Week 7s assignments i found entertaining especially the Terminator shootout, I decided to create a tweet regarding the shootout as if it was a actually LAPD statement. I used canva to create both the tweet and the propaganda.
The three daily creates were all very simple and easy to complete
I think these posts specifically speak to Lady Birds dissatisfaction with the current state of the world. She is anti-government and understands that society is inevitable an infinite cycle that feeds on itself and causes suffering.
I think specifically she would like the idea that this highlights the empty promises of politicians that are often not seen during their campaigning. Politicians consistently make promises that they are not able to keep and even when it is in your face directly people still refuse to understand that politicians don’t often fulfill things they say especially when it comes towards helping working class people. Lady Bird would think that people understand this is not only a need by a must if ever social change was on the horizon.
My disabilities and off and on month long illness caught up with me to the point that the health center and ODR sent me home to recuperate and be closer to my doctors, so I have not had a very productive week unfortunately. However, I was able to at the very least get my propaganda assignment done and I feel quite good about it. I’m really hoping that being home and on spring break will help me finally recover and get better so that I can finally start getting back in the swing of things.
Growing up in a very political family and working in a very political counterculture scene, propaganda is something I am very familiar with. However, I’ve never made it before. I decided to use my own roots that overlap with my character’s to use this opportunity to spread a message that seems to have been lost over the years that has been making waves in recent times especially with the current administration. Goth is political. It always has been, and it always will be. It stemmed from the punk culture of the 70s and 80s, the music has always been steeped in allegory, and it’s more important now than ever to understand that and use those beliefs to fight for the same rights and freedoms that we’ve been fighting for the whole time; it’s life or death.
I hopped onto Canva, grabbed some commonly associated political symbols with the goth scene, and got to designing. It’s a fairly simple design as I am still very sick, but I overlapped and overlayed some various paper textures to give it that old school punk propaganda feel, I chose a font reminiscent of counterculture zines, and made sure to outline it to contrast the font color with the background color. I purposely chose to make the outline of the word “political” blue because punk/goth ideals lean very left and blue is the color most commonly associated with that.
While simple, I feel like propaganda should be simple. Colors, fonts, and symbols to catch the eye, but it should be able to be digested in a quick glance without a need to think much about it. The message should be blunt and clear. And this is one that will always be important.
This week I used Canva a lot to create media to represent how I would format a movie scene into a news article, and to create my own propaganda that connects to Eric Little. Although these were 2 separate assignments, I thought it would be a cool idea to combine them into one, having both the new article and propaganda on the front page of this website’s newspaper, The Digital Canvas Times. For the movie scene, I used the nightclub scene from The Terminator, and used a sense of ambiguity behind the event to frame the shooting as a real event that was trying to be published as soon as possible even without having all of the information. Furthermore, the propaganda I put together had a prominent theme of structure that resonates well with Eric Little and his backstory as someone that’s only done what he is told. I also wanted to add different teasers such as identifying the conspiracy Eric is caught up in being an underground anarchy against the societal elites known as The Arrow, and adding a wanted poster of him in the bottom of the newspaper cover.
I also did the 3 daily creates this week which I will show below, as has become tradition.
I really enjoyed this assignment, I think it’s interesting to be in the position to create a newspaper and be In charge of where things go. Before deciding on the story, I had to choose between the ways in which I would be covering the story. It was not difficult as I love Canva however, I did not know the full ins and outs of the story so I did s little bit of extra work so I would be able to create a coherent story. I then opened a google doc and started to type versions of the story. After that I put the works into Canva and started to rearrange them while adding photos. There were a couple of times where photos I would download would change the entire look of the newspaper but I was able to shift things around and make the paper look the way I wanted.
I was excited for this assignment as propaganda can be fun to create. I think it is able to highlight the effects of society and various social movements are able to progress. When thinking about the specific topic I wanted to tackle, I wanted to do something that was obvious. I think that posters do not have to have extremely layered meaning to be effective. I began to think about my character and what she would be thinking as this is similar to a video topic I did for my last assignment. This is how I ended up with my idea of doing an anti-propaganda poster about the effects of technological advances used against humanity.
I then, started to think about ways I wanted to execute this plan. I first started by choosing the pigeon, I went back and forth between the animals I wanted to use. I first thought about Barry from the bee movie, because there is a quote he uses “dedicating our lives to the white man” which I thought was funny however, it wasn’t really what I wanted. I then started to think about a bugs life and how the ants wanted to create an uprising. This then lead me to thinking about pigeons. This is because humans domesticated pigeons for our own good and then moved on leaving them to suffer. This is how I feel about the rising use of AI and the possible effects of using robots as opposed to humans. This is because large corporations will choose to use a robot as opposed to using people because it is the easier option. Technology evolved and that’s why pigeons got left behind.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
For week 7 I was able to once again use my newly learned photo and video editing skills. In my post You Are What You Eat I created a propaganda poster. For video editing I made a digital news article in my post called Breaking News. Lastly, I made a post called Runa Reacts where I have my character comment with her own fake Twitter account on other propaganda posters.
This week I created 3 Daily Creates which can be found in my post called Inside My Creative Mind.
For this Daily Create I was supposed to create a gif from a scene from one of my favorite movies. I chose the Disney movie Tangled because it was my favorite to watch as a kid. For creating the gif I used MakeGif and added the captions Here comes the smolder because that is the funniest part from that scene.
For this Daily Create I was supposed to show the opposite of my usual perspective every day. Normally I am sitting doing schoolwork on my laptop for hours so I took a picture from the backside.
For this Daily Create I was supposed to write a fairy tale. For mine I chose to do the typical story about a prince rescuing a princess from a dragon in a tower, but I did mine with a twist by writing that the princess was the actual dragon who was just cursed into dragon form and was waiting on a prince to revert her back into human form.