Tag Archives: featured-image

The Johnson Journal

Weekly Summary ds106 by Andrew Johnson

To start off this week, I was introduced to Assignment Block which is an online website that provides you with various options to create visual design and even animated GIF assignments! It was really interesting to dive into the different projects and themes that the website offers. The assignments I listed above are the projects that I decided to create and share with ds106. So, what does these assignments look like?

  1. Visual Assignment: The objective of this was to introduce a theme, then have the text say something completely contradictory to the starting theme. For example, this theme or feeling shows playing sports and the enjoyment of any sport. However, something that contradicts sports are injuries and the impact they have on athletes, young or old.

2. Design Assignment: On this assignment, I was tasked with portraying a poster of a sports team. I decided to pick the NBA team of the San Antonio Spurs to represent my poster. One of my favorite sports teams to watch includes the Spurs and basketball in general, that is my conclusion on why I chose to depict them.

3. Animated GIF Assignment: For this animated GIF, I was able to find a website (Giphy) that gave me a few options on how to coordinate and put together this GIF. I thought it was funny to see the other fighters reaction when she found out that she lost. I also feel like the caption is very relevant, especially in todays society, it just seemed fitting.

Celebrate Voting Rights GIF by Creative Courage

I enjoyed crafting these assignments because it opened my eyes to digital media that I have not been introduced before. I also like to create new ideas and platforms for entertainment purposes and I think that these assignments that I created definitely deliver that criteria. However, using the website did have a few problems such as running extremely slow and some pages not being able to load properly. To troubleshoot these problems I had to reload the page or revisit the site (Assignment Bank).

I would like to tell you about my course character, however, I do not want to give away too much detail. My course character is somewhat of an young investor looking for new opportunities in real-estate and other large money accounts. A few things about his lifestyle include making the most of each and every single day. This includes not following one single path, leaving options open for every instance that may occur throughout day-to-day life. Although some may say his lifestyle is lavish and relaxed, there is much more behind the scenes. I’ll leave y’all with that…

Here comes Layla: Your new favorite character.

Herse a few things to note about your new favorite character. Layla is all about the arts and her head is usually in a book. She was born in and still lives in Tokyo Japan, where she is a successful manga artist and has one dozen of awards for her manga. She loves writing romance comedy manga and has a very distinct art styles that people have raved about.

When Layla isn’t hunched over in her art studio creating her manga Shes either getting lost in the world of books at a local coffee shop or library or you can find her on the search for the latest boba drink or iced latte.

When she is not working or reading, she’s creating. Shes creating paintings, drawings, sculptures, and stories. She truly embraces the world of art and believes that anything can be art. If you ask her about technology shell tell you that it’s not something she cares much for. Layla would rather have an actual book in her hand then a e-reader. Most manga artist draw on an iPad, but she prefers good old pencil and paper. She won’t admit that shell use the tablet when Shes behind on a story thought.

Layla loves art, loves books, loves relevant pop culture and all things the aesthetic of a cozy and warm coffee shop. If you ask her how much sleep, she gets shell just look at you and avoid the question. That how passionate and in love she is with the world of the art. If you know art, then you know Layla. If you don’t know art well here your invitation to start. Why? Because Layla is always everyone’s favorite.

Film Review- The avengers.

Whether you are a superhero fan or not I’m sure you’ve heard of the avengers. I chose to write about the Avengers because I’m a Marvel fan and I believe there’s a Marvel movie out there for everybody. Even one of my friends who isn’t super into superhero’s was able to enjoy the Avengers Franchise and even went back to watch the individual superhero movies. Enough of my own personal opinion and to the review itself.

The avengers bring together a world of superheroes to fight the bad guy and save the earth from being destroyed. This may sound like every basic superhero story out there but it’s just the way Marvel did that really set the tone for the entire franchise to be as successful as all the films were. There’s so much comedy, action, a bit of romance in there, the characters are all likable in their own distinct ways as well. Someone that hasn’t watched any of the individual superhero movies about the characters can still enjoy the movie without having to go back and watch the other movies beforehand (even though I highly recommended one doing so).

The actors had such great chemistry, and the writing of the actual story was really well done. It was more than just a superhero movie but a movie that can really bring you together. Weather it’s a family, couple, or someone by themselves it’s just a great movie overall.

Getting into more of the story itself even the villain is likable in my opinion. One of the hero’s being Thor classic brother trope. Thor being the all-around good brother good at everything and the favorite and then you have Loki less popular, and what you could label as the odd ball. Lokki wants to destroy the earth well because why not? He was getting the means to do so. Thor and his other super friends are thrust together and the dialoged between the characters is again hilarious. Iron man takes on the know-it-all rich guy and all of his quick wit and banter plays really well with the humble captain America who’s the all-around good solider and wants to do right by his country. Paired with all around classic superhero The Hulk who is surrounded by the “new age” hero’s it just all pairs together so well.

The Avengers was a great first movies to what turned into a great Franchise and is a must watch for all in my opinion.

DS106 goals

I think anyone can answer their goal for their class is to pass so it will count towards there degree completion. If you’re someone that likes to do well in school like me, I not only want to pass a class, but I want to do well in the class. So, I guess a generic answer and what my answer usually is at the start of this new semester when asked. What do you hope to take from this course? I really just want to do well and ultimately graduate with my degree, but I know that’s why most of us are here. This class is making me think a bit differently, its more than just wanting to pass a class but I would really like to tap into my creative side. I don’t think I was truly able to dabble into my creative side for longer than I care to put in this post honestly.

I think as you get older and have more responsibilities, it can be difficult to try and go about things in a creative Lense. Things at least for me are getting tasks done and doing them efficiently and not creatively. My goal for this class is to get creative in everything that I do, to the blog post we have to write about, the stories we have to create, my blog itself I want to authentically be creative with the content I am creating. I am someone that’s not big into social media, but I think the digital world in incredible and ever changing and growing as time continues to evolve. I would like to create something be involved in some sort of contention creation as I am majoring in communications and minoring in digital studies. I am intrigued to get into this world of digital creating and learn what I am able to come up with.

So what’s my goal? I want to pass and do well of course but ultimately, I want to really get to know my creative side.

Avengers Assemble!

The final assignment that I chose to work on was an animated GIF assignment. This assignment required me to create a GIF of a scene from my favorite movie that captures the essence of the idea behind the GIF. One of the requirements was also to make sure that the GIF involved minimal movement so that the image was not too busy. I decided to make my GIF in relation to the movie, Avengers: Infinity War. This clip happened closer to the end of the movie when the three characters, Groot, Thor, and Rocket Raccoon all landed back on Earth in a place called Wakanda after being off world for a decent amount of time. This scene really stuck out to me because while watching the movie, I always thought about how cool the scene looked when they were all ganging up together to help take down Thanos, who was the villain of the movie. The caption “Let’s Go Boys!!! Time to Work!!!” was written by me because the picture looks like they are getting ready to go to war, which they are, and so the motivational words seemed fitting for the time and picture being used. Also, since I am part of a team here at UMW, it make sense for me to create an image that shows of camaraderie because any time we have a match we are getting ready and playing our matches as a team and we want everyone to succeed. Therefore, I think this image and caption really relates to my life as well just looking really good overall. I enjoyed making this GIF because I think it is something that I can use in the future and will be nice to know that I was the one to make it.

Sports – From the Eyes of AI

One of the assignments that I chose to do for this week was to create a sports poster. However, I thought about it and decided that in order to relate it to the field of AI, I wanted to try and see what an AI bot would give me when I get it certain prompts. So, the first image on the far left was an image that was given to me when asked to recreate the Cincinnati Bengals football stadium. Now from this image, we can see that the AI bot was pretty accurate in its depiction of the stadium and did a really job of recreating the stadium. Now moving, I gave the AI bot a little more specifics on this turn, I asked to recreate the Bengals stadium while have it in a jungle with the weeds and tree roots growing over and around the stadium with a tiger on the front of the stadium. I found that the AI bot made a less and less accurate depiction of what I wanted with the more information I was giving it. For example, I wanted the tiger on the front of the stadium almost like a statue or logo on the front with the trees roots and weeds growing up the stadium walls. What I got was more of a entryway into a stadium with a tiger in the way. Finally, I decided to give the AI bot free will and choice and asked it to give me a depiction of the Bengals stadium in its own eyes. In other words, I asked the bot to give me a picture of what it thought the stadium should look like and from the output (far right), it appears to pretty close to the what it actually looks like (far left). The only issue with the third picture is that from some reason it could not properly generate the team logo like it did in the first picture but other than that it was pretty accurate in its depiction. This was confusing to me because the more specifics I gave the chatbot, the less the image looked like what I wanted it to look like. Overall, this was a really interesting experience because I was able to combine the world of sports while also seeing how AI would react to questions about generating images related to specific sports teams and what it thought different things should look like.

AI Takeover

One of the first assignments I chose to do was a Visual Assignment in relation to the field of AI. The assignment asked us to create an image that showed certain depictions of something happening and then having a phrase somewhere else on the page that completely contradicted it. So, to fit in with the world of AI, I decided to create an image of what some would called, an “unusual” use of AI, in which case the user is asking the robot to complete their taxes. Now the main reason behind why this is will be revealed soon, but for now, it is important to note that this situation was chosen for a specific reason. Moving on, you can see that the robot was able to successfully interpret the question and come up with a solution as any good AI bot would. This entire conversation or short talk was what the assignment description referred to as a “certain depiction,” and the following was added to create a contradictory statement: “Never learn anything ever again!!!” I chose to add this line because over the years people learn to do their taxes through school, college, parents, and even from just the internet, but now that we live in a world where AI is looking to be the main point of contact to get things done, people would never have to learn how to do anything ever again. A lot of people use AI to get help on assignments and ask for clarification on topics, however, if it gets to the point where it can complete things such as a person’s taxes, there will no longer be any need for learning and what AI was built for would no longer be its main reason for being used. As a result, I think that these poster creates a good depiction of what AI might look like in the future along with the idea that its somewhat contradictory because AI will no longer be used for learning rather getting stuff done and not learning anything.

Week Summary

I didn’t know what to expect when I entered into this course but wow after reviewing the syllabus and going over all of the required work its defiantly going to be an exciting semester. I honestly had a hard time with initially getting things set up but thankfully after an appointment with the Digital Knowledge Center I was able to easily figure out what I was doing wrong. I can tell that this class is different from the courses that I have taken in the past at UMW but on another note I am excited to be able to learn more about the digital world then I thought I could. At one point I considered myself someone that understood how to set up accounts and things of the digital nature pretty quickly. Well, that’s not the case and I know off hand that I am really going to have to take my time when it comes to the assignments, I am someone that is known to work fast. All in All, I am looking forward to what I learn, and all this class has to offer.

Play Along – My Story As A Game

For one of this week’s assignments, I chose to do My Story As A Game. I thought it would be fun to play around with a Photoshop-like program and imagine how people would play my life. I used Photopea, which is essentially a free Photoshop. I designed the characters in the Sims 4, which, as you will learn, is my favorite game (the characters are based on, but not exactly, people in my life).