Category Archives: Weekly Summary

Week 14: Final Project

M. Marshall 4.28

It is crazy to know that the semester is in its last week. I will probably never forget this class and some of the things that it’s taught me. I think going into it I did not have accurate expectations for what the course would be, but that’s a good thing. Over the semester, I’ve really honed in on my digital drawing skills, which was extremely beneficial for my final project that I animated. Even looking at the difference between my first daily creates artwork and more recent artwork I think there’s been a major shift in my understanding of and abilities at this skill.

I don’t even want to show it, it’s so bad!

I get really caught up on the fact that my work isn’t perfect or that I could’ve done better if I had just done something another way, and I think that is great for growth, but in this reflection I really want to appreciate how I’ve grown. I learned a lot about shading and color theory. My growth in understanding color theory is well represented by the Adelson’s Checker Shadow Illusion. If you can believe it, squares A and B are the same color

I can’t believe it either, don’t worry. That aside, the reason is our perception that there is shadow over a “white” tile is because our brains are filling in information. I cannot prove to you that what I am telling you is true, but I’ve used an eye dropper tool, and it is definitely the same. The best way to know is to check for yourself, but here’s the best way I have to show you. I drew a line right over, did not stop. It’s freaky.

Another thing I honed in on was my story telling skills and creating a world and thinking about nuances within that world. Toward the beginning I relied on things like other TV shows I had seen and couldn’t really go far beyond what I had come up with.

I honestly feel much better equipped in my creativity and storytelling. Over a relatively short period of time I was able to let myself be free to create ideas, even if I cringed a little bit.

I also worked on my video editing skills, which was really fun to learn about. I think I should create a vlog YouTube channel. I am honestly very proud of myself for some of the stuff I’ve made. I did some photo editing, and I really tried to challenge myself, but it was mostly just to be funny, here are some examples!

Video editing

Photo editing:

And last, but certainly not least, work on my character:

I worked really hard to have my character be consistent but also ever improving, hopefully, the viewers will feel that she is!

Let’s talk about my work timeline:

Week one:

I drew a lot to see what kind of thing I was aiming for and how it would look, the preliminary sketches definitely look very different from the end result. I focused on watching animation videos (which had really interesting techniques that ended up being too complicated for my level of knowledge). I would watch my cat as I drew to see how she looked at different angles. I wrote down the story and I spent a lot of time drawing out what I wanted the background to look like, where characters would move, all of that. I considered the story aspect a lot and the moving parts of how to make people committed to a character in a (very) short film. Toward the end of the week, I started on animating.

Week two:

This is the bulk time that I spent animating, I had scenes, lines, beginning drawings, just not a finished project. I became best friends with the layers section because it allowed me to move things around more easily, I could erase writing but not the speech bubbles behind it, I could use the lasso tool to move a character but not everything behind it. I probably spent around 20-25 hours animating it. It was no joke. It ended up only being about 2 minutes long, but I hope you can see the effort I put in to the quality of the drawings. For things like crying, took a slide, copied it, edited it a smidge, copied that, edited that a smidge more, until I was able to show a character crying. The scene that took the most work was definitely the laboratory scene.

Originally, I wanted it to have audio, but my voice does not work very well to be a guy, and I think that the meaningful thing here is that people can relate to the characters, and I thought that my voice would pull people out of the scene. I tried to add music, but I really struggled with the copyrighting policies of YouTube and finding music that I liked, so unfortunately I ultimately had to scrap that.

Previous knowledge of my storyline is definitely beneficial to understand the plot. In the radio show, the ending was more depressing. I think that this would have been more long and drawn out and show more characters, but by the end I was running very low on time, unfortunately we cannot win ’em all. I was thinking a lot about how I wanted to show the intersection of humanity and technology. In the story, the animals gain human like cognition from the combination of artificial intelligence and the animals’ pre-existing sentience. In this, the government is mostly able to stop emotions in animals because it restricts the parts of the brain creating them, like the amygdala. In the end, that combination of artificial intelligence and sentience is able to save D41SY because she recognizes her owner and the love that she has for him overrides government interference. I really feel proud of this project because it really wouldn’t be me if the end of the story wasn’t something about how love perseveres and real love can’t be broken by technology and the government.

Thank you for tuning in to my creative process! I hope you enjoyed!

Weekly Summary: Week 14

FINAL WEEK!!

This final project started with many different ideas and thoughts of execution. My group had bounced around ideas from making an animation to creating a music video. We really wanted to base our ideas around our course characters and find a way to fit them all together.

We had taken the time to each come up with ideas and come back together to find a way to mix them together or pick one that we liked the best. Ultimately we were focused on using our course characters and their defeat of AI. Our ideas continued to change as we actually started on the project.

One of the hardest things to do was find a way to fit our course characters together because of the different backgrounds and even genetic makeup of them. They all had very different back stories and located in different cities, states, and time period. We found a way to make them have a similar goal and almost make them “super heroes”.

Over the past two and a half weeks we added different elements into a shared google drive in order to compile all of our things into one place and so that we could all actively see what the others were working on. It ranges from video, audio, and pictures. We spent this week putting all of these things together to fit an idea of a music video type film where our plot was based strongly off a Daft Punk music video.

Throughout this class i have learned a lot about many different aspects of the digital world. We used our new (and some old) knowledge of mostly audio and video to create our final project. Creating different background effects and audio dialogue. I had done some video work before this class but the audio was the hardest part for me. It took me a while to figure out what sounds best with what and how long to keep tracks in and where exactly to add them into the overall video.

This class taught me a lot and defiantly made me step our of my comfort zone. I enjoyed the layout of having my work a week at a time and have a full week to complete it. I learned a lot of new things and was introduced to many apps and sites that helped me complete all of my assignments.

Welcome to “The Ambassador”

Drum roll please- our game is done! Rebecca (of Rebecca’s Radient Realm) and I created a game for our final project, hosted on Twine. We incorperated multiple sounds and designs, as well as a tech-noir themed script. I implore you to go over to Rebecca’s Radient Realm to play our final project!


We did some brainstorming during casual conversation throughout the week, and then sat down on Thursday to get all of our “must have” ideas on paper. I’ve attached a photo of our Google Document here! Once we got working in Twine, some of our ideas moved around and we realized that the story progressed much faster than we thought that it would.


Moving into Twine, I worked on the script while Rebecca figured out how to import audio and images. I first mapped every decision out, as well as how everything would intersect with each other. After that, I just started writing, and everything came together. I’ve attached a very zoomed out image (no spoilers!) of most of our game.


What I learned and how I used it:

  1. Creative Writing: this is probably one of the biggest things that I learned in this class, and certainly what I showed off during this project. I’ve always enjoyed analytical writing and feel like I’m good at that, but having to write creatively and as my course character was a struggle for me at the beginning of this semester. Wanting to do that for my final project was something that I didn’t expect, and I doubly didn’t expect to really, really like how it was turning out! I found myself getting excited for the end of the story, and having a lot of fun putting in easter eggs and references to other ds106 things. I can confidently say that I feel like I’ve improved, and I think the story execution is strong (if you don’t feel like it is, please don’t tell me!).
  2. Integration of Multimedia Design: While I wasn’t in charge of the audio design for this project, I have gotten better at conceptualizing the use of multiple media formats in projects. With the combination of video and audio projects that I’ve completed this semester, I’m much more able to work in those formats. I’m also more able to make space for them in other projects, which leads to a fuller, more interesting final result.
  3. Time and Self Management: Not visually present, my ability to manage my time when it comes to an asynchronous workload has improved. I got much better at estimating how long things would take me, and finding time in my day to work on them.
  4. Planning (to a point): I’m not much of a planner when it comes to creative projects. I don’t like to rough draft, and I don’t like to storyboard. This project forced me to do that, at least a little bit, and I think it turned out better because of it. I’m really trying to get better about drafting, but the instant gratification is just so appealing!
  5. Domain of One’s Own/Website Organization: Does this count as a skill involved in the project? DOOO was my sworn mortal enemy coming in to this semester, and I think that we now just mutually dislike each other instead of full-blown hate. I find this website difficult and not very intuitive, but I’ve grown used to the interface. Making this blog post now is a breeze!

ECHO Protocol

Project Summary:
ECHO Protocol is a futuristic, interactive sci-fi story created using canva where you play as Kai, a memory technician who uncovers a rogue signal in a world controlled by the ECHO AI. The story explores themes of control, freedom, and identity through branching choices and glitchy cyberpunk visuals. It combines storytelling and digital media.

Weekly Reflection:
This week, I focused fully on finalizing the project testing visuals, refining choices, and bringing the story together. The process was creative and experimental, and I’m proud of how it turned out. Echo Protocol reflects what I’ve learned all semester about blending narrative with multimedia.

Weekly Summary: Week 13

This week was focused on finalizing the ideas for our final project. My group met earlier in the week which I talked about in my update post. Over the next few days we are all finding clips and additional things to add into or video. We want to go with the idea of using our course characters in a Daft Punk style music video because a few of our ideas put together created the plot of one of the songs.

Unfortunately we had a group member drop to do the final project on her own so we have been moving a few things around to make sure that we can still get all our ideas together.

For this week we will focus on compiling the video together and getting it submitted. I look forward to the completion of this and seeing the outcome.

The Brain is Storming

This week, I worked with Rebecca to come up with the storyboard and plot points for our game (refresher: AI governmental ambassador goes haywire, and its your job to fix it (or not)). We have decided to host it on Twine, and that it won’t revolve around our characters. However, our characters will be involved in the story as background characters or delivering messages to the player. The player also won’t be required to interact as their character, though that could certainly be interesting! We’ve decided to divide the game into chapters, with each section focusing on a different conflict. Chapter I is the beginning, Chapter II will have the bulk of the AI conflict, and Chapter III will be the epilogue. With Twine’s choose-your-own -adventure format, the way that these three sections interact with each other could change drastically depending on how the player chooses to interpret the prompts. We are going to finish the game next week! While I think it will be time consuming to create different narratives that all interact with each other and come back to the same conflict will be time consuming, I don’t anticipate the actual writing to be much of a setback.

And, unlike always, no Daily Creates to share this week!

Weekly Summary #13: Taylor Swift’s Lucky Number

M. Marshall 4.18

I cannot not mention that 13 is Taylor Swift’s lucky number on my thirteenth weekly summary, so here it is.

I did a lot of work toward the final project this week. I went into it more in this post:

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!

Week 13

During Week 13, significant progress was made on the final project, Echo Protocol. With no other coursework the focus was entirely on brainstorming and refining the story’s direction. The project revolves around a futuristic narrative set in the year 2149 where Kai, a memory technician uncovers a mysterious unauthorized signal in a world governed by the omnipresent ECHO AI system.

I explored various creative elements in Canvas experimenting with layout, visual elements, and interactive components to determine what best complemented the story’s tone. The visual aesthetic included glitch effects, AI alert screens, and scenes like a digital mirror, cyberpunk skyline, and a void of white, symbolizing the unraveling of reality.

Weekly Summary: Week 12

This week I did two daily creates. The first one that I did was a random animal generator. I got a camel cricket. The next daily create I did was a secret agent name generator. I got Agent Rouge Hawk. I then used AI and plugged this name in and asked it to create an image based off this name.

Lastly, my group from the last project decided to work together for the final. We had a zoom call on Thursday to figure out exactly what we wanted to do and even started talking about the process for the final too. We created a trailer based off our course characters. We each uploaded things like images, audio, and videos into a shared google drive so that we all have access to it. It was all edited together to make the trailer and then uploaded to youtube.

Weekly Summary #12: Final Project Looming Overhead

M. Marshall 4.11

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:

  1. National Pets Day
  2. Secret Agent Story
  3. 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.