I started off thinking I would take a darker take on this Digital Storytelling class assignment, a visual assignment called the “Make Your Own Spubble”. I took an old photo of myself, taken by my friend Dil a couple years ago (during which she had an obsession with so-called “emo” culture), which she had turned into greyscale for dramatic effect. As you may have noticed, I love black and white photography for this very reason.

However, I was in a great mood, so I decided to do a different take and follow the suggestion to make the “spubble” (a portmanteau of “speech” and “bubble” in this case, not the Urban Dictionary definition) add humor to the photo, which was obviously especially challenging in this case. I first decided a splash of color would help lift the aesthetic mood, so I selected an intense red outline for the spubble, then overlayed one of the rather limited options for spubbles available on Google Drawings. I thought the curly edges, usually indicative of thought, made sense in this case since the photo shows me not speaking.

I didn’t like the way it looked with a solid white background, but a transparent bubble wouldn’t look right either, for the letters would not have been visible in black or white against the many greys of the background…I learned that this is an advantage of black and white when words need to be superimposed on an image. I resolved this issue by making the bubble semi-transparent white, just light enough to see the black letters.

Overall I think it went surprisingly well. I may recreate this photo later, but with greater attention to detail than in the original, and with consideration of the photography tips we’re currently learning. In particular, I may want to do this photo from a different angle, giving more power to the perspective, as recommended by David duChemin, or use Jason Eskenazi’s photography in WONDERLAND: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith and analysis in Storytelling and Visual Literacy as inspiration for a more geometric composition of the figure.

Your very own Spubble – Learn to love yourself, grab a picture of yourself in which your body language, actions, gestures, etc. suggest one thing and then play off that using a speech bubble.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/your-very-own-spubble/

I wanted to use this picture because I knew the only recent pictures of me that weren’t selfies would be of me on my Psych in Europe trip. Personally, I found this pretty easy to create but the whole making it funny part threw me for a loop. This is because, to me, this is hilarious for it was exactly what I was thinking when my group handed me the map and asked me to translate the directions. This is extra hilarious to anyone that actually knows me and that I am terrible at two things: technology and directions. Luckily we got to where we were going! This is great storytelling wise because there is even a story in of itself along with people wondering, “Did they make it?” “Where were they going?” “Is this their first day?” “Is Ciera really that bad with directions?”

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/your-very-own-spubble/

Assignment: Your Very Own Spubble

This assignment was quite the comedic task because it made me have to think of a good caption to write. Why the caption and pose next to a stool, you ask? I picked: “where did the couch go?” because I’m currently at my boyfriend’s house and his parents are moving to Paraguay! There’s barely any furniture at the house, especially in their living room, so I thought it would be funny to take a picture with the stool. I know, I’m hilarious. More of an inside joke but anyways I had fun with the assignment none the less!

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/your-very-own-spubble/

Here is an old photo of me, I look like such a doofus with my egg nog.

Behind the Creation

I have an obsession with Wawa egg nog so I am assuming my happiness in this photo was caused by the egg nog in my hand. My mom used to be scared of my egg nog addiction, she would treat it like I was doing hardcore drugs. She would try to get my brothers to convince me to stop drinking egg nog so much. Unfortunately none of that worked, because I still drink Wawa egg nog to this day. Though it is a seasonal drink so I always have to wait until Winter, and please do not tell me to go get egg nog somewhere else. It is not the same, trust me. I look really stupid in this picture so I enjoyed making fun of myself. I hope you find this kinda funny.

The Process

To add the text and the speech bubble on the photo, I used an online photo editor called LunaPic. I don’t have photoshop or any other fancy photo editing software right now so I have to resort to the ghetto option.

The first thing I did was load my image into the editor by selecting the Browse option on the photo banner with the blonde hair woman (or man, who knows).

The photo I selected then showed up in the editor. I went to the Draw menu and selected Speech Bubble. This opened a menu to select what style of speech bubble I wanted.

After selected the bubble I wanted, I place it in the proper position and resized it using the small yellow squared on the corners.

The going back to the Draw menu, I select the Text Tool option to add the text inside the speech bubble. This opened a menu at the top of your photo seen to the right of the photo below. From here I was able to edit the text as I needed.

After adding the text and moving it to the proper position. I go under File and select Save Image to save it to my computer.

Background To start off my spubble for #VisualAssignment190 I first looked through my own images until I came across one that I thought was funny on it’s own but would be even funnier with a text bubble. For this I decided on a screenshot I had taken of my boyfriend while on Skype of him […]