Category Archives: VisualAssignments

first try at gifs and succeeding?

I did the Say It Like The Peanut Butter assignment from the assignment bank because I’ve always wanted to learn how to make gifs. I chose the movie Black Swan because when I was thinking of movies with scenes that capture its essence, Nina’s wing flutter movement immediately came to mind. I think this movement she does completely captures the movie as it is the character’s move key move during the ballet.

To make the gif I used this Animated GIF Maker I found where you compile all the images and with a few quick settings choices, it makes a gif. I tried this a few times as I knew I needed a lot of snapshots to create a gif that’s not too choppy but I severely underestimated how many I would need. I uploaded both of my attempts, the second one being the better of my tries and I stopped after that one because it felt like a smoother gif would require me to basically just record a video.

first try

second try


Go, Vote!

I decided to have Bing AI photo generator design a poster to encourage people to go vote! The prompt I gave it is “create a poster to encourage people to ‘Go, Vote!’”.

Here is what I got:

This image seems very patriotic and like one I would see if not for the “Ec’omt” at the bottom. It is weird to me that AI image generators toss in random letters or words when they aren’t sure what to put in the space.

What’s in your bag?

Your purse, bag, packpack, murse, whatever, is your constant companion throughout your adult life. What are the essentials in your bag that get you through the day? Take a picture of the items and detail each of them with a description.

Here’s my everyday carry.


Emptying out my bag and placing all the essential items on the floor reminded me of the artwork for one of my favourite albums, The Rich Man’s Eight Track Tape by Big Black.



Go Phillies!

The first task I choose to do from the assignment bank is titled “Your Favorite Photo.” The title speaks for itself, and the instructions are really straightforward: just share your best picture. Above is my favorite picture of the exterior of the Philadelphia Phillies ballpark on a gorgeous summer evening. I have several reasons why this is my favorite picture, but the main one is that I love the Philadelphia Phillies. I have been a lifelong Philadelphia Sports supporter who was always really interested in baseball in general and the Phillies in particular. The Phillies were among the top MLB teams at the time I started following sports, and they even took home a world series title in 2008. Even though baseball games are extremely slow, I always enjoy watching them since it gave me something to do for a few hours while I relax. The second reason this is my favorite picture is that it reminds me of all the wonderful times I had with my dad when we used to go to so many Flyers, Eagles, and Phillies games. Growing up, I had the good fortune to attend Phillies playoff and World Series games, so I have always loved attending the games. This picture simply reminds me of all the wonderful childhood memories that my dad and I were able to create. Last but not least, this is my favorite picture since, come summertime, who doesn’t enjoy baseball games? Nothing like lounging back, enjoying some hot dogs, and watching a baseball game. Go, Phillies!

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river”

image of a person in a boat on a river, overlaid on a pattern of rectangles.I wanted to do a random visual assignment, so I sorted the entries in the section from old to new and picked one from the first page, the One Shot assignment. To make it AI-related I decided to get a generated image to start with. I went to the Rundown AI tools page and picked the Magic Studio AI Image Generator for no other reason than it was free-ish and looked like it would do the job, i.e. create a scene from a text input. As I was wondering what to say, these lyrics came to mind:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

That seemed as good as anything. I made a few versions. They had very little variation, so I just picked this one. The first thing I did was see if I could remove their watermark, not seen in the image above but very visible on the download. In Photopea, I fixed it with the Magic Wand tool and the Content-Aware Fill function. Would we call that function AI? Whatever, it worked pretty well to flawlessly. Next I had to chop it up to create tension and narrative. It wasn’t exactly a tense scene, so that could be a challenge.

I copied sections and adjusted the scale. I also played with Levels, Hue and Saturation.
To make it comic-book-like, I used the Magic Wand to select the background area on each layer, then inverted the selection so I had the image part. I made a new layer, then used the Modify-Expand function to increase the selected area by 8 pixels. I filled it with white and moved the layer behind the image layer, making a white box around it. I rotated some parts to create a sense of movement, or at least askew-ness. I thought the part in the top right corner might give the impression of an axe, and maybe tilting the other oar might hint that the boat capsized.

I was hoping to create a sense of a boating accident or an impending one. I don’t think I got it though. There is some drama in the color, contrast and organization. It probably would have been better, or easier, to start with an image that would lend itself to the project, like something with more going on. But it did make me think about image and narrative and tension a bit, along with color and mood.

The way the generator interpreted the input was interesting. It gave views of a figure from behind, one from inside a boat and one of an empty boat. That seems like a fairly sophisticated way to deal with “picture yourself.” A frontal view, or one that showed part of the figure’s face, would be picturing someone else. I’m not sure if I’d describe the sky as marmalade, but it’s more marmalade than blue. The trees have a tangerine-ish color. One image had a treeful of tangerines. The lyric was somewhat metaphorical but not so much that the machine couldn’t predict from it.

Big Eyes

by: Greta Hammen

These piercing eyes were increased in scale by opening the image in the paint app. First, save an image from the internet, then open in Paint. Choose the selection tool for free form and trace the eye shape, adjust the size by taking the image handles and pulling the shape on all four sides, until you get the desired scale and press enter. Repeat that for the other eye. Save as a different name than the original. This is Natasha Sidorov, cybersecurity employee for the CIA.

This assignment reminded me of artist, Margaret Keane, who was famous for her Big Eyes collection of paintings. The one below is titled, The Holy Grail. I recommend seeing the movie of her start as an artist Big Eyes Official Trailer #1 (2014) – Tim Burthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xD9uTlh5hIon, Amy Adams Movie HD (youtube.com)

The Collage of the Century

For one this week’s assignment bank assignments, I chose to do a visual assignment in which we had to create a collage of a place where the 4 seasons of the year are shown profoundly. So, I thought to myself, what better place than New York? All of these images are taken at Central Park in New York from very similar spots. As you can see, the winter transforms the area into a winter wonderland where everything you see is covered with snow and ice. Right next to that we have spring, here we can see that the brush and trees are starting to come back and the sky is very overcast due to the mass amounts on rain during the Spring time, so that is also well represented in this picture. You can also see that some people are still bundled up from the aftermath of winter and can be concluded that the weather is still not fully back to spring/summer time weather. Moving on, the bottom left picture represents the summer time up in Central Park, in which all of the trees are back and they are radiating so much green color and brightens up the picture so much. Everyone is out in shorts and short sleeves to indicate the end of the warm/cold Spring time and the start of the hotter summer time. They are all on boats on the river that runs through the area, which in fact was frozen in the Winter picture, and it seems like everyone is having a great time. The sky is blue, the sun is out, and the nature is radiating color and to me, is a perfect representation of what summer time should be like. Finally, we get to the fall season. Here we can see that the leaves are starting to turn yellow, indicating fall season and the transition from summer to fall and fall to winter. There are not as many people out on the water due to the colder temperatures but the nature in the area still radiating that yellow color and make the picture look really nice. I really enjoyed creating this collage because it allowed me to take a second and sit back and look at the different seasons in Central Park and see how they really changed the look and feel of the area.