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I ran into some problems in creating my video essay for the movie Stardust since I couldn’t get all the clips I wanted frrom the movie. 
As I continue to work on my video essay tonight, I decided to leave you with a 4 icon challenge I created for the movie. This will prepare you for what I will talk about in my video essay which will also briefly cover the novel written by Neil Gaiman, which is the basis for the movie. Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer who I am currently studying right now in my Fantasy class at UMW (we read the book Neverwhere and watched part of the series; currently reading Stardust now) and who I studied last semester in my Graphic Novel class (we read one of the books in the epic Sandman series).
Looking forward to finishing up my videoessay!
Also, here’s some photos taken while I and others were working on the project:
#2 Assignment for #ds106 is up:
Take a friend and turn him/her from a normal looking person to an extraordinary looking one. Put the shots side by side for comparison.
For my example I used two photos that I’ve taken of my suitemate Karen (she is a #ds106 superstar now, haha):
Creation Process:
Okay so I didn’t actually take these photos consecutively. I took the photo on the right first in a random photoshoot that happened with Karen and Elena( my suitemates) because we were bored. The crazy makeup, hair and wardrobe was done by Elena. Don’t quite remember why we decided to put crazy makeup on Karen, but we got some really good photos out of it! (I may post some of them up later, depends on when I have the time). I really like this photo even though she looks kind of sad and tragic (Karen isn’t the biggest fan because she thinks she looks too “clownish”.) I messed with the colors in photoshop then ran it through the Poladroid maker to get the final effect.
Then the photo on the left was from another photoshoot, this time taken from when it was flurrying/slushy outside. It was cold and we didn’t have a lot of time to take photos although Karen did have time to throw on some more glam clothes that what she was originally wearing. I enhanced the color a bit on this one, but the lighting outside was so good I didn’t have to do much.
I like both of these photos together because I think it expresses the idea of how with a little work (i.e. clothing, makeup, hair) someone can completely be transformed into someone else entirely. Side by side, obviously it’s the same girl in the photos, but in each photo she is a different character. This holds true with most of the other photos I’ve taken of Karen who has a great range of expressions. I like exploring the different personas people can have, which explains why I end up with photos like Karen’s or the Rainbow Brite set.
So thanks to Karen who let’s me create art for fun 
The Many Faces of Karen:
For the design assignment, I chose to do The Big Hip Hop submitted by Tim Owens, which requires taking a photo from The Big Picture (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/) and overlaying it with text from a Top 100 song (http://www.metrolyrics.com/top100.html). This photo was taken at a protest in Tunisia. The lyrics are from the song “Lucky” by Jason Mraz. I was drawn to this picture…It’s powerful, and I love how surrounded by anger, a woman is holding up the peace sign. I chose these specific lyrics because this is what I imagine the woman holding up the peace sign is thinking. I used the website Picnik (http://www.picnik.com), a suggestion I received from Professor Groom, to add the text.
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