It’s crazy that next week is the last week of class. I’ve really enjoyed the creativity and tools i’ve learned to use in this class. This week was pretty essay in terms of prepping for the final project.
The fearless femmes and I agreed to meet on Sunday afternoon to brainstorm how we wanted to film the episodes for Real Housewives of Cyberpunk. We brainstormed ideas and agreed to meet and film scenes on Wednesday. During our meeting we also established who would do bumpers, edits, and commercials for our show.
We filmed about 4 – 5 scenes on Wednesday which is great progress. We still have a lot to still film but, we’v planned out our scripts and agreed to meet again Monday afternoon to finish the scenes. This ill give us plenty of time to edit and focus on filming bumpers and commercials for the show throughout the week.
Overall I think it was a very successful week. I really enjoyed watching other classmates trailers and i’m very excited to see how everyone’s turns out. I love working with the Fearles sFemmes! We work together really well and have so much fun while working. It’s really easy to bounce ideas off each other and we end up with a great final result.
See you guys next week with the final and finished project!
But here’s what I’ll say here: I’ve been watching all the YouTube videos on cat animating that I can find (admittedly, not as many as a girl could hope for). I’m in the beginning stages of animating, it’s not perfect but I’ve been working on my drawing skills this semester. And I’m about halfway through with a script/plans for the pictures. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of substantive things to say about it that I didn’t already discuss yesterday. So that’s the week 13 update!
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!
It’s been a while since I contributed to the Walk of Life Project, and an even longer while since I watched To Live and Die in LA, so why not kill two birds with one mashup? As far as Walk of Life endings go, this one doesn’t do much other than add to the list. Mostly I just wanted to get a picture of adding a second soundtrack in iMovie:
What I did here was import my video file and my MP3 soundtrack, then overlap and align them in the editing window. I split the video with Cmd-B where I wanted to second soundtrack to take over, and dropped the video volume to zero after that point. I split the added audio at the same point and reduced the volume a little before it.
This week was calm and fun. My group got started with the trailer really early in the week which took a lot of the stress off the trailer. Our trailer turned out great! Martina did great with the editing. The Fearless Femmes had a really fun time creating the trailer and I’m so excited to see what our final project. To see more of our process you can check it out here.
This weeks creates were much more exciting than previous week I Feel like they actually called for more creativity than recent weeks. I completed three this week and these might be the last, but we’ll see. Here are my daily creates for the week:
I absolutely loved filming the trailer for the final project. The Fearless Femmes decided to get together again and make the final project and trailer. We all loved working together on the radio show and decided to work together again.
First we met on Wednesday the week before the project was due and brainstormed ideas. It was a bit difficult to settle on an idea for a while but then we settled on “The Real Housewives” concept we were all really excited and fans of the show and started throwing out ideas that could relate to cyber and tech noir.
We met Monday to film the trailer, we filmed in the green screen room in the HCC. It was really fun and creative. We had a fun time and just bounced ideas off each other. The only problem we ran into was getting the camera to focus, but we figured out pretty soon.
Here is he finished project, we’re still brainstorming the actual show but i’m very excited to see the outcome.
This week has also been on the lighter side, similar to last week, which I’ve been thankful for. Unlike last week, the final project is now impending, so my group for the radio show (Emily H., Sam H., Brigid W.) decided to work together again for the final project! We had a Zoom meeting to discuss ideas, and Emily edited together a very beautiful trailer using footage/pictures from all 4 of us, which you can read about here. Or just go straight to the page on YouTube.
I also did 3 daily creates, here they are:
National Pets Day
Secret Agent Story
How long could I make it in the wild with the proper tools?
How long could you survive without a ds106 post? Not long! Cause its #4life.
Finally this week was a creative week of daily creates. For the past couple of weeks they were pretty simple and niche, but this week they actually called for some creativity. I completed three creates this week.
The first create was Monday, The prompt was to generate a random animal. The animal I got was a giant panda. I don’t know a lot about them so I looked up a couple interesting facts and included them on my daily create post. Check it out here:
The next create I completed on Wednesday was my favorite of this week. The prompt was to make a poem ot of a sentence that you overheard that day. I overheard my sister talking about job seeking and she said “why do I keep seeing this job” so that’s what I made the poem about. It was pretty difficult but I didn’t want to spend to long on it. You can check it out here:
The Final Crate I finished was Friday. It’s National Dog day so I included a picture of my dog teddy going on his daily walks that he loves. You can check it out here:
I believe this was the last week of required daily creates. I really enjoyed doing these, sometimes it was annoying to remember, but I really appreciate how it helped with my creativity and thinking outside the box.
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!
This week was pretty low stress which was nice after finishing up podcasts. I really enjoyed listening to everyone’s podcasts and seeing how creative everyone was with their ideas. I also really enjoyed the process of creating the podcast with the Fearless Femmes. It was my first podcast and I think it came out great. Listening to everyone else’s podcast inspired new ideas for me in terms of bumpers and commercial ideas. To see my full in detail reaction t this weeks podcasts you can click here:
I participated in 3 daily creates this week. These may even be the last three of the semester but, we’ll see how hectic the week is with getting ready for the final project and trailers. To see the daily creates I completed this week you can click here:
I have already started planning for my final project and Trailer Due next week. As I mentioned previously I really enjoyed working ithb the Fearless Femmes. We work really well togeher so we decided to team up together again for the final.
We have some really exciting ideas for the show! We met Wednesday to go over ideas and brainstorm. We came up with Final Project idea and agreed to film our trailer for the project Monday.
I really enjoyed everyones podcasts and daily creates this week. I can’t wait to see how creative everyone gets with their final projects and trailers! See you next week.
