLUE

Ahahaha that is the vibe here!

I made it in Canva like I said using shapes and animation affects to bring it to life. It’s simple but each movement is me staring at the screen wondering how tiny a frame can be before I can click on it. Unlike Audacity I can’t just zoom in.

Still I overall liked how it came out could’ve used more sounds but still really good in my books.