In order to flesh out Veronica, or as I like to call her Vee, as a character even more, I thought I would give a sort of backstory as to why she is in the field she is in now, or why she is the way she is. To give context (but not too much as you will have to watch the video to see), she starts off in the criminal justice system working as a detective, but realizes the corruption that comes with it, and decides to go rogue. This was a bit difficult, as I am not very good at drawing, so visualizing her as a character was hard. So, I decided to keep it ambiguous for now, but still include realistic images and videos in order to accurately recreate her backstory. I found most of these images and videos either from Pixabay.com or from Canva and downloading it. I edited on ClipChamp which is included on Microsoft 365. It is simple and gets the job done as far as completing this assignment. After, I was proud of what I made. It isn’t perfect, but I think it doesn’t look too amateur and gets the story across perfectly.
Category Archives: Assignments
Become a Pinterest Plant Parent
For this video assignment, I decided to talk about the thing I can’t stop talking about: plants! All of the information included in this video is from my own experience becoming a plant parent this year. I included some pictures of my plants as a character witness.
To create this video, I used Microsoft ClipChamp and recorded everything directly in the software. Ideally, I would have been in a room that is not quite so echo-ey, but I didn’t have the ability to do that this week!
Midnight in February
It’s funny how perspective can change everything. From this video, it look cold but dry, nothing around except bushes and grass on the brink of death. But just outside of the reach of this video, there’s snow that had fallen the previous day. Shooting this video of the cold winter night was an assignment I didn’t think I would be doing, just me sitting in the cold. What it does though, is emphasize connecting with watchers without sound or a lot of background activity, just you, and the cold night sky. I think this assignment is a reminder that in a video, one can control what you can and cannot see, preventing crucial information that help help in understanding the surroundings and context.
30 sec memory
This a compilation of the clips from when me and my family took a trip to miami and went on a crusie this past summer. I put a black and white fliter over top of it to make it seem more like a memory
Tiktok video assignment
This is a short little tiktok of DK’s pet/ sidekick, the little puppy Bane is often getting into trouble or making a messy that he has to clean up. It is important to always keep a eye on him because who knows what he can get into
Wake up!
One of the video assignments I chose for this week was the assignment “Signing Words”. I have never really gotten into sign language or learned anything about it besides learning the motion for thank you a while ago, but I am friends with some people who know a good amount. I wanted to take the opportunity of seeing this assignment to learn how to finger spell and explore a bit of ASL. I am a Spanish minor so other languages aren’t too out of the ordinary for me, but the commonality of ASL versus Spanish are pretty far apart. I chose a little phrase to spell so please look and see if you can guess!
(P.S. the title of this post is a hint!)
Back to 2021
One of the video assignments that really caught my eye was filming as if I was speaking to my sixteen year old self. This was back in 2021-22 and the reason it caught my eye was because it immediately reminded me of how much I was going through at that time. I wanted to be able to make a video to show how much I’ve grown since then. I was also challenged in my attempt to not overshare. In my mind when completing the assignment I thought back to movies that state that if you tell your past self any details about what happens in the future then that future will not occur. I thought it would be a good challenge to uphold.
If you are interested, then you can listen here!
Revisiting My Goals
Now that we’re a third of the way through the class, I feel like I’ve made some real progress. I’ve had the chance to grow my creativity, and even though there were times I doubted my work, seeing my classmates vote for Finn’s Walk Home post gave me a confidence boost. It reminded me that we really are our own biggest critics.
One of my original goals was to explore new tools, and I’ve definitely done that—especially with Canva, which I now use regularly for this class. I’ve embedded assignments I completed using Canva below.
Something I didn’t mention before but have also struggled with is finding time to work on my personal website. I’ve wanted to get more comfortable with WordPress and Domain of One’s Own, but it always felt like something I’d put off. Now that it’s required for class, I’ve finally had the time to use it more, and I’m getting the hang of it.
A big highlight for me was seeing my website get a shoutout in the Week 5 video by Jim—that definitely made me happy!
Looking ahead, I want to keep pushing myself creatively and take more risks with my work. I also hope to refine my storytelling skills and get even more comfortable with the tools I’ve been exploring. So far, ds106 has been a challenge in the best way, and I’m excited to see where the rest of the semester takes me!
What did I sign?
This assignment requires you to take a video of yourself or someone else and finger spell a word or a phrase in Sign Language alphabet and let others guess what you have spelled. Make sure you do a word that is bigger then 5 letters so you can learn some of the letters. Link to assignment: https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/signing-words/
For this assignment, I signed something related to my character. It’s just two words, and it’s very connected to them. I hope you guys can guess what I signed.
This was really fun because I learned ASL in high school and haven’t practiced in a while, so I had to get back into the groove of things. But I really enjoyed it!
Tips for your characters
10 tips…so many different options to do. What do you have 10 tips on? You could inform me on tips when going to the movie theatre, tips to get through quarantine, tips to get through school, ds106….hehe. Anything you want! What are you an expert in? Link to assignment: https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/10-tips/
Alright, for this assignment, I wanted to use an AI avatar and a synthetic voice because it’s from my character’s perspective. I’ve included some of my previous assignments related to my character for anyone who isn’t familiar with them.
Instead of my usual Canva workflow, I used HeyGen. I had never used it before, I found it online, but I highly recommend it for anyone looking for an alternative to Canva. They offer a free version as well as different premium plans, but for this assignment, I just used the basic features.
It was pretty easy to use, most of it was drag and drop. You can create your own AI avatar, select a voice for them or use one of the available options, then add a script. They also provide options to include elements like graphics, images, videos, audio, and more. For this project, I added text, a script, videos, and my avatar. After arranging everything, I added transitions and edited the background audio to sound more natural. I also adjusted the voice, though I wasn’t completely satisfied with the selection.
Overall, it’s a great application and I would definitely use it again.