This week was still a bit overwhelming due to the high amount of assignments given a week while I still have lots of homework and studying to do with my other classes, but I will admit that I am really proud of everything I accomplished this week. For someone that isn’t tech savvy at all I learned a lot and was impressed by how a lot of my creations came out. I am so happy that I was able to figure out how to customize my blog and make it look prettier. Now I love going onto my website Cinder’s Wonderland and seeing all the pretty details, and I feel a lot more confident while editing it now. Participation is still slightly confusing to me because I don’t know if I have to show proof of any comments I leave or will they be automatically noticed afterwards. Also this week for the first time I used Canva, contextualized hyperlinks with texts, made a poster digitally from scratch, etc. Most of it I was able to learn from Google and also video tutorials. I am still slightly worried about the weeks ahead since I am sure it is gonna become a lot more complicated when I have to make and edit videos and audio, which requires me spending more extra hours trying to figure everything out. But I am trying my best and I hope everyone appreciates all my effort and are enjoying looking at my creations.
New Discoveries and Experiences
Learned how to use Canva
Learned how to customize blog
Learned how to insert videos into blog posts
Learned how to link words to websites
Daily Creates
For the Daily Creates this week they were mostly simple and straightforward which I enjoyed, I feel like I spent more time trying to think of a fun idea to fit the prompts than the actual time spent on the creations, but the best part was seeing all my creations together in a post at the end of week. I also enjoyed seeing all the other ideas people come up with throughout the week in their posts. I go into a deeper dive of each of the Daily Creates I made on my post called Inside My Creative Mind.
Assignment Bank
This was my first week using the assignment bank and I will admit I was overwhelmed when I realized I had to create 3 of them, and not only that but 2 of them had to fit the cyberpunk theme which made it a little more complicated. It is very time consuming but the end results for my assignments came out really nice. For Young – The Anthem of a Corrupt Future I had to analyze song lyrics and write the meaning behind them. I chose the song Young by Hollywood Undead because it fit the cyberpunk theme because it is a song about living in a corrupt society. For Empire State of Love I had to make a contradicting poster so I used Canva for the first time. I used the cyberpunk theme for this as well by making the poster about advertising for being able to buy a robot lover in a futuristic New York City. Figuring out how to use Canva was pretty straightforward and I was amazed by how I was able to create a very detailed poster from scratch. Lastly, for Minecraft: Cherry Blossom Vacation Villa I had to create a house in the game called Minecraft. I already had prior experience with this game so building a house was fun and I loved being able to put all my ideas into it. I already did the cyberpunk theme for the other two assignments so this one I chose to use my own personal inspirations. Overall, I had fun with each assignment this week that I chose to make and I think the hours of effort I put into them were worth it.
Runa the Mercenary
Creating Runa was easy and fun! I already love making stories and characters so this was an enjoyable experience. I put a lot of thought into her personality, appearance, and storyline. I am assuming she is going to be used again later on this semester for another assignment, but for more information on Runa you can find her character’s profile on the post Meet Runa aka The Shadow.
Cowboy Bebop Review
I went back to my last week’s review on Cowboy Bebop and edited it to explain more about how cyberpunk was incorporated in the show’s theme in the final paragraph. You can find it on my post called The Thrilling Adventure of Cowboy Bebop
This week was a bit crazy for me. Had a lot going on it was definitely harder to keep up with everything but I know I’ll improve in the coming weeks. I liked the idea of doing the Daily Creates, just a short and fun way to express some creativity and getting to look at other people’s responses was fun as well. I also had fun designing my character, Eric Little, as an innocent victim and even using his last name to represent his knowledge of the dangerous outside world was cool to experiment with. Some issues I had this week was that I really wanted to fix my website URL to change the main page to have a cleaner and more organized subdomain structure. It may seem simple on the surface, but I ended up having to go down an entire rabbit hole into my File Directory to move a bunch of files around once I got the WordPress URL and Site URL changed. This was because after that initial change I wasn’t able to access my website and edit it because of the URL and wp admin shift. Nonetheless, I got it all figured out minus pulling out a few strands of hair stressing about it.
This week I chose a visual, a design, and a written assignment from the weekly assignment bank. I will also introduce my new course character, add some of my weekly adventures from the daily creates with my post and replies, and then give a brief summary of some of the new things that I learned this week.
I can feel and smell the seasons through the pictures!!!
The first assignment I chose was to make a visual collage of the 4 seasons: Winter, Fall, Summer, and Spring. I was drawn to this assignment because I absolutely LOVE the transition of all 4 seasons, and pictures of nature always amaze me. I wanted to use this assignment to start getting used to creating work that incorporates our class themes (Cyber punk and tech noir). I created the two collages using Canva. They are posted below in the order that I will write about them. Hopefully, you all will be able to tell the difference by their appearance!
First, I started searching for pictures of the four seasons that appeared to be normal or with no theme. I selected pictures that I felt we would see in real life. Or when we think of these seasons a picture like this will immediately pop into our heads. I then added them to my collage board and kept their original rectangular shapes and used no filters or editing tools to alter their appearance. Seasons are in this order for the first collage: Spring, summer, fall, and winter.
For the second collage, I chose another batch of seasonal photos that tended to have darker lighting with more intensified colors and are a little animated. For example, a themed photo I chose for the summer season has an animated human figure sitting at the beach. I intended for this picture to have some tech noir vibes to it with notes of cyber punk, while still representing a seasonal picture in my collage. That was really the process for all of the ones that I chose. I added the themed seasons in no correct order, I curved the edges of the pictures, and I added a little saturation to the pictures to make them look a bit more edgy. All in all, I wanted to show our seasonal reality versus a fun imaginative seasonal world with cyber punk and tech noir vibes. I hope you all can see my vision through these two collages!
For the second assignment, I decided to design a Destination Poster using Canva. My destination is of an imaginary place called Dooms-Dale Land that takes place in the heart of Cyber-Rome, Italy. Traveling to Italy has always been a dream of mine, so that’s why Italy was the inspiration for the setting of this technologically doomed place. I chose a few different pictures to put into this poster because I couldn’t choose just one of them. I researched cyberpunk/tech noir Italy, and these pictures popped up. I thought they were absolutely awesome and had to include them all. I cropped the pictures in a way that I could fit them all on the poster. Other than that, that is the only editing that was done to the pictures.
I used a multicolored background color that you can find on Canva using the linear gradient codes #8c52ff & #ff914d. This is the purple/pink/orange multicolored colors on the poster. I chose these colors because they looked appropriate for the setting. In most of the pictures, they have these colors incorporated in them. I used a “vintage” font with a hollow effect on the text. You can see the letters are slightly hollowed out. I chose this font/effect because I felt like it matched the vibe of the images. I looked through probably at least 15-20 font styles and I loved this one. I clicked on the hollow effect one time, and I didn’t even look for any other effects because I knew this one was it. Lastly, I finalized what I was going to say on my poster. At first, I kept it simple, and I wrote “Welcome to Dooms-Dale Land”, that name was a little random, but I felt like it went with the tech noir and cyber punk themes. Then I added the “Located in the heart of Cyber-Rome, Italy!” part. I thought it would be fun and on track with the theme to add Cyber-Rome, Italy instead of just saying located in Italy. Then I figured, why not add something nice at the end, in hopes to add suspense or something of the like. “We hope you enjoy your stay :)”. It’s almost the same effect as the creepy/scary chucky doll saying “you wanna play?”. Because who is “we” and from looking at the pictures, enjoying your stay may not be what will happen if you travel here. There seems to be a lot of technological warfare happening in these images.
For my last assignment, I chose to do a Self-Wellness Check. Personal wellness is very important to me, and I think it is essential to occasionally do self-check ins to see where I’m at, what I’m thinking, and why I’m thinking it. Below are the questions that were asked in this assignment. I answered them as myself and this assignment was not themed like the other 2. Above I created a little poster to go along with the written assignment. I created it on canvas. I found a picture that I felt like represented self-wellness, and I added it and expanded it to the full size of the poster (11 x 17). Then I added a little text box below that says “Self care. Self love. Self-Health.” Below is the Q&A panel, questions first and then answers are below it with a bullet point.
What worries me most about the future?
I worry about what the world will turn in to. I’m worried that all my hard work (College, internship, jobs.) will only get my head above water, and I’ll never truly become stable to where I can enjoy a comfortable and a financially stress-free life that I create for myself. I fear that I will finish college and get a well-paying job but then I still can’t get ahead. I want to be able to have the work life balance and not have to work to live like I have seen other family members have to do.
What am I doing about the things that matter most in my life?
I am nurturing and watering the things that matter most in my life so they can continue grow. I care the most about my education, wellbeing, my partner, my family, my friends, and my community. I study and use my resources to do well in school. I nurture and respect my relationships with my partner, family, friends, and in my community. The hardest thing to do out of all of these sometimes, is to be nice and kind to myself and take care of my wellbeing. Although I do my best!
What do I want most in life?
I want stability, great health, to be well education, enjoy the work I do, and to live a life that I love. I’d love to own a home. I want a garden to grow fruits and vegetables. I also want to grow flowers.
When did I last push the boundaries of my comfort zone?
This is a great question. I’m unsure. I feel like the last time I truly pushed the boundaries of my comfort zone was when I switched jobs. I had been waitressing for 7-8 years and I QUIT! Shortly after I found an internship opportunity that has been life changing. Now to think about it. I want to push my boundaries of comfort again very soon!
What goals do I need to have to get where I want to be?
My goals:
Complete my last semester at UMW, graduate this May 25′, and apply for a permanent position at my internship.
I want to start working out again or taking yoga classes. Something to get me more active and stimulated.
Start saving money. Once I graduate college in May, I’ll have NO student debt. I paid all of it off while attending college. So, this will give me the opportunity to start actually saving the money that I make. I don’t have a specific savings goal yet.
Apply to attend graduates’ school to achieve my Masters. If I get offered the position at my internship, they will FULLY pay for me to get my masters. Then I’ll get another raise.
Be open to moving out of my apartment. I’m scared to move because I’m comfortable here. I feel safe and secure because I know I can afford it because it is cheap/cheaper than anywhere else I’ve seen in the current market. But I want to keep an open mind about moving or relocating. I don’t want to be scared to make a move if it will benefit me.
Are you ready?! Click below to meet her. She doesn’t like waiting.
Name: Sapphria Mae
Archetype: Femme Fatale
Date of Birth: September 16th, 2073
Place of Birth: Somewhere in Greece
Occupation: Self-reliant entrepreneur/Slayer
Marital Status: Single, of course
Physical Description: Sapphria Mae has dirty blonde long hair. She wears down most times or up in a clean bun. Green eyes, long eye lashes, and a stunning face. About 5’4 and 170 pounds. Her dress style changes for the occasion. She loves wearing tight dresses with heels or dress slacks with a button up t-shirt with a blazer and dress shoes. But don’t get it twisted; She has a strong sneaker game too! She always wears jewelry, Sapphires are her favorite BUT diamonds are a girl’s best friend, so they say. Red lip stick looks good on her of course but she’d rather wear a vibrant purple because it really brings out her green eyes.
Bio: “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better” (Inspired by Mae West)
Favorite Food: Mangos, apples, yogurt, French fries, and salmon with mashed potatoes and vegetables.
Favorite Drink: Water, Ouzo, and fresh squeezed juices.
Favorite color: Doesn’t have one
Favorite book: Women talk “Family, Love, Sex” MONEY, Edited by Rebecca Walker
Favorite movie: Doesn’t have one. Her life is a movie.
Favorite Possession: Her cigarettes, and her weapon of the day. It varies.
This week was the start of my Daily Creates #ds106 #DailyCreates
First of all, I have 3 followers already!!! How exciting?!
For the first DC #tdc4754 (Daily Create) I sent in my secret spy weapon. Which was a picture of a watch, I’ll repost the picture below. I got my inspiration from James Bond, and many other agents. In my caption I said, “Every agent needs a watch!”
My second DC #tdc4755, I sent in captcha humor/sarcasm. On canvas, I created a collage with about 8 different humorous memes or images that I found on the internet. I added them into the collage, and I cropped and edited the memes/images, so they fit in square or rectangular form on the page, almost how a normal captcha would look like. Then I added a text box and posted a caption on the collage that said, “Select all squares with captcha humor”. Image below:
Third DC, #tdc4756 We were supposed to make some kind of art about unexpected coincidences. I created a blank canvas on Canva and found a meme about the coincidence of eating Pie on Pi Day. I also added a caption: “The pie also cost $3.14… Wicked!! A coincidence, I think NOT!” Image posted below:
The last DC for this week! #tdc4760 Create an emoji poem. I found a meme emoji poem that I had to share. It had a bunch of waves, ice cubes, whales, dolphins, boats, and one ship; At the very top right corner it says, “Jack No”. I love the titanic and I thought this was pretty creative way to represent that movie/story. I replied to myself on my post and wrote “Titanic Emoji Poem” just to clarify what the empji poem was about.
Image posted below:
Lastly, each day for our Daily Creates I favorited ones that I was able to see. Everyone else in my class did a great job this week! I made one reply to another student that said “This is awesome! Nice post rylie!” I’m still getting the hang of using these platforms. Next week I plan to make more comments and replies to other classmates.
Dr. Oblivion; Film Review with The Postman
The Terminator
Last week I watched the film The Terminator. From the previous readings, I had already known that some themes of this film were going to be tech noir and cyberpunk. I asked Dr. Oblivion, “What other themes besides tech noir and cyber punk were in the move The Terminator?” His response gave me a deeper insight on some of the deeper themes that I had overlooked. Of course, AI, dystopia, fate/destiny, and time travel are all themes that I had caught onto. But the idea of humanity and empathy, what it means to be human, and the idea that certain events are meant to happen and with changing them creates another set of problems. Then I asked Dr. Oblivion, “What does it mean to be human?” He replied that being human means that we feel emotions, have our own thoughts, we are conscious and aware of ourselves and our surroundings. Humans can also create things that don’t already exist. I had never really thought about what it means to be human.
In Chapter 1 of the Towards Technopoly: The Judgement of Thamus, ““Every technology is both a burden and a blessing”, “therefore, whatever our tendency — to praise or to curse — we should avoid becoming “one-eyed prophets.”” It makes sense that One-eyed prophets are not to be seen clearly. There are many external factors that cannot be accounted for. For example, the behaviors of people are most times unpredictable. We can’t account for the actions of other people because you cannot ever be certain of it. This also ties into the Statement of non-neutrality. Technology is not neutral. There are many pros of using innovative technology – it is used to create and transform but with that comes with many consequences. Just because an innovation is good, and it holds value, and dignity doesn’t mean it always will be and could cause disruption. Competition, dominance, money, attention, and intention is always subject to change and take discourse. I resonated with the concept of who are the winners and who are the losers of this technology? Who will gain power, dominance, money, and control? Who will suffer poverty, hardship, and defeat? In The Terminator, Skynet was originally created for unmanned military use and then became so powerful it became evil, and humans could not unarm it. In this case, humans would have been the losers.
In chapter 3, Towards Technopoly: From Technocracy to Technopoly, the Postman talks about unlimited growth. Which is relevant to The Terminator. Skynet, the created invention by Sarah Connor’s son became incredibly dangerous to humans and would have caused a nuclear death of the masses. This creation was not improving the condition to humanity and had widely caused disruption. This idea of technocracy had created new freedoms and accelerated life but also became the root of evil and triumph. From the reading, “With every new invention some limit was lifted or alleviated and there was less temptation to look back.” The Terminator was sent to look back in time to kill Sarah’s son to eliminate the new limitless technology, including; Limitless possessions, knowledge, science, and progression – good or bad. In this case bad because it was leading to violence, waste, war, and destruction. It also minimized the respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination for those in power in the future. Which would have AI, robots, and of the sort.
“Technopoly is water we swim in, which is why it’s critical for the flourishing of our local and global community that we know what it means to be wet.”, a quote from ch.3 readings from the Postman. This movie is the perfect example of why humans have to be careful and cautious of new technological creations as they can become dehumanizing.
It was lovely to meet Dr. Oblivion this week and read through Postmans Towards Technopoly pieces. Learning how powerful technology is, what type of effects it can have, and the ideologies behind it was very interesting and I took a lot from it.
Final Thoughts:
This week I got to participate with my classmates through the daily creates. I also had the opportunity to explore and pull out my creative side through the assignments that I chose. I also got to play around with word press and find out how to create tags, insert media, design my writings in my post, and even more.
Over the weekend I’ll be going to the DKC again to dive a little deeper on how to work with word press and how to better format my work on my post. Overall, I think I did a great job on week 2 assignments and activities! My work can only get better and more creative from here!
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.
For starting of the week, I decided to start customizing my website a bit to personalize it! I wanted to do something different than my other subdomain sites. I also started reading through the different tasks throughout the week, and planning out when I will complete each task. I think I did well at spacing out the assignments, while also doing the daily creates everyday.
Daily Creates
Daily Create #1
The theme for Monday was “unintended consequences”, so I decided to do an inspirational poster. One that you would see in a high school classroom or in a doctor’s office. I used Canva to create it, and then posted it to Mastodon.
Daily Create #2
The theme for this daily create was “bad art”. I opened Instagram after opening this assignment out of procrastination, and saw a post from Sammy D. Eagle, to which I immediately got to work. Of course, it only took me a couple of minutes, and I am not much of an artist, but I am quite proud of it.
Daily Create #3
The challenge for this was to take a photo of your long shadow. As I was walking back from lunch with a friend, I saw my long shadow in the snow, and took the opportunity to take the photo. I thought this prompt was quite funny and also interesting, as the effect the position of the sun has on shadows is intriguing.
Daily Create #4
It is DS106 Radio’s 14th birthday so I thought I would share a classic birthday song!
Daily Create #5
For the last daily task of the week, we had to make a poem out of emojis. For some reason, this iconic chant from an iconic movie kept playing in my mind! I guess it kind of counts as a poem, there is repetition?
Tasks
Assignment Banks
I was excited to complete these assignments, as there were so many options that it was hard to choose from them. The first assignment I did was to find my dream home on Zillow, which I then decided to make a collage of my favorite photos of the dream house I found. To read more about my dream home and my thought process behind it, read My Dream Home. For the second assignment, I made a GIF from the movie Blade Runner 2049, as it is not my favorite movie of all time, but it is one of my favorite cyber punk movies, with a stacked cast and amazing visuals. To read more, read GIF. Lastly, or the third assignment I chose to do was “Who Said What?”, where I found three characters who share similar characteristics, and made a confusing graphic of them saying an iconic quote, with showing different aspects of the characters. I chose to do iconic characters in the cyberpunk genre, and to read more about it, check out my Who Said What? post.
Building Participation
I also got to comment on and view some of my classmates blogs! This assignment was pretty easy and fun, as I got to explore my classmates blogs! It was very interesting to see all the different themes, as well as reading their blog posts just to get a peek as to who they are. I am excited to see everyone’s work in the near future.
Course Character
This was probably my favorite task as I got to get creative in creating a character under the film noir genre. It came pretty easy to me, and the archetype of the hard-boiled detective immediately stood out to me. Then, ideas started flowing about how to flesh out the character into something that fits into the genre, but stands out in a way. It was also interesting researching the different archetypes and their common characteristics. Here is my full-fledged description of my new course character, Course Character.
Readings and Film Review (Dr. Oblivion!)
Overall, I enjoyed Dr. Oblivions input in the assignments that I used him for! The readings were interesting, as I completely agree with how we should use ethics and morals when navigating advancements in technology. To read my summary, here is my post Technopoly. With the film review, I was happy to go more in depth about the Black Mirror episode I watched. To read more about my film review, here is my blog post about it Updated Film Review: Black Mirror.
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
This week was definitely a lot, and I felt pretty overwhelmed at times. But I got through it!
The Daily Creates were a highlight. They’re a fun and quick way to be creative and see what everyone else is doing. I jumped in on Monday, and the prompt was to create art about coincidences. This one took me a while to get started because, honestly, I see coincidences as random events, and I wasn’t sure how to translate that into art. It was a bit tricky at first!
The Assignment Bank is a cool idea, and I really enjoyed browsing through all the options. Doing the assignments was fun, but I did struggle a bit with the speech for Dr. Oblivion. I noticed he doesn’t always say exactly what I write, which threw me off a little at first. But then I realized he was still getting the point across, so it wasn’t a big deal.
I worked on my blog design this week too. Last week, I customized it pretty quickly, but this time I spent more time on it. I picked a theme I liked and spent some time organizing the menu, picking out colors and images, and playing with the headers and footers. It feels like it’s becoming my space now, which is cool.
Creating my course character was a lot of fun. The whole process was kind of tricky at first, especially figuring out how to introduce my character, but the character creation form really helped me stay on track. It gave me a good structure to follow, which made it easier than I thought.
This week, I also did the reading and wrote a reflection comparing it to The Matrix. That was surprisingly enjoyable, and it helped me improve my film review. I went back, added some images and GIFs, and dove deeper into the cyberpunk/tech-noir themes. It felt like a big improvement, and I’m glad I took the time to revise it.
For participation this week, I commented on some awesome blog posts and interacted with a couple of Daily Creates. Here are the links to my comments and the posts I engaged with:
Hi there, my name is Ethan, and this is the only personal social media I have at the moment. It’s kind of sad but I deleted all my other social media accounts this past year as a way to better my mental health and challenge myself to create healthier lifestyle habits. Blogs are so y2k though so I’m here for it.
I am excited to be able to share my personal journey in learning how to use various creative digital story telling tools hope to reignite a lost spark I once had for creating things online.
This week I learned that setting up a functional WordPress blog is much more complicated and time-consuming than using a simple drag and drop or AI website builder and that I am not the creative genius as I once believed myself to be. I am planning on scheduling a few appointments with the DKC this upcoming week to learn some tips and tricks around how I can build a more impressive looking homepage so that I feel more confident to showcase my creative journey and not get made fun of as much.
Technoir seems to be the new buzzword in this class. It’s like a detective story in a dystopian world where technology and robots have taken over the world. It reminds me of Blade Runner and Tron.
This week was more-so a transitional time with more housekeeping and preparation than actual creative projects. The majority of it was spent setting up accounts, creating this blog, coming up with my semester goals, and meeting with Paul. This week I also watched my tech-noir film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and wrote my review on it. Nothing this week was particularly challenging or stood out much. I did thoroughly enjoy watching my movie as I’ve been wanting to watch that one for a while and have never gotten around to it, so this gave me a good excuse to do so while also analysing it. I felt it necessary to take a much more allegorical approach to discussing cyberpunk/tech-noir which I did have quite a bit of fun with. Cyberpunk/tech-noir is not really my thing, I tend to find it very overstimulating and sensorily overwhelming, but I loved that this film didn’t have the hyper-futuristic neon dystopian chaos feel that many films in the genre do. This week taught me a few things: mainly that cyberpunk/tech-noir is a much more broad theme than I had realized and that this course actually utilizes many things that I already have a degree of experience in and I would definitely benefit from expanding on my skills and creative repertoire in those mediums.
I am not going to lie, I was really excited when I picked this class because it looked really fun, but I struggled a lot this week and was overwhelmed. From setting up my website and blog to learning how to navigate everything was very confusing and sadly I am not fully sure if I completed all the assignments correctly. I am still trying to adjust to everything and hopefully become more familiar with all this new stuff I am learning so that I can fully understand and do everything correctly. The most interesting assignment this week though would probably be the film review of Cowboy Bebop. I have always had a fascination with stories, so having assignments where I get to fully share my opinions and reactions about them is such a fun activity. Since the current theme is Tech Noir and Cyberpunk I am very interested to see what other fun assignments will be given and I hope this will be a fun class that I will enjoy all semester.
