From the Minimize Your Philosophy assignment: Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept. Extra challenge: Try to include a unique element that makes it YOU. Don’t forget to explain your thought process. (2 stars)
I wanted to use the simplest image creators to exhibit the short and sweet Up, In and Out (so I used paint). It is a self-awareness tool that I have learned from Jo Saxton which is the lifeshapes triangle for a balanced life. We balance relationships, outreach, and self-time, etc. Ever since hearing of this I have been finding ways to incorporate it into my life. Triangles are such odd shapes but structurally fundamental. I love the cool and bright colors (well, anyway these are my favorite colors…) and it suggests a harmonious way of living. The jutting out bar of the triangle is to give the eye and the “out” a place to rest and it grounds it.
Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept. Extra challenge: Try to include a unique element that makes it YOU. Don’t forget to explain your thought process. :)
Okay, I am not going to claim this one as MY philosophy, but I had this idea, and needed to make a poster, and this was the closest assignment I could find (yeah, I could create a new one, but we have plenty).
Today on our walk around the country roads near their home, friends Barbara and Bill pointed out some innocuous nondescript green plants on the roadside. They had been mowed down, but there were taller stalked nes in the adjacent field. “Have you hear of wild parsnip?” No, I’m kind of a city guy.
Well, as it turns out, wild parsnip creates these bright yellow flower heads
but if you contact these plants at all, they will burn your skin and leave scars. It is labeled as a dangerous plant.
Can you think of a more clever evolutionary strategy to be left alone? Create attractive flowers but then easily poison anything that touches it.
SO I decided to make a poster of this.
In PhotoShop I used the image above, and simplified it by using Image=> Adjust-> POsterize which reduces the color set to a smaller number, and turn a photo into something more abstract like a print. I played with the slider and ended up on something like 11 levels.
In landscape orientation it did not look like a poster (nor did it leave room for words), so I rotated in 90 degrees.
The text “Survival Strategy” is Gil Sans Ultra Bold, because, it is big and thick. I used Layer=>Effects=>Stroke to put a 3 pixel outside edge to the letter, a good effect for making text stand out.
The lower text is Mistral, which I liked because it looks kind of hand drawn and more ominous. The black text was not really looking good on its own, so I used Layer=>Effects=>Outer Glow to put that yellowish haze around the letters.
Poster done!
Again, this IS NOT MY PHILOSOPHY! Just had fun with today’s learning moment.
Learn more about Wild Parsnip… I think it gives our Corn Overlords something to worry about
This week I found another block of time through which to sprint after a number of ds106 design assignments. I had some trouble narrowing down which assignments to tackle until I began them; clearly, I do not yet have the patience or chops for some of the work, so it’s great that the ds106 community has shared so many different ideas for assignments. I hope to contribute some ideas this summer and fall as I try to implement a more ds106/MOOC feel in my middle school classroom.
Here are my basic hardware and software specs for the week: MacBook, OSX 10.6.8, 2.26 GHz Intel Core Duo 2, 2 GB of memory, Chrome, Wacom Bamboo tablet, SketchBook Pro (for drawing), Acorn (for fills and copy).
This week the work is not in any particular order. I made an animated comic book cover that looks pretty crummy next to all the awesome examples out there. I don’t yet have the animator’s patience to pull off a decent attempt, so I’ll pass on sharing for now. It was a simple snikt effect.
I’m becoming interested in how the community categorizes tasks. At times today, I definitely felt like a designer; at other times, I felt more like I was tweaking a pre-existing design for my own education (which seems more like a visual task to me), or mashing-up a number of designs. Some of the visual assignments feel like design tasks, too – like the album cover. I’d love to hear more about how contributors and organizers think of course- and task-design.
I take a ton of screenshots in Minecraft. I love discovering new sights in Minecraft, as well as new perspectives on familiar places. I ask students to take a ton of screenshots, too, so I can share their work easily through blogging. (Teaching in a multi-age classroom in a middle school, I haven’t yet solved the riddle of whole-class social media use, so I try to collect and share as many digital photos and artifacts as possible.)
For this assignment, I looked through my ds106-server screenshots, found a picture I liked, cropped it some, and then appended a snappy postcard/bumper-sticker-ready punchline in Acorn. Lastly, I mocked up a simple back for the card and let it be.
Since I wrote about how much The Road terrified me when I posted my Liminal States story-shape, and since The Road showed up as the exemplar for this assignment, I went back to Liminal States and riffed on my fake album cover assignment; with Liminal States you really can’t go wrong with a boy and his dog.
However, I wanted to use a different image this time around, so I found
“>a picture of a boy dressed as a cowboy riding a dog in The Commons on Flickr.
I brought the photo into Acorn and composed the rest of the cover there, darkening the bottom band to offer better contrast for the tagline.
The boy dressed up as a cowboy reminds me of my [privileged, white male] love for archetypes, even though many of those archetypes make horrible, horrifying decisions, like the genre-riffing characters of Liminal States. Moreover, in the book, youth – the eternal kind – is not all its cracked up to be. Considering the source material, it’s also significant that the boy and the dog clearly have different ideas about what’s going on and are, in fact, headed – or at least looking – in separate directions. The presence of grass is germane to the novel, as well.
I picked Trajan Pro for the font because it has that somber, elegiac, official feel like the title of a Tom Brokaw book.
The tag line is neither entirely true nor entirely false in its description of the book.
I’ve cartooned myself many times – some examples can be found here, here, and here. There’s even a short comic I drew about the first year of our school out there in a filing cabinet somewhere.
I find using a cartoon alter ego to be very helpful in breaking up the monopoly that text holds over my blogging, and I like to use drawings in class materials, as well. Cartooning is a good way to and bring some humor to the engrimmening proceedings of American public education.
For this assignment I wanted to draw myself differently than I normally do, so I went online and searched after
“>an image of Savoy from the comic Chew as drawn by series-artist Rob Guillory. (I have no idea why I’ve never cosplayed Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Chris Farley playing Savoy, but I know I could rock it.) I like Guillory’s style – it’s cartoony, dynamic, busy; as with Jeffery Brown’s completely different work, it makes me think I could draw a comic. It gives me hope.
I tried to capture Guillory’s sense of Savoy’s form, but left much of the interior clean, as I tend to do in larger work; paradoxically (maybe)I detail little doodles like crazy. I also colored myself for a change since I usually work in black and white.
I drew myself in SketchBook Pro using a 2.5-sized brush rather than a 4.0-sized one so that I my line would look more like Guillory’s and less like mine. I began with a blue-line drawing and then added a layer for a black-line drawing to bring into Acorn. Then I deleted the blue-line layer, switched to Acorn, and colored myself.
To make my own, I went for a popular, yet nerdy, property – The Lord of the Rings. In looking at spacesick’s use of patterns, I decided to use a ring motif to build Mount Doom and to perch Suaron’s eye atop it. I used a different color/material for each level of rings: silver for the Elves, bronze for the Dwarves, and iron for the humans. While that progression isn’t canonical, I used it to bring more color to the page and to communicate of how Middle Earth rank-orders its species. I could have made the other rings all white and left the one ring golden, but I am not at all unhappy with this design. I wonder also about linking the rings to show their interconnectedness in a chain-mail kind of way.
I used Acorn to compose the cover. I read up on spacesick’s fonts
“>here. The projector is the only element I lifted directly from any of spacesick’s covers.
Finally, I opened the image in SketchBook Pro for some final touches with textured brushes to worry the cover.
I’m really eager to see more of these designs from the ds106 community.
I’m not sure why this assignment is worth zero stars; I think it should get two.
For this task, I decided to make a children’s book cover for a hard science fiction novel – House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. I love that book. It gives me hope.
My cover, however, gives me the giggles. It’s so profanely incongruous – and yet so weirdly apt – that it delights me.
House Of Suns for kids
I drew the cover in SketchBook Pro and then colored and lettered it in Acorn.
As I hunted down stray pixels in Acorn, I discovered that it’s much easier to draw and paint in that program while zoomed in a level or two (this is both an a-ha and a duh moment). I still prefer SketchBook Pro for drawing, but it was satisfying to find a way to draw and color productively in Acorn, as well. At the default zoom, even a medium-sized brush can disappear on-screen in Acorn because its reticle isn’t persistent. That means if you’re trying to paint stray pixels in Acorn without zooming in, you lose the tip of your brush if your brush color is the same color as your background. That frustrated me greatly, but now I know that it’s easier to keep track of your brush tip while zoomed.
I hope others will jam on the idea of making children’s book covers for novels meant for adults.
Aude aliquid dignum: dare something worthy. I try to approach teaching and learning as if they were the most worthy things I could do and help others do. I think it’s important to ask kids to do worthy work. I think it’s important that teachers dare to resist the standardization of education. I think it’s important and worthy that we talk about how to subvert the status quo in our primary and secondary schools so that learning matters to kids, their families, and their communities. So here it is:
Aude aliquid dignum
I made the image in Acorn. I tried to minimalize the sans-serif text’s presence on the page without making it illegible (I probably cut too much of the “g”). Then, while trying to stay away from the Dr. Manhattan symbol, I made a little hydrogen atom to frame the words, with the “e” inside the electron. Hydrogen is a pretty minimalist element, but the proton and electron are also the building blocks of everything else. Hydrogen can exist by itself, but atoms do great and terrible things together. We humans can do the same, inside and outside Minecraft, a game about building – and/or destroying – alone and/or in a community!
I put another atomic particle in the upper right-hand corner so that the eye would be drawn there in an attempt to connect the two white spaces with one another over distance, which made me think that maybe the electron (which wants to create a bond) is also little person or organism looking to the stars and wondering how to connect with another being over a vast distance. I think connecting is worth daring.
I found a CC-licensed picture of a glorious, insanely detailed, embroidered Moss, brought it into SketchBook Pro, and traced over Moss’s hair and glasses. I used green in homage to the show’s pixelated, primitive CGI credit sequence. Then I went into Acorn to fill it in and clean-up white speckles left over in Moss’s hair and glasses.
For this piece, I searched The Commons on Flickr for propaganda. I went into my search looking for an ad or poster about building a shelter. I wanted to make a visual pun on our Minecraft work. However, when I found this picture, I switched gears. I hate Creepers. I’m playing the ds106 server on survival mode right now, and the Creepers have not been kind. If you look at my stretch of the beach on the server (behind camp), you can see how much Creeper damage I’ve had to patch. Finding a way to rally against the Creepers was just what I needed to lift my spirits.
I grabbed a CC-licensed picture of some Creeper cosplay. I took a screen shot of the head and cut out the background in Acorn. Then I brought in the propaganda poster. I used the scale and perspective transformations to size, angle, and position the Creeper heads. Then I made the heads monochromatic and color-matched them to their bodies.
Beat the Creeper
Now I’m ready to go back on the sever. I hope someone will put this poster into a ds106 texture pack for Minecraft!
#DontBlogNow starring Martha Burtis and Alan Levine. Somehow featuring the Bava, Timmmyboy, and Slaughterhouse 4. I did a lot of cutting, filling, and smudging in Acorn. I grabbed the movie poster here. I found Martha here and I found Alan here. I sepia-toned their faces, shrunk their heads, and then altered their saturation and brightness to help their faces better fit the gestalt of the photo in the poster.
#DontBlogNow
I love how different their expressions are, as if Martha has caught on to something that Alan is asking about again. “A serial killer in a red raincoat? Really? Was that a deliberate design decision? Where?” “Over-ay ere-thay, Alan-ay! Et’s-lay o-gay!”. Why someone snapped a photo of them at this moment I will never know.
I picked Don’t Look Now to avoid making a quick and easy visual pun about a movie I loved. I despise Don’t Look Now. I loathe that movie. I will never go to Venice. I refuse to look at myself passing on a boat. Forget it.
I will, however, spend hours remixing the film’s poster.
I just wish I was better at digital production – I really like the way the poster turned out, but I wanted it to be perfect, like my utter, unutterable, intangible, illogical contempt for this Don’t Look Now.
That’s it for today’s products. As I go further into the ds106 experience, I’m trying to stick with at least a few assignments per week that push me out of my comfort zone. I also want to balance the camp nature of camp with the profundity of the learning experience available to me here. I need to socialize more with my fellow campers, too.
I try to teach to what kids are doing in my classroom; in the same way, I’m learning to design what I discover instead of trying to design what I plan. It feels good.
Minimize Your Philosophy: Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept.
The quote is from a well-known part of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt. Although the entire speech is called “Citizenship in a Republic,” this famous portion is known as “The Man In the Arena.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It’s a paragraph that has always given me chills, and its sentiments are things I’ve tried to live my life by. I’m a shy and anxious person by nature, and when I was younger I found myself missing opportunities because of it. When I heard this speech, I decided I would never let fear keep me from doing something I wanted. Whether my efforts ended with victory or defeat, at least I would have been in the arena.
I used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate one of the “Gladiator” posters, painstakingly erasing the littlest bits of the image I didn’t want. Then I used a filter to render the image as you see it (sorry, I forget which filter I used), and paintbucket’d the beige background color. I wanted a dirt-color, but not too dark so that it wouldn’t take away from the contrast of Crowe and the arena itself. Then it was a simple matter of putting the text in and adjusting it to the appropriate size.
Minimize Your Philosophy: Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept.
The quote is from a well-known part of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt. Although the entire speech is called “Citizenship in a Republic,” this famous portion is known as “The Man In the Arena.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It’s a paragraph that has always given me chills, and its sentiments are things I’ve tried to live my life by. I’m a shy and anxious person by nature, and when I was younger I found myself missing opportunities because of it. When I heard this speech, I decided I would never let fear keep me from doing something I wanted. Whether my efforts ended with victory or defeat, at least I would have been in the arena.
I used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate one of the “Gladiator” posters, painstakingly erasing the littlest bits of the image I didn’t want. Then I used a filter to render the image as you see it (sorry, I forget which filter I used), and paintbucket’d the beige background color. I wanted a dirt-color, but not too dark so that it wouldn’t take away from the contrast of Crowe and the arena itself. Then it was a simple matter of putting the text in and adjusting it to the appropriate size.
Minimize Your Philosophy: Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept.
The quote is from a well-known part of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt. Although the entire speech is called “Citizenship in a Republic,” this famous portion is known as “The Man In the Arena.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It’s a paragraph that has always given me chills, and its sentiments are things I’ve tried to live my life by. I’m a shy and anxious person by nature, and when I was younger I found myself missing opportunities because of it. When I heard this speech, I decided I would never let fear keep me from doing something I wanted. Whether my efforts ended with victory or defeat, at least I would have been in the arena.
I used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate one of the “Gladiator” posters, painstakingly erasing the littlest bits of the image I didn’t want. Then I used a filter to render the image as you see it (sorry, I forget which filter I used), and paintbucket’d the beige background color. I wanted a dirt-color, but not too dark so that it wouldn’t take away from the contrast of Crowe and the arena itself. Then it was a simple matter of putting the text in and adjusting it to the appropriate size.
Minimize Your Philosophy: Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept.
The quote is from a well-known part of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt. Although the entire speech is called “Citizenship in a Republic,” this famous portion is known as “The Man In the Arena.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It’s a paragraph that has always given me chills, and its sentiments are things I’ve tried to live my life by. I’m a shy and anxious person by nature, and when I was younger I found myself missing opportunities because of it. When I heard this speech, I decided I would never let fear keep me from doing something I wanted. Whether my efforts ended with victory or defeat, at least I would have been in the arena.
I used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate one of the “Gladiator” posters, painstakingly erasing the littlest bits of the image I didn’t want. Then I used a filter to render the image as you see it (sorry, I forget which filter I used), and paintbucket’d the beige background color. I wanted a dirt-color, but not too dark so that it wouldn’t take away from the contrast of Crowe and the arena itself. Then it was a simple matter of putting the text in and adjusting it to the appropriate size.
Minimize Your Philosophy: Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept.
The quote is from a well-known part of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt. Although the entire speech is called “Citizenship in a Republic,” this famous portion is known as “The Man In the Arena.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It’s a paragraph that has always given me chills, and its sentiments are things I’ve tried to live my life by. I’m a shy and anxious person by nature, and when I was younger I found myself missing opportunities because of it. When I heard this speech, I decided I would never let fear keep me from doing something I wanted. Whether my efforts ended with victory or defeat, at least I would have been in the arena.
I used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate one of the “Gladiator” posters, painstakingly erasing the littlest bits of the image I didn’t want. Then I used a filter to render the image as you see it (sorry, I forget which filter I used), and paintbucket’d the beige background color. I wanted a dirt-color, but not too dark so that it wouldn’t take away from the contrast of Crowe and the arena itself. Then it was a simple matter of putting the text in and adjusting it to the appropriate size.
Minimize Your Philosophy: Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept.
The quote is from a well-known part of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt. Although the entire speech is called “Citizenship in a Republic,” this famous portion is known as “The Man In the Arena.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It’s a paragraph that has always given me chills, and its sentiments are things I’ve tried to live my life by. I’m a shy and anxious person by nature, and when I was younger I found myself missing opportunities because of it. When I heard this speech, I decided I would never let fear keep me from doing something I wanted. Whether my efforts ended with victory or defeat, at least I would have been in the arena.
I used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate one of the “Gladiator” posters, painstakingly erasing the littlest bits of the image I didn’t want. Then I used a filter to render the image as you see it (sorry, I forget which filter I used), and paintbucket’d the beige background color. I wanted a dirt-color, but not too dark so that it wouldn’t take away from the contrast of Crowe and the arena itself. Then it was a simple matter of putting the text in and adjusting it to the appropriate size.
“Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept. Extra challenge: Try to include a unique element that makes it YOU. Don’t forget to explain your thought process. “
The quote/philosophy I chose:
The above image was obtained from a site called cherrybam (and they allowed it to be used by even providing a html code-awesome people!)
So I brought the artist in me alive to create this poster(see below):
Used the pencil tool to draw what I believe is the glamorized version of our real heart(that is minus the valves and arteries).
Changed the outline color to red using fill tool.
Still using the fill tool ….filled the inside of the heart using a pattern fill called ‘mud’ to get the brain like effect!
Pattern filled the background using a fill called ‘marble’.
Wrote the text at the bottom using the text tool.
Story:
Honestly speaking I dont live life by quotes thought I love reading them. So I chose a quote that matched/suited the wayI think in life generally. Realized most quotes did suit me but then finally decided on this one. So the whole idea here is I really think its important that being nice/good does not mean acting brainless! Its very important to be rational, calculative and smart along with a good heart! Writing this I remembered another quote/saying which says something like ‘one thing you should never have in life is regret!’ Basically, carry both your brain and heart with you always and hopefully never regret/feel bad/be hurt in life! I really dont know how many can really relate to this but then again this is ME; extremely calculative!
The extra challenge says to include me in the poster – I made it so i believe that just makes it me! The color ,format and everything was done the way I want it to be! and I love marbles(as in the ones used on the floor)
(2 stars)
“
and I love marbles(as in the ones used on the floor)
