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.
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 appreciated the focus on photography this week, as I have been trying to take more pictures this semester. Perhaps it’s the senior regrets, but I feel like I hardly have any pictures of the last four years! I spent some more time with my course character, Bethany, as I worked on finding her a house that I know she would love! I also took the time to scan in some of her IDs, just to keep them on my laptop in case she looses her wallet. Neither of these assignments required any intense technical skills, as I just used browser based programs for both.
Along with my time with Bethany, I spent some time deciding which of my things I would save in a fire. I discussed this in the assignment post, but I opted to work on my iPad (and in bed) instead of on my laptop (at my desk), so I likely didn’t approach this in the most efficient way. However, I enjoyed reverse coloring much more than the lasso tool!
I could see myself continuing to check back in with the photoblitz tool, as I think the collection of prompts combined with the idea is so interesting! I think it could be fun to do in a bigger city or someplace that I’m unfamiliar with, as this assignement felt more like a seek-and-find than a true act of detection. I didn’t find myself using the whole time because of this, as I already had ideas in my head.
In terms of design, I feel like all I think about is design design design. Lighting design, graphic design, “does this look good on the wall here?”, crafting- the list goes on. I always enjoy reading about these things, if just to fill in trivia facts.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Talk about a week where my brain felt fully juiced! Getting started with The Daily Creates was certainly difficult at first, especially having to be okay with creating art that wasn’t polished due to the time constraints. However, I found myself beginning to look forward to seeing what kinds of new things I would be asked to make each day. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t still have trouble with TDC, though!
Along the same lines, I had a ton of fun creating my course character. I’m interested to see how our work with our characters will continue throughout the rest of the semester, as well as how they’ll interact with the class. The writing process was tough at first, but I got a lot of inspiration from a character name generator. It spit out “Bethany Smith (Smithy),” and I just had to make my character a good girl by day/mob boss by night with that kind of name! Being able to create a collage to further create a 3D person was quite fun as well! I haven’t done “creative writing” in years, so this was a welcome break from typical writing expectations.
I enjoyed my interactions with Dr. Oblivion, too. I find him a little unnerving, but I could say that about all AI! I think his voice adds another level to his persona, and I like being able to feed him prompts.
Looking back on this week, I know better how to manage my time in this class going forward. I think the first week of the semester spoiled me, and the workload this week surprised me. I also need to get in the habit of commenting on others’ posts, as I don’t feel like I did enough of that this week.
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.
The Work Itself
Telling the Story Behind the Story
Narrating the Process
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!
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.
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.
Devil & Goat
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.
Longest shadow ever!
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.
Happy Birthday DS106 Radio! To many more
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.
Translation: Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes And eyes and ears and mouth and nose Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes
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
In addition to the two Wikipedia articles, I decided to read Joseph Hurtgen’s article Sci-fi Noir: The Terminator and Tech Noir | 10 Updates to Film Noir. I’ve seen The Terminator before, but I can’t say that I remember much of the movie besides the major beats and iconic moments.
I think the part in section 2 where Hurtgen discusses the lack of trust in the police force was interesting, especially as many people currently are unable to trust or rely on the police. I think it is somewhat ironic that a crucial aspect of a genre that portrays an “unwanted” or “dystopian” future shares such direct similarities to our present society.
“Consider also that the police are not who you can turn to in The Terminator and you have pretty well laid out this aspect of the noir. If you can’t turn to those who are supposed to serve and protect you, who can you turn to? Who can you trust?” – Joseph Hurtgen
I watched an episode of Black Mirror to satisfy the watching of technoir media, and I enjoyed it! I think the episode I watched felt less blatantly “sci-fi” than what I’ve heard of other parts of the series, which I appreciated as I’m not always the biggest fan of that genre. Maybe that won’t bode well for me in this class, but I might not like the genre just because I’m unfamiliar with it.
I also had my intro meeting this week, and I’m looking forward to the class! I’m excited to dig in to assignments and see what different applications are involved in this class. Overall I didn’t have much frustration this week, especially since I’m familiar with DoOO/Wordpress.
Now I just have to make it look more like it’s actually mine. That is a fight for another day though. There are truly so many guides I can hear my fan huffing and puffing
And you are telling me that the first month hasn’t even passed yet?!
;-;
The process was far simpler than I had anticipated, thanks to the many resources provided. Admittedly, the hard part was being aware that these resources existed. I really enjoy trying to find free pictures online and then realizing it’s easier to take my own, then figuring out I am definitely not doing it right, so things will look plain for a while longer.
For my final project, I made a blog for my course character Andrea which you can find here. While I have created subdomains before, this one made me use all of the skills I learned during this class.
First I came up with the concept of what she posts about, the pages she has, and the comments that would have to be under each one. I made a resume for her and rebuilt the business card I made for her earlier. It then took me forever to find a blog theme, font, color scheme, etc. that worked for Andrea’s personality I built over the semester. Sadly once I found things that worked there were of course many problems with how they looked that I had to fix. This is where what I learned this semester really was used.
A lot of the time making this site went into the CSS coding on the backend. First I had to solve the problem of the post slider. Whenever you reloaded the site or just opened it for the first time there was a huge glitch where the photo size was normal but there was double the white space beneath it that wouldn’t go away until the next post came in. This disrupted the flow of the site and since Andrea is a software engineer I couldn’t just leave that error in. So after many hours over a few days of troubleshooting, I figured out how what element was causing the problem, how to override the original code (since I couldn’t find the line in the actual theme files which there are many), and then I added specific code to fix it based on the device you were on. The mobile device especially needed this slider fixed as the original theme cut off the image and the text was unreadable without this fix. Next, to really sell that this blog has been posting for a year I had to get rid of the comment post dates because, unlike post dates, those could not be changed. I then added a hover effect like I have on this blog to reduce the static look of the home page. Finally, I edited the size of the site’s title and description because they were way too small to read, and I added a bit more space between the top of the site and the title. The images below show how I did all of this and you can also see the difference between how it looks on different devices.
Obviously, it is not the smoothest fix as I am nowhere near becoming a computer programmer, but over the weeks of this course, these are all the skills I learned in CSS coding so that my site can look exactly how I want it to. After all I’ve done this semester, this project took the most time and frustrated me the most (especially the individual comments I had to do under different names) but in the end I really enjoyed the final product.
