Week four was a good one! I love podcasts and music so I knew this week was going to be enjoyable. I was nervous about the workload because having to listen to assignments can take a while but I was pleasantly surprised that the listening assignments were very interesting. Limetown was fun because it combined elements of cyberpunk and mystery, Moon Graffiti, although listening to two people cope with death as they face it freaked me out, was well made and a very good story. Even other students were doing great jobs this week, I was so impressed with everyone’s sound effects stories, radio bumpers, and assignment banks!

Daily Creates

I always try and get an early start on the Daily Creates, if I do one for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it’s off my plate for the rest of the week. Additionally, it allows me to skip a task if I don’t like it or find it too hard, I wouldn’t have this option if I procrastinated everything to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. This week my daily creates included word art, draw a t-rex, and Paul Bond’s brazy look.

The first daily create was word art. Using a website that converted text into a drawing utensil, we were supposed to make a body part and use the different aspects to draw it. Here you can see I drew a foot. I chose a foot because I didn’t trust my ability to draw a hand freestyle. This daily create was frustrating because there was no undo button, so if you really messed up you had to start over. This Daily Create was another reminder that art doesn’t need to be perfect, just done. Apparently I’m more of a perfectionist than I thought I was because I’m learning this lesson every week now.

This assignment was fun and scary. I am not an artist who can paint or draw, so any task with drawing makes me want to close my computer and run away. I decided to give this Daily Create a try because there was a tutorial linked, so I could follow that. I did follow the tutorial and my T-rex still looks funky, but it was a fun exercise and I was able to reference one of my favorite Disney movies.

The last Daily Create was finding a picture that tried to capture the Paul Bond “brazy” look. After some research, I concluded that the term “brazy” means tough and crazy. At first, I tried to take a picture of myself capturing the look, but I fell embarrassingly short so I moved on to a new idea. I love this picture of my cat because she looks like she’s sizing me up, I felt like this perfectly captured the brazy look; she’s tough but in a scary, chill way, like you don’t know her next move.

Assignment Bank

This week the 3 assignments I worked on were creating a playlist for my character, a radio bumper, a sound effect story, and a “Guess the Song.” I had a lot of fun with these assignments, especially because I felt that each process was very different.

To start, I made a playlist for my character: Krissy Ryan. I did this because I thought it would help me understand her a little more as well as other students who want to get to know Krissy’s likes and interests more. The genres that I included in this playlist include country, independent woman, but most importantly yearning for more. I think the most important song on this list is Belle from Beauty and the Beast because Krissy also feels like she was destined for more but doesn’t think she’ll ever get it. This playlist not only shows Krissy’s music interests but mine as well. I love all these songs so if you’re looking for some new music, this is a great place to start.

For the sound effect story assignment, the hardest part for me was coming up with an idea and executing it. Because my only options were what was available in the library, I kept running into walls. At first I wanted to do someone late for work, but I couldn’t find a frantic enough sound effect. It took me a few tries before I landed on Charlie Brown in class, and as much as I would love to take credit for choosing the idea, the idea chose me. I wanted to make what a classroom sounds like but the only sound effects for a teacher talking was Charlie Brown voices. I decided the best thing I could do was act like it was normal because for the Peanuts, it is. I like how the story came out, it sounds average and then the teacher talks and nobody blinks an eye.

This was a fun assignment and I’m curious to see if anyone else did this. I love playing “guess the song” I do it in my free time a lot, so when this assignment offered for me to make one I quickly took the chance. Spoiler alert: The song is “There’s a Hole in the Bottle” by Kelsea Ballerini. I picked this song because I’ve been listening to her a lot lately because I’m going to see on her tour and this song is easily one of my favorites. This assignment was surprisingly easy with the help of AI. The app that I used to remove the vocals is powered by AI and it separates the vocals and the instrumentals. Sometimes AI scares me but it can be pretty useful too, it was a good tool in this assignment.

I liked listening to everyone else’s radio bumpers. They were all so creative and clever, I wanted mine to be just as good. I had trouble coming up with an idea but I was inspired by Defunctland’s Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery. In the video he goes into depth about network identification and bumpers. As an homage to this video, I wanted to incorporate Disney Channel into my bumper. The connection from Disney Channel to DS106 Radio was pretty easy to make and from there I crafted my radio bumper. I used Adobe Audition for all of my audio editing assignments, and I find that it is very easy to use. This assignment was no exception, besides one transition challenge, editing a short audio assignment like this was simple.

Comments

I thought everyone’s takes on the assignments this week were really strong and I loved getting to listen to and read as many as I could. I thought Sam’s Club’s reflection on Moon Graffiti was well done and I could tell he put a lot of thought into it. I said “This reflection was so thorough and well-written! I also found the Moon Graffiti podcast creepy, especially considering that it could very well have been the outcome of the moon landing. I wonder what it was like for the person who wrote those speeches—how it felt to write one celebratory speech and another mourning the deaths of two individuals. Again, great job on this reflection!” The Moon Graffiti podcast left me with a weird feeling because it thoroughly creeped me out but the story was told so well that I couldn’t help but like it. I appreciated what Sam said and I liked being able to bounce my ideas off of his. I also commented on Your Weekly Adrenaline Rush’s radio bumper, I said “Ah! This is so lovely! You did a great job, and I commend you for being the first to do this assignment. I love the dial-in; it’s the classic feel of a radio bumper!” I was really impressed with their courage to be the first person to make a radio bumper. I put mine off as long as possible because I was nervous. Next, I commented on Live it Up With Liv’s Character Playlist, I wrote “This is so cool, and I bet it was fun to make! I see that there’s a trend of older artists and some country music. From what you’ve said about your character, I think she would absolutely listen to Amy Winehouse. I definitely want to try this with my character!” Liv inspired me to make a playlist for my character because looking at her assignment made me start thinking “oh that’s interesting, I wonder what I would do if I did this assignment?” So, I stopped wondering and got to work which is how I ended up with my assignment. Then, I commented on Rebecca’s Radiant Realm’s sound effect story. I said, “Wow! I think you killed this assignment. When I tried doing this, my audio clips were played one after the other, but I love how every sound in yours is overlapping. It creates the busy feel of the office because everything is happening simultaneously or one after the other. Great job!” I was vey impressed with the quality of their story. I felt what Jad Abumrad was saying about the dreamlike state of storytelling; I was in that office, I was hearing those snores. Lastly, I commented on The Digital Canvas and their sound effect story, I wrote “I love this take on the assignment! It’s something that everyone can relate to, and I like how it includes all the elements of an average day: the good, the bad, the great, and the ugly. Putting in different tones makes me feel like I am in this person’s shoes.” I appreciated how they put in all aspects of the day. Showing the realistic side of life made the story seem so real! All in all, everyone did great jobs and I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone better when we do group work

Conclusion

This was a good week! Not only am I proud of the work I did, but I can’t stop gushing over everyone else’s. The assignments were creative and I could tell everyone had an original take and put a lot of effort into their pieces. I’m looking forward to next week!

I admittedly was trying to avoid doing audio assignments since they required me to download stuff but looks like I couldn’t avoid them in the end. Since I was busy, I had to get them done within two days.

I was lost for this since it was such a wide range of possibilities, I am not someone who knows much about radio I only listen to music and its ad free, so I don’t even get breaks for ads anymore. Still, I tried to have multiple ideas since it was plural the first one was the best.

Did the audio story telling assignments and was shocked by the moon graffiti I didn’t really understand the title until I finally listened to it. I was fun discovering how many sounds I unconsciously recognized.

Lots of drawing this week, and then there was one I didn’t understand at all so I didn’t end up doing to at all.

Radio bumper was not my favorite part of the week, but I managed to get it done, getting through something even when it doesn’t interest you take a lot of energy out of a person.

Overall, this week’s audio-based elements were a surprise but not a bad one exactly. Got to try new things and experiment with new programs that I haven’t used before. So, it was a great experience learning to use more to add elements to the stories I create and to appreciate the small detail others add.

I found this week to be much more easy going than the last which was a very nice break. The assigned tasks were really fun and engaging! The Photoblitz was definetly my favorite. I put it off until the last minute because I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but it was really easy and I got a good walk in. My least favorite assignment of the week was the Dream House assignment that I chose from the assignment bank. I acknowledge that this was my responsibility and I probaly should have just quit and chose something else, but I’m stubborn so I stuck with it. The thing that I didn’t like about this assignment was having to justify my why this was my character’s house. I don’t know if I had writers block or made a bad choice with the house, but that blog was really hard for me to write. I did push through, however, and the blog is up if you’re curious about Krissy’s house. Still this was a god week, and if all the weeks end up like this one, I think I’m in good shape.

Daily Creates

The Daily Creates were hard for me this week. I really enjoyed them last week but this time around, I just felt uninspired and I think you can see that in my work. I did Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday’s prompt. I looked at Monday’s prompt and thought it was really cool and I wanted to try it but the day slipped away from me before I got the chance.

Tuesday’s daily create was to make a header for the new create page. I used Canva to make the banner. I added some neon tech, which I know from watching the movie poster video that shows themes of action and cyberpunk. Then I added some text with fun fonts to convey what the page was about.

Wednesday’s Daily Create was the anti cloud. I thought the concept for this was really cool. I can’t even imagine how long it took for them to find every word that wasn’t in those books. There were quite a few books to choose from, so I’m thinking at least a year to compile what they had. For my DC I used the first six words to make art. It was hard because the words are so random but I did my best. Once again, I used canva to compile the images and the text.

The last one was rate how woke a sandwich is. This one was easy because all I had to do was google my favorite sandwich and then rate it’s wokeness. It did make me start craving this sandwich though which was really unfortunate for me since I had no means to get one.

Assignments

The assignments were easy this time around. I appreciate how much freedom there is in being able to choose the assignment. I really liked how my video game screen turned out. The image is good on its own but I think the video glitch effect I added really completed it, and made it look like a real videoo game screen.

****flashing lights****

I liked making my logo, it was one of the easier assignments, and I was excited to make it about me instead of my course character. Making content for Krissy is fun but the only hard part is you have to really think about what she likes and doesn’t like plus the decisions she would and wouldn’t make. I didn’t realize how relaxing it is to just know what I like.

My last assignment was finding a house for my character. This assignment wasn’t all bad, I had a hard time writing the blog but looking for a house was fun. I really like this house, I think it’s beautiful. There are pops of color while still maintaining a classic look. For those who read my Pinterest assignment, you know that I love old fashioned homes and colors, so I think it’s fitting that Krissy would have some of the same interests as me.

Finally, for Photoblitz, this project was really cool. I saw that Photoblitz originally came from a Daily Shoot, which is like a Daily Create but with photography. When I was doing the Photoblitz, I had some ideas for pictures but they weren’t possible given the time constraint so I wonder how these prompts would have turned out if I had the whole day.

Comments

I tried to leave one comment every day on a different blog. I think it’s funny to look back on my comments, because as my work load for the week got heavier, my comments became shorter. On Monday I left a really long comment on The Digital Canvas, to paraphrase, I explained how I agreed with their reflection on Graphic Design and I think it’s cool how a font can reflect the air of a show. Tuesday, I commented on Tigerflora’s game screen and I said “I love your “Game Over” metaphor. It’s a wonderful reminder that the game isn’t over until you quit. As long as you keep trying and failing, you’ll eventually complete your level and, one day, maybe even finish the game!” I thought the message was nice and could be applied to more than their character. Wednesday, I commented on Oh Noir You Didn’t’s Shakesperean cat. I said “Mango is adorable! I love to see a fellow Canva user. It has been so helpful for this class, and it has saved my butt for the Daily Creates. The prompts that don’t involve taking pictures or screenshots have me running to Canva. I whip something together with the mass amount of resources it has, and my Daily Create comes out looking so good! I can also completely relate to having hundreds of pictures of my cat on my phone. I liked the quote you used and how well it matched the picture. Do you know which play this line is from? I’m not the biggest Shakespeare fan, but he does have a couple of plays that I like.” I appreciated the thought that went into matching a Shakespeare quote to a picture of their cat. The picture focused on Mango’s eyes so they picked a quote that also focused on eyes. Thursday, I looked at Rebecca’s Radient Realm and I commented on their Tattoo art. I said “These tattoos are crazy good. I’m obsessed! I think each color option is really cool, too. It’s so fun to see how the colors add a different vibe to the same tattoo! I like the acknowledgment that Evelyn is a classy gal. Do you think she has multiple tattoos, or is this her only one?” I was really impressed with the artwork for Evelyn’s tattoo, the sketch was gorgeous and the each color pallete was a nice compliment. Finally, on Friday I commented on Sam’s Club’s GIF: “LOL, this made me giggle! I like the contrast of his quiet character with his loud actions. His eyes and mouth remind me of Sussie from The Amazing World of Gumball. Great job!” The gif was really funny, and as I mentioned the difference between the sullen character and their extravagent face movements was very silly.

Closing Thoughts

I had been looking forward to this week because I was overwhelmed from the Digital Bootcamp, and I’m glad I stuck it out because this was a nice workload. I wasn’t overwhelmed with the amount and I enjoyed the assignments. I hope week four is even better!

Reflection

This was probably my least favorite part of this week’s work, why read an article when you can create after all, so it ended up being my last task of the week. Probably should have skipped the money video I was confused and uncomfortable the whole time.

Photoblitz

Honestly, I was at work when I was doing this assignment, so I had a lot and only a little to work with. So, they are very tech based in a way but that’s about it. I did it in the 20-minute allotted got confused how time works and took the second picture late or early I still don’t know. What do you mean it stops at 60 ugh, time.

Assignments

So, most of my assignments were chosen based on existing images I had or ideas. It was done in the first few days since there were so many pages, I took time flipping through only to go back to the beginning in the end.

Daily Creates

This weeks daily creates I started much sooner, so I was quite pleased and wasn’t stressing over it daily like last week. My favorite was the Australia day one since mine came out quite cute.

Commenting

I have been making sure to react daily or react to ones that I noticed.

Vote

For voting I went with this post Mickey’s Not So Scary Christmas Party – Rebecca’s Radiant Realm by Rebecca. It’s creepy cool and I love how it came out. I did have to make sure to keep it focused on this week’s work though I may end up voting again.

Today’s weekly summary Image is brought to you by the scene of the back Woodard window by me.

Number one is always a good place to start Learn How to Write Assignment Posts.

As with most things even if you work for hours if you don’t tell someone how hard you worked, they will never know. Admittedly the start is rough for me since my habit of doing what’s important and gong back for small details later is going to be the end of me. There have been many papers completed and completely redone due to this habit. But I made sure to read through it and then….told myself to do it again Thursday because I will 100% forget (medical junk) and yep!!!! I did!! remember knowing yourself is better than knowing your enemies people!!

Dude chill it's not that deep. In fact, it is that deep

Next great hurdle was the daily creates and I am so! happy I checked what needed to be done on the weekend and not Monday! I really needed that extra day to do the daily creates in case I forgot, and I did, once again know yourself well!

How to embed Mastodon posts on a website or blog | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse Had to use this guide to figure out how to embed.

Behind each post there’s a different story.

Jan 18th my first post, I was so sure I didn’t own anything that was the slightest but spy like. Then I remembered the tool I used for mischief. My key screws they have been used dull almost, my special tool for when curiosity strikes. So I searched through my bag and pulled them out finding decent lighting before snapping a picture.

Jan 19th sarcastic captcha, although it said sarcasm I wanted to be funnier about it making a captcha that was impossible to do in a different way. Funniest part was that I edited this in google slides, clipping and pulling together a random group in images. As you can see the technology degrades as it goes down. I almost chose to just put toasters on the bottom row. With cropping, copy and paste, grouping and blasting music it was made.

Jan 20th This one that had zero thoughts, I hate clowns and therefore put that energy into this. Using an app on my phone called photo Leap to make it. Transforming the cover onto the books, though I realized it was too small to read so had to make it look more like an ad then anything. the clown was added by trying to make the blur match the one that was already there.

Jan 21st So much harder to make ugly art them expected but, I did my best. Much better at making something look unsettling rather than ugly. It can’t be seen but there is hidden text saying free me and run. Creepy right! It’s just a bunch of squares put together in different shades of grey.

Jan 23st Simple as making sure to put the happy birthday song my family uses.

Explore the Assignment Bank is third. I was almost unlucky and didn’t notice Make at least two of the assignments relate in some way to our course theme. Good thing I checked almost daily

Of the assignments the easiest was the coloring after all it was just downloading an app and following the instructions. I did try to stick to 2 star and below options and was truly surprised by how many there were. Plus, some get very complicated very quickly and unfortunately, I’m not at that level yet. Overall, I spent the most time on the intro since I was trying to get the Doctor to just say my intro completely forgetting how sassy he is. So, it took a few rewordings to realize. The visual assignment time was spent more in coming up with the idea then actually doing it. This time I used the paint application and good old Pinterest it’s a cesspool in my eyes (I spent all of middle school doom scrolling there). I ended up pumping the work out over the week and going back to adjust it today only to remember everything in this class is live ;^; shoot. Welp I may end up doing the publish later option more often.

Customizing my blog..Groan! At first, I was trying to figure out how to do it custom but, ended up crashing and burning since I’m a minimalist with a floral dream. Changing my main background color irked me cause not every color looks good with everything but white and black are neutral. So, despite being a dark mode girly I chose white since flowers tend to be a light color. Color theory begone it’s called if my brain go purr it works. I ended up choosing one of the offered themes. Then fought with the category boxes. That was a must! It’s more of a accessibility thing for me. Why click text when it could be pretty pictures one is far more impactful don’t you agree? Of course, I found a video about how to add links in word press.

Gosh I love the internet. Then it hit me! Agh I had to actually label my pretty flowers, so people knew where they were actually going. So, I labeled them and now the variety of pink flowers are their own identity. After that it was far simpler just looking up flowers. I mean for the assignment’s sake I can add more but honestly, I felt very very satisfied my brain go purr and my eyes don’t get stressed and overwhelmed trying to take in a flurry of information and graphics. Not flashy but I never liked a flashy.

My character took a while since I was stacked with work but, overall, she came out far less fleshed out then I prefer. Still, I thought about all week thinking what she would be like. Looking up cliches and so much more.

For the interaction and Dr. oblivion it seemed more like a long turn but started out at getting used to do both, so going to make it a habit to comment on my classmate’s stuff and making sure to ask any questions to the Doctor.

The Postman was an interesting read, but I struggled to relate it to my film. Overall, I got it done faster then I hope despite all the reading admittedly I should have done each reading one by one and compared not do all at once and try to compare based off my memory was not fun hoping from page to page.

Finally redid my review honestly very uncomfortable experience writing like that for something school related… Still got it done and it certainly came out differently… Better is not the right word but, it is more fun and interesting to read now.

This week had a large to-do list, and unlike last week, the tasks were not short and sweet. With doing the assignment banks, creating a course character, reading 6 chapter, and having everything accompanied by a blog reflection, I was overwhelmed. However, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the work that I did. In fact, I am really proud of some of the assignments I turned in.

The Daily Creates

When I first saw that we were doing Daily Creates, I thought it would be a chore. The first Daily Create, art about unexpected coincidences, confused me and I really struggled to come up with an idea. I landed on making a graphic with lyrics to Sabrina Carpenter’s Coincidence.

After seeing other posts, I realized that the Daily Creates didn’t have to be revolutionary. This took a lot of the pressure off and I ended up having a lot of fun with them. The next day was “Make bad art.” That was perfect for me! I decided to make the Devil and the Goat, and as you can see. I nailed the prompt.

The next prompt was my favorite, make your shadow as long as possible. I waited until the last possible second to take the picture, which made me nervous because if I waited too long I would miss the sun all together. I made it though, and I was very happy with how long my shadow was.

The prompt after that was, “Say Happy Birthday to DS106 radio.” For that, I just made a quick image on Canva. This prompt was one of the easiest from the week.

The last prompt of the week was “Make a poem out of emojis,” so I turned the “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” song into an emoji poem. I thought the idea was clever, and thankfully most of the emojis already existed. I admit doing the shrugs for shoulders, was a little bit of a reach, but I was committed to my idea.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with the daily creates and I’m excited to continue doing them!

Assignment Bank

The assignment banks were very time consuming, but I am happy with how they came out. My favorite one to do was the Compilation of Chidi and Eleanor. I love their relationship, I love that show, and I love that song. Working on it was really fun, and felt more like a hobby than something I was doing for class. I also had a lot of fun with the “That’s Not It” prompt where I edited together scenes from Mean Girls & Clueless. Both movies are so iconic. In the scene, Cher is trashing Regina, but if they were actually in the same universe, I can’t decide if they’d be best friends or enemies. Lastly, the third assignment I did was “My Dream Life” where I showed my ideal life through Pinterest. This one was the hardest assignment because I could not figure out how to effectively embed the link. The assignment was relatively easy but the embedment took so long that I wnted to throw my computer away. I did the best that I could, but even still I feel like I didn’t fully figure it out. Still, completing my assignments helped me advance towards completing my D106 goals, and for that I am happy. Here are the links.

Comments

I enjoyed getting to read about a lot of people’s perspectives and creative choices. It was so interesting to see everyone’s creative takes. I loved the course character from Liv It Up With Liv . I could tell that they put a lot of time and effort into their character. She felt very fleshed out and was giving me Veronica Mars/Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes. I commented: “This is great! The thought and care you put into your character really helped me envision her. I love that you tried to break the norm when you created your character. I also thought what you said about her liking flawed characters was very interesting. I wonder why she likes them. Maybe because she relates to them or because she knows they make for a good story? Either way, it was a great detail. I’m curious to know if you drew inspiration from other characters when you were creating Veronica. She reminds me of Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Again, great job crafting this character!” I also read Rylie’s goals from Rylie’s Riveting Region for this class, and what they said about lighting design, I completely agreed with. Lighting is one of my favorite aspects of theatre, so to see another fan was very cool. I also told them how I felt that lighting may subconsciously tell the audience how to feel which is so crazy that it can have that kind of effect on people. Lastly, I read ‘One thought on “Black Mirror: We Love Women Working Together!”‘ from Bloog. We coincidentally watched the same episode of Black Mirror so it was interesting to compare and contrast our thoughts. Additionally, because we watched the same episode, I was able to share my theory from the episode. I just left the comment this morning, but I’m eager to see if they respond and whether or not they will agree with me.

Final Thoughts

I’m grateful that I got to flex my creative muscle this week. I love creating and it’s to get in the habit of practicing. This was also a great reminder that the work doesn’t need to be perfect. My ‘That’s Not It’ edit wasn’t flawless but I still liked the way it came out. Other people must agree with me because I posted it on YouTube so I could embed it into the blog, and it got a couple hundred views. While I did have fun with the assignments this week, I’m glad that the digital bootcamp is coming to an end. I’m excited to focus on one project for the week