I made a sound clip that tells a story through noise and different sounds only. This assignment was to create a story in only 90 seconds that was interesting for 4 stars. I had to use at least 5 different sounds I found online, and mash them up to one clip. I used free sound and BBC sound effect website along with audacity. This inspiration comes from being woken up in the middle of the night for a call and hearing those tones drop and the story that plays out afterwards. I did have a learning curve with this assignment. Sound is definitely going to take the most time to complete because I know the least about it.
This was an assignment I used audacity to create then uploaded to soundcloud. I started with the idea of the alarm clock then moved to work and the fact we had the fire alarm go off last night in my dorm to the point of the fire department coming. I downloaded a bunch of different sounds then looked into working with them, I got some walking to the truck and hospital, indistinct chatter for the hospital, sirens for the ambulance, and a washing sound because that’s how we feel on a call in the middle of the night. I was able to play around with a bunch of effects like the envelope to figure out where I wanted the sound to be louder or softer, I also decided to silence parts of different sounds but not delete them.
I think I did a good job with this assignment. I learned a lot more about the software than I knew from the beginning. I figured out how to layer sounds better and have them tell a story. I feel like I am starting to really understand how it works and the creativity that it encompasses. I learned how to work with the sounds and I felt like the sounds started to tell a story by the end and that was an exciting feeling. I make a good story and it sounded real. I was able to create the story using only sounds and no words.
I did notice that the blog for this class said 3.5 stars and the assignment said 4 stars, I am going with what the assignment said. Let me know if anyone else has the same confusion and how you are figuring it out.
While this assignment was to do a 3D anaglyph of a a singular picture I did stereoscopic mashup of two different Queen posters. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but I like it anyway.
? We’re talking away I don’t know what I’m to say I’ll say it anyway Today’s another day to party, but I’m Shying away I’ll be in the corner snacking, okay? ?
A-ha Melody
This week, I did something pretty out of character and went to a party! I only knew like 3 people there, so suffice it to say, I was all kinds of awkward and uncomfortable. I thought since I was already feeling weird about being around people, I might as well make the most of the situation and be the creep taking pictures of everyone. That’s right, I chose to do the Visual Assignment, Unsuspecting Friends. My mission, if I chose to accept it, was to:
“Take pictures of your friends at times where they are not aware that you are photographing them. Once you have a few photos put them into some kind of a collage. Make sure your friends are okay with the photo though before you post it. You don’t want to upset anybody. Have fun with this one, I showed my friends and they all got a nice laugh.”
Alright, let’s goooooo, actually, wait. I need to tweak the rules, I think.
Seeing as how I hardly knew anyone at this house shindig, I couldn’t exactly make my photography session 100% unsuspecting. I made sure that it was cool with everyone for me to take pictures throughout the evening. I might be a little weird, but I didn’t want to be stalker weird. (Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. But photo bomb! So friend me, maybe)? Everyone consented, and pretty soon they all forgot I was even taking pictures, which led to my true objective: candid shots.
Well…almost candid. Some of them were wise to my antics.
After taking a bunch of photos, I then went home and assembled them into Photoshop. I layered photo after photo on top of one another into one big collage. Hmm..but something was missing. I started playing around with the lines and angles of the photos, creating a collage that was starting to take on an abstract feel. I was inspired to play around with angles after I took this one photo that had a distinct frame:
I was inside snacking at the time when my boyfriend excitedly told me that the dogs were on the deck and he needed to step outside to pet them. (Understandable). When I looked outside a little later, I caught a pretty good moment of him with one of the dogs and two people chilling in the back. I hurriedly crouched down to try and capture this perfectly framed moment. Success! I didn’t get a perfectly straight-on shot, but I did get capture it.
Back to Photoshop. I played and played with the lines of this frame, extending it to the rest of the photos. But something was still missing….
A-ha! I needed to get an 80’s Take On this thing.
I stylized all the photos with ‘poster edge’ from the filter gallery. I then duplicated my photos and added a sketch filter to the copies. I erased some of the black & white to let the color from the bottom photos show through. I was inspired to try this technique from watching A-ha’s ‘Take On Me,’ music video, which has a kind of animated, color/black & white combo feel. I was also inspired by 80’s album art such as Siouxsie and the Banshees’s, ‘Once Upon a Time: The Singles,’ which uses a collage of black & white pictures with bright colors over top.
My collage wasn’t quite right yet though, so I added an Exclusion adjustment layer over top to bring out the neon colors and to blend the erasures. Finally, I added a type layer. The final result of my party soirée 80’s mashup:
I like the artistic feel of this piece, and it turned out much differently than I expected. I came into this project thinking it would be a simple photo collage, and it turned into some rad 80’s album art. So needless to say, I’m no longer at odds and ends with photo collages. I’m slowly learning that experimenting is okay. It’s no better to be safe than sorry for a missed art opportunity. ?
This week I tried out the assignment, Another Day from the writing category. The details for this assignment is as follows:
“People often forget about how beautiful the world is, the way the trees blow in the wind, how flowers bloom in the spring and how amazing the grass feels on our feet. We come from a generation where the only beauty we actually see is over an electronic. Go outside every once in a while, smell the fresh hair and the flowers, lay down on a blanket in the grass and look up at the sky and see how the clouds look, We dont really live in a bad world, you are just blinded by what you see. Show me what you see.”
I was inspired to write about “another day,” when I read Maddie ‘s post, Another Day With The Dogs. Being a dog lover myself, I started formulating a response to this prompt. It’s so easy to get caught up in our daily lives, our computers and smart phones, that we start to dismiss life (and ignore our furry companions). What does “another day” look like when you are consciously trying to remember the details of a day as they occur rather than pushing them away? I decided to tell this story in two parts. The first part shows how we speed through life, and the second part is when we stop to smell the flowers.
Part 1: A Power Walk Past Life
My neck hurts.
The first thought that enters my mind each morning. I sleep wrong and never wake up right. I had set two alarms the night before (the chicken is set 5 min. later than my phone), but I’ve already hit snooze on both of them 3 or 4 times. My mind feels heavy. I remember dreaming about throwing knives at my computer. Why did I do that? ‘I have to get up,’ I tell myself. ‘I have 2 quizzes and I need to get my Major Declaration form signed. I’ve been putting it off.’ I struggle awake and get ready. I choose a pair of jean capris and a Homestuck shirt. Vriska’s symbol, because I need allllllll the luck. The dogs are barking at the loft window like they do every morning. “Oh, they’re here,” my mom says to no one as she rushes downstairs. I look out the window and see a white van in the driveway blocking my car. I’ll have to take the mustang to school. Luckily, I checked the tires yesterday. They don’t hold air for long. “The garage door guy is here. He’s been here before. Man, that guy can talk.” Mom says. “Great.” I say. I check to make sure that I have my phone on me. It feels heavy in my pocket- a reassuring weight. I pour some coffee in a thermos, grab my bag and keys, and I’m out the door. The coffee is never hot by the time I take my share, but I don’t mind. I cross the threshold of the garage where an old guy with long stringy hair has a workbench set up. The first thing that hits me is the smell of cigarette smoke. I don’t usually mind that smell, but this… I power walk past him as he tries to engage me in conversation. He only gets out a “how are you” before I make it to the car. I throw all of my bags in before I realize that I need to run back in the house for a forgotten item. Do I risk it? I do, and as I leave the house for the second time, I get caught by Smokes-a-lot. “How many daughters your mom got living here? She wanted me to program the cars.” “Me. Just me.” “That your car too?” “Yeah.” “One car for cruisin’ and one for business, ‘eh? ehehehe. “uh…sure.” (How do I leave?) “I wouldn’t take this nice car to school either, they’ll ding it up. This one time….” (ugggghhhh, I don’t care, let me go). “Uh huh.” “…and that’s probably why ya got this car, for when ye start havin’ kids? ehehehe.” “Nope!” I make a dash to the mustang that’s parked on the street and peel off towards school as though my life depended on it.
‘C’mon, c’mon, walk faster or move out of the way,’ I silently seethe as I weave in and out of the throng of people bottle-necking the covered walkway at school. I start thinking about how this is probably my biggest pet peeve. When I walk slow, I stay to the right. Why do groups of people insist on taking up the whole middle of a path? I jet past a stand on the left that says ‘Voting Registration,’ and one on the right that is for who-knows-what. I only notice the drink dispensers. I make the mistake of glancing over at the table to try and figure out what it’s all for. “Hi, how are you today?” “Hi, good.” (Sorry, no time). I walk past. I huff and puff up the stairs of Trinkle and catch a breath inside, pressing the ‘down’ button on the elevator. (I’m so out of shape). I step off the elevator and take my Major Declaration form out of my bag. A couple of feet down the hallway is a cluster of offices where professors hold hours. A guy sits on a teal couch just inside, staring at his phone. I gently knock on the wall as I peek into Ian’s office. “Hey, Ian, I think I need this signed by you.” “Yeah, no problem! Glad you’re declaring!” Ian takes my form and I take my leave. I have a few minutes before class starts, so I sit down at the tables facing the elevator. A group of 3 students are chatting next to me. I overhear bits and pieces. “I spent $99 on it. I splurged.” “Yeah, I played the beta. It was good.” “Smash Brothers tournament is Thursday.” I try to focus on my notes before the quiz, but I can’t think over the conversation. “You should wear pink again to the tournament just to mess with them.” “Why?” “To get into their heads.” “Why?” “To win again.” I get up and make my way to the classroom. I either know this, or I don’t.
I look at the clock on the wall. I still have a whole 5 min. left to finish up my second quiz of the day. Only 2 other classmates are still working on the quiz. Everyone else has already left. I can’t decide whether the cardinality of this set is 3 or 1. Oh well. I get up and hand the piece of paper over to Anewalt. “So, how’d you do, Miss ‘haven’t done high school math since 2004?’” “Oh, I think I did OK. I had a quiz before this and I bombed it. We only had 10 min. to do the quiz” “Oh man. Yeah, it can be hard getting back into the swing of things.” “I think he was in a hurry to get his lecture in.” “Yeah, we try and get in as much as possible in an hour. You should talk to him about it. Maybe he’ll move his quizzes to the end of class.” I hadn’t considered talking to my professor about the quiz, but now it was all I could think about as I emerged into the bright light of day from the dark depths of the Trinkle basement. I make my way to the mustang parked at the other end of campus. ‘I mean, I know the concepts. But I didn’t have time to read it carefully. 10 min.? I couldn’t tell you my name in 10 min. Never mind do long division.’ I formulate what I will say in my email on the drive home. The radio is playing that new T-Swift song.
? You are somebody that I don’t know But you’re takin’ shots at me like it’s Patrón And I’m just like, damn, it’s 7 AM ?
‘I don’t want to make a big deal about it. But I have to say something. maybe I can make it lighthearted.’
? So oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh You need to calm down, you’re being too loud ?
‘I’ll poke fun at myself for being slow. Am I overthinking this?’
The song changes to Barenaked Ladies’ One Week and I sing along as I pull up to my house.
Part 2: You need to Calm Down
My babyyyyyyyy!!!!
I am showered with puppy love. I say ‘hi’ to all of my dogs by the stairs. I joke with them that they are ‘in jail.’ Gretel licks my face furiously. Each member of our household has a favorite Schnauzer, and Gretel is mine. The feeling is mutual. (We all love the Doodle equally). “Dinner will be ready in 15 min.” Mom says. I sit down at the kitchen table and finish the rest of my coffee from this morning. I never have time to drink it all before heading to class. “Geez, that garage door guy can talk. He caught me on the way out,” I say. “Yeah, he kept me outside for hours! I finally told him I had to go start dinner.” “What? that’s crazy.” “Yeah, and he had some stories! He told me about this one neighborhood with pineapple flags in front of all the houses. Pineapple flag, pineapple flag! The guy thinks it stands for peace and happiness, or something like that. He finally asks one of the owners, hey, what’s with all the pineapple flags?” “yeah?” “Swingers! It means they’re swingers. And if the flag is upside down, it means they’re having a swingers party and people are welcome to join.” “What?! Seriously?” “Yes! And he said one time while working in one of these neighborhoods, he saw a woman sitting in a lawn chair in the driveway, naked from the waist up. She moved her chair closer to the guy to see what he was doing. The husband was there working in the yard. He didn’t care!” I listen in astonishment to the story that came from Smokes-a-lot. I somehow think it would have been less interesting to hear from his mouth. Dinner is ready and I fill up my plate with noodles and sauce. I add lots of Parmesan cheese and grab a piece of bread off the pan that’s resting on a glass cutting board. I stare out the backdoor window as I eat. Light is playing off the leaves of the bushes and trees. Inside, the dogs have calmed down and are spilled out on the floor. Kitchen talk puts them to sleep.
“C’mon, let’s go outside!” I say as I take the stick out of the backdoor and undo the locks. A flurry of motion happens as all the dogs rush outside. Vi always barks in excitement. The bells tied to the door handle jingle as I slide the door open. I pull on it with effort- the door doesn’t slide as easily as it used to. I walk down the patio steps and take in the sights. I always did think that our yard looks like a jungle. Banana trees with their huge leaves dot the landscape. Birdbaths, sculptures, flowerpots, tools, and rugs are placed haphazardly. Potted plants with flowers are still in bloom as Summer winds down. I hear a buzz near the willow tree and stoop down to find its source. A bee is flying around the purple flowers at the base of the tree. I try and take a good picture. ‘Stay still.’ “Gahhh!“ I swat the mosquitoes away from my legs as I stumble backwards. I look at my phone ‘gallery’ to see if I got the picture. ‘Hey, not bad. It’s not as close-up as I wanted, but at least I got ’em.’ (I aspire to take good bug close-ups). Doodle is nipping at the long-leafed bushes. She’s still young and has her puppy ways. She chases the other dogs around. Vi and Gretel run under the bushes and play ‘keep away.’ I notice Zoey is not out with us. Our polite senior. She prefers to stay indoors and rest. The dogs mill about the yard for a time. Doodle sniffs at the air and looks towards the neighbor’s yard. She hears something that I don’t. Vi pants and licks her snout. “Time to go in!” I say as I head up the stairs. Some of them have already gone in via the doggy door. Vi follows me in. She’s the ‘needy’ one and likes the reassurance. I lock the door back up and take note of my new bug bites. “Another day in the life of me, huh?” Happy dog faces look back at me. I wonder if my professor has emailed me back yet.
When I first saw this assignment I knew it was meant for me! I am a huge sports fanatic for Pittsburgh. I thought to in corporate one of my favorite players, Troy Polamalu, of the Pittsburgh Steelers who has already retired to commemorate his career.
I used the program Photo Image Editor Pixelstyle like my previous assignment I just did. This assignment was easier and less time consuming than my first one because once I found all the Google images I wanted to use to create the poster it was just deciding on positioning and mashing them together.
In order to have the freedom of moving each Google image around I placed each image on a different layer. This allowed me to edit only one picture at a time. The one part of the poster that was not a Google image was Troy Polamalu #43. For this I just used the text tool and formatted how I liked it. Overall, I throughly enjoyed this Visual Assignment. I hope you enjoy it!
I thought long and hard about which assignment would work best for me and I would enjoy and learn the most from. I choose to do an assignment that was inserting myself into a concert from the assignment bank. I chose Florida Georgia Line because they are a band that I have followed for a while and they are the new country that brings back the roots of old country. Their music is mostly inspired from country songs in the 1980’s. I have listened to the 80’s country and it has been lost over the years and these guys are slowly bringing it back and mixing it with hip-hop and other genres. They will write some of their songs based off 80’s country music so in my opinion it is bring the thoughts of the 80’s back to life. I have been to their concerts before and they are always a great time. In this assignment I decided to put myself front and center of that arena I based it off the assignment called Concert you want to be at. I did enjoy making this project though it had its challenges.
I attempted to use Photopea to make this work. It really was a struggle. I started with learning about the layers of different photos then added the photo of myself that I was going to crop into the concert. I was able to get rid of the background on my photo without distorting my face to much. Then when I tried to make my photo smaller so it would fit in better in the concert I couldn’t get the hang of it. I tried to make it smaller a bunch of different ways and even googled it but I couldn’t get it to work for me without messing up my face or cropped part of my face completely out. Setting my photo on top of the concert was the simple part I figured out how to layer it but I still couldn’t change the size of it. I was thinking I wanted my face to be in the corner like the other little faces but I guess my photo was not supposed to be there. I used the different lasso tools, crop tools, paint brushes, and the magic wand to try and make this mash up work.
Even though, it didn’t work like I wanted it to, I have learned so much more about photoshop similar apps and what can be accomplished with them. I realized that making these photos work together was harder than I thought and while I tried my best to make it work I couldn’t seem to figure it out. It was a struggle to do this visual art piece. I learned that photo shopping someone into a different picture was a lot more work than I previous gave people credit for. I knew this band meant something to me and I wanted to showcase how close to them I wanted to sit while I was there.
For my first audio assignment, I chose to do the “Instrumental VS Vocals” prompt. Now that I finished it, it was a bit difficult for my first assignment… Perhaps I should have picked a simple one first. Nonetheless, here it is!
There was a time at school, where I would pick a handful of songs and I would listen to them, every day, on repeat. I listened to them to the point where I almost disliked them. If I were to listen to those songs today, I would just get a flashback of me overplaying it. Now I know not to do that!
While working on this assignment, it reminded me of that story. I was working on figuring things out and how to work the audio software for a while. It almost made me get tired of the songs. But I am super glad that it didn’t take so long that I hated the songs, phew!
The audio file for the instrumental was much longer than the file for the vocals. So I had to edit and cut the end portion of the file, which I was not using.
To make the mashup sound more pleasant, I made the instrumental a lot quieter. To do this, I clicked Effect – Amplify, to adjust the volume.
Unfortunately, I could not get LAME mp3 Encoder, because my computer for some reason would not download it. I had to export the edited file, normally, as a WAV file instead of MP3. Then, I had to download another program, called WavePad.
In Wave, I opened my WAV audio file into the programmed, made no changes, then saved it as an MP3 format.
As mentioned in a previous post, Mia loves watching all kinds of movies. However, secret agent movies are her favorite! She likes watching both the Mission Impossible and Bourne movies. Not because they are true to life, but because they differ so much from what her life as a secret agent is like! She thinks it’s interesting to see what everyone’s perception of the secret agent lifestyle is.
The “Movie Mashup” assignment was to “Take a movie that you really like. Now think of a movie that has been compared to it, and make a new movie poster that incorporates the two!”
For this assignment, I went with two movie series that Mia really likes watching. I looked up posters for the Bourne Identity, then found a picture of a poster without text. Then used Canva to add the lines found in the original picture along with text. For the text, I found the same (or a very similar) font as the one on the original Bourne poster. I inserted the words “Mission Impossible” and lined them up correctly. The final product ended up looking like a real movie poster! I also did a tutorial on my process for this assignment that you can find here.
For this assignment you need to mash up two different iconic movie scenes. However, you should aim to be as subtle as possible. Perhaps a famous prop that simply doesn’t belong or a character that looks a little out of place.
I mashed together two iconic movies scenes in order to get this interesting final product. The obvious movie is Rocky, but can you tell that something is mashed up with it?
You can see the bike from E.T. in the sky in the background. I realize the bicycle is probably too large, but it’s still the bike from the famous scene from E.T. The difference is fairly subtle, but it makes for a funny mashup.
In order to create this mashup, I first went through a list of iconic movie scenes. I had a couple in mind already, but I wanted to explore more options. I came across this scene from Rocky, and I knew it would be perfect for this assignment. I also knew that I wanted to do something with E.T. whether it was the bike or the scene where E.T. wants to “phone home”.
I used Adobe Photoshop Mix on my phone to create this image. It hard to cut out the bike from E.T. onto the image from Rocky. The bicycle was relatively small, so it was hard to move around and scale. I was cautious not to make the bike too small because then it would be difficult to tell what it is.
This mashup was really fun to make, and fun to look at, also. It was hard trying to maneuver the pictures around and actually find good pictures to use, but I like how it turned out. In the end, the difficulties only improved my photoshop skills.
This week, I completed one of the mashup assignments that tasked me with merging two audios of the same song, one live and one recorded, and to highlight the differences between the two.
You can check out my completed project embedded below!
This assignment is relatively easy to complete so long as you know how to use audacity. It took me awhile to get to learn how to use audacity so I thought I would take this chance to make a tutorial for how to complete this assignment as well as how to use audacity!
The first step it to download whatever YouTube clip you want into an mp3 file. You have to download your audio to an mp3 file first before you can upload it to Audacity. I recommend also making sure you are aware of what type of YouTube video you are converting! Often times, if it is from a legit source, it can be subject to copyright which can affect the upload of you audio! For my video, U converted Kesha’s recording version of her song “praying” as well as her performance of the song at the Grammy’s!
The first step is to import your converted youtube mp3 files! TO do so, simply go to files, import, and then finally audio!Next, find the audio file you are looking for! If you wish to import more than one audio file, you will need to do this step more than once for each individual file you wish to use! For example, I sued tow audio files, but had to do this step multiple times as I changed in between the song multiple times! Every time I would cut the audio and merge it, I would reimport the original audio file and do the same process until I had about 3 imports of the recorded and live version on my audacity!Audacity has a lot of great tools, but the two that are most useful for trimming and merging audio are the ones that I used highlighted above! The tool circled in red allows you to drag an audio file lateral. This is useful for merging audio files that don’t appear on the same line. simply hover your mouse over the audio file you wish to move, click and hold down your mouse, and move the file laterally to where you want it! The other tool is the trimming tool which is highlighted in blue. this allows you to highlight a portion of an audio clip and cut it down. Both of these tools are demonstrated below!This is a picture of the tool that allows you to move the audio files laterally. Notice how the tool is highlighted on audacity! This shows that you are currently in the mode of that tool. To switch modes, just click on another tool. This demonstrates the cut tool. The first thing you need to do if you want to cut a piece of audio is to highlight the section you want cut. Notice in the tool section, that the tool icon with the image of a cursor is highlighted. This tool allows you to highlight a section that you want. Once you have it highlighted, press the trimming icon with the image of scissors and it trims the audio!Once the file is cut, you can then use the merge tool to move the audios so that they merge as one! Once my first cut was done and I merged it with the second audio file, I re-completed all of these steps about 4 times, re imported each individual audio file and cutting and merging them until I had one audio that went back and fourth between the recorded and live version about 4 times. Once you are satisfied with your audio, your last step is to export it! Exporting is like Audacity’s equivalent of saving. One of two ways. First, you can upload it to sound cloud and embed the link into your blog. Another way is to upload it directly to your blog as an audio embed!
Like I said, this assignemnt is not hard as long as you know how to use audacity. Audacity was soemthing first introduced to me at the start of this course and it took a lot of trial and error to figure out how all that audacity can do. But I have used Audcity a lot over the course of this class, and it has helped me make some pretty cool projects! My best adivce to anyone is to not lwt audacity overwhelm you. It is really an aweosme tool so just keep working through the trail and error and playing around with it until you feel comfortable!
I added the two audio files by importing them.
