Once upon a time there was a movie that was completely characterized  by the follow three symbols:

Ten points to anyone who is able to guess what the movie is!

I created these using Adobe Flash. I used it because it is something I am familiar with. As soon as I saw this assignment, I knew that I wanted to do it about this movie. I think I could have been way more clever about the symbolism, however I really couldn’t think about anything much better. Overall it took me about thirty minutes to create it. To anyone who has seen the movie, I think it will be very clear which movie it is. I just wish I had done a better job creating the symbol on the far left, it doesn’t look very good in my opinion.

What movie is this?! I feel like I’m on a game show.

For this assignment (worth two stars), we had to take four symbols that would represent the movie and whoever happens to stumble upon this post would have to guess what movie it is from. This goes back on Vignelli’s principles in where he states with design, someone needs to show the meaning of a bigger idea through a simple yet timeless symbols.

To do this, I used The Noun Project to find my symbols. Then, I pasted them into a blank paint document and scale them to be fairly similar in size.

For this assignment, I was supposed to take four pictures (icons) to make the basic elements of a movie, story, or event.  I used the movie The Boondock Saints. It is one of my favorite movie and when I saw this design assignment it was the first movie to come to mind.  The first icon is an Irish Cross which represents the protagonists’ religion and their reason in the first place to go and kill people they deemed as evil and wicked. The second icon shows the protagonists ancestry which is prevent in the film especially anytime they speak and their Irish accent is heard.  The third icon is of two guns. Throughout the film they use pistols that look similar to the ones in the icon to kill “evil” people and when people think of the film their poses with their pistols is the first thing that comes to mind. The last icon is of a weight which is the representation of balance.  One of the last things that happen in the film is interviews of the public asking about the Boondock Saints and the last question that is asked is “Are the Saints ultimately good…or evil?” which at the end is up to the viewer to determine are the protagonists good because they killed off people that were evil themselves or evil for taking law and justice into their own hands.

In this assignment I used paint to place the pictures I found online and added text to the bottom with the title of the film. I went for a minimal look with no color in any of the picture other than the border of the picture itself and the title of the film. I believe that it came out well. Initially I wanted to go for complete minimalistic with no intricate details on any of the items but given how I wanted to show an Irish Cross and the pistols they used I went for a little detail with no color.

This assignment is worth 2.5 stars.
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/one-story-four-icons/

This post requires a little guessing on your part, dear readers. The four icons below are expressing a favorite movie of mine. Do you know it?

I skipped over this assignment  (2 and a half stars ) the first time I saw it:  “..reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons, four of them.” I didn’t really feel the appeal in it. Wasn’t something that interest me. But after reading up on design and symbolism and their impact on people, I thought I’d give it a go.

Though only four icons, this wasn’t produced in like 5 minutes. I had to think on things for a bit. After I had picked my movie, I sat down and listed some things I thought symbolized the movie. What do people think of when they hear this movie’s title? What do I think of?

I took that list and reduced it to the top four things. Then I got to work finding icons to fit these chosen symbols. Everything was selected from The Noun Project. I tried to keep my white space/ black space ratio in mind as I picked icons. The icons I picked have a bold sort of look to them. I feel like these types stand out more.

The creation part of the assignment was pretty simple. I downloaded the icons and placed them in a photoshop document. Again I tried to keep design ideas in mind. I had a grid up while I placed the icons. I kept the space between the icons equal, as well as the border around the whole thing. It doesn’t really show much since my text space on my blog is white. But if you click the image you can see what I’m talking about.

Credit for the icons are as follows:
Icon 1: James Keuning from the Noun Project
Icon 2: Alex Auda Samora from the Noun Project
Icon 3: Cris Dobbins from the Noun Project
Icon 4: Richard Cordero from the Noun Project

For this assignment (worth 2.5 stars), we were asked to “reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons, four of them.”

I thought this would be a cool assignment to do to challenge myself.  I’m normally not very good at summarizing stories so succeeding at this assignment would definitely boost my self-esteem.

To do this, I started by thinking about movies and books that I could summarize in a few words or phrases.  I then used The Noun Project to find my images.  After I found them, I saved them and pasted them into Paint.

See if you can guess what movie this is:

Click here to see the answer

You think that when you get a job to save a cat from a tree all you will have to do is get a ladder. It was so much more than that. Probably why they called us and not the fire department. The story goes like this. Amelia came to us for a meeting. Our mission was to save a cat from a tree. The cat was stuck. But, it wasn’t just any cat. The cat was half demon, which meant that he could turn in to a big ugly at any second. There had been rumors around town about weird murders. They bodies looked like they were being clawed to death. So obviously, this was our mission.

It was a Saturday. The ones that came were me, Amelia, George and Daniel. Amelia was certain that Daniel was useful in this and George was the one to make sure we got away safely. We had Mark and Katherine stay back in case things got bad. We approached the park where the cat was. The cat was definitely in a tree. It definitely wasn’t a cat though. It looked like a monster. It had long fangs and it was growling as we cautiously approached it. Daniel looked to be moving his hands in some sort of weird way. Amelia looked nervously at him. George waited in the driver’s side of the car, ready to drive away if we needed it. We had guns and knives at the ready but Daniel seemed to be extending he hands at the creature. Suddenly, the creature charges towards Amelia. Daniel rushed in front of her and extended his hands. What came from his hands shocked me? Fire flew straight from his hands and the creature burned to ashes. Amelia screamed and Daniel fell to the ground. She rushed to Daniel as he lay gasping and muttering,” I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” I guess that answers some questions.

Kassia Note:
Here is the Four Icon Story assignment that is 2 1/2 points.

Story:
Lukas Jones was running as fast as he could. Pushing people in the crowd aside. He was chasing a criminal named Mack. Mack had just robbed the local bank and had escaped with a large wad of cash. Earlier that day, Lukas had gotten a note telling him that he would have to stop the crime on 7th street but he didn’t think it would leaving him running halfway across the city. He wasn’t cut out for this but he had to do something. He grabbed his gun and started shooting. At the sound of gun shots, the crowd around him immediately moved out of his way. He would be fine if he was able to hit Mack’s leg. He wanted to wound him enough to catch him but not kill him. Lukas needed him later for information. Mack’s gang had been committing routine crimes for the past couple weeks that Lukas had appeared in the 1940s and he wanted it to end now. If he was able to capture Mack than maybe he would get some information and solve other crimes done by people other than the gang. After a few failed attempt, Lukas was able to shoot Mack in the foot. Mack fell to the ground with a huff and Lukas was able to handcuff the troubled soul. Hopefully, he would get some information out of this guy.

Background
This assignment was the One Story/ Four Icon assignment that was 2 1/2 points. For this assignment, you have to put four icon together and make a story with those icons. I chose to use my radio show group mate’s character Mack. Sharla’s character Mack, she describes as a thug and my character is supposed to carry on the job of a detective regardless if he wants to or not. So, I wanted to have my character catch her character committing a crime. I used fotoflexer.com to edit the photos together. I found the photos in a simple google search and then aligned them in a way the I thought best fit the movement of the story. Hope you like it!