4 stars

Although 16 was not too long ago for me… 6 years to be exact. A lot has changed in my life and in the world. In this letter to a younger me I tell myself to keep with my passion of singing and not to let anyone tell me different. I tell myself to just be me! I assure myself that things will get better, and even though there is a war on things have improved.

I treated writing this letter as if I was to write one to myself, Erin. I gave advice and reassured my character that what they loved and what they were doing was not unnoticed in the world. Of course I geared the passion and interests to fit Veronica’s character. Over all this was an easy assignment, once of course I wrote out the letter. As always I applied a black and white filter to fit in with the time.

A quick little video that I put together for this 4.5 banana assignment. I definitely didn’t do multiple takes or edit the video in any way. Nope, just all me and my raw talent. One hundred percent.

Anyway- let’s not talk about the video for now. How are you doing? Are you eating enough? Where’s that lovely hunter green jacket you had earlier? Don’t tell me you’ve lost it already. You know, you really should be more responsible.

I had just finished recording the interview that B&B&B&G asked me for, when I realized that I hadn’t introduced myself! I talked for nearly half an hour all about my roots, my likes and dislikes, and who I am as a person! I then put this into iMovie, cut and shortened everything, leaving only a little information to be mysterious. Did it work? I’m mysterious, right?

I then added some music and transitions to make it better. I don’t really know where those last few clips came from- I don’t remember doing any of it, but there are videos…

Love always,

3 1/2 Stars

Since I am constantly on stage almost 7 days a week. I have to use various facial ques when singing to convey the emotion of the song. These “looks” have also transferred into my personal life. Since many people in my small town know me and expect such from me and the Hideaway Lounge I have some up with four signature looks. The first is the USO. One of my dreams is sing and tour with the United Service Organizations (USO). This is professional look and one fit for the traveling stage. The second is the Rosie. This soft look is popular for any 1940s women, whether at her new job or out on the town. Thirdly is the Singer. For my nights on stage this expression is fit for my more romantic and jazzy songs. Lastly is the Patriot. This basic and average look is appropriate for any war time activity. It shows support and victory for those over seas in Europe and in the Pacific.

Video wise this was an easy video to make. A black and white filter was added to create a 1940s looks. Coming up with the names was not that hard. I took several aspects for Veronica’s life: singing, women in 1940s, and World War Two and turned them into catchy, short names. After making the names I created characteristics of what each look would be for based off the name. For example, Rosie is feminine name and sounding so therefore its a softer look.

So I did the “Swede a Scene” assignment, which was o recreate a scene from a movie in any way you could. So since I like to draw, I broke out my wacom tablet and story-boarded a scene from the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde movie, replacing Clyde with Cleo. In all I ended up with 33 frames drawn, and each one took about 5-10 minutes to do. I uploaded all the frames to a folder on flickr too if you’d like to look at them individually. Some of them don’t look the best but overall I’m in love with them!

What I did first was use gifcam to capture the frames of the video that I wanted to use. At the point where Clyde comes out of the store with the money you can see I just recorded that little bit because it was too tough to pause at the frames I wanted. Then I took the gif into photoshop where I drew the new frames on top of the old ones. The technique is called rotoscoping. Typically it’s used for full on animating something frame by frame but that would have taken me all week to do. You can see in the frame below that I didn’t follow exactly how the actors were posed. I kind of went with what felt right.

I had everything separated into groups. The original frames were a group on their own and then the gray backdrop pieces I drew in and then a group just for the characters. I had a white layer set to 50% opacity over top of the original frames while I was drawing, to make it easier to see the black lines I was drawing.  Then once I had finished it I just saved every frame as a jpeg and put it into moviemaker. Then I downloaded the audio from the original scene, and all that was left to do was figure out the timing of each frame.

Over the semester I’d kind of been doodling ideas for character design for these girls. I liked Bonnie with short curly hair and a rounder face shape and round eyes to make her seem more friendly and kinda spunky. Then for Cleo I wanted sharper features to make her more mysterious, kind of.

So. There’s a reason I chose the profession I did (it was revealed in the radio show). If you were to read my diary, you wouldn’t find the Notebook as my story. In fact, that movie repulses me. My reality was the movie psycho, hence why I joined the two. My first relationship was unhealthy … Continue reading Psychotic Notebook (5 stars) →

Oh.. hello. I didn’t see you there. I was busy playing my nintendo ds gaming system. What? You’ve never heard of such a thing? Is that witch craft?! IS THAT FROM THE GOVERNMENT?!?

why, yes. yes it is.

One of the old flames works for a security agency. He was kind of a big deal, but I weaseled this tech out of him. I have to keep it under lock and key, though. He said that it wasn’t set to release till some ridiculous date in the future… like 2013.

It’s one of my favorite possessions…. mainly because nobody else has it and I shouldn’t have it either.

Whao, bro, is that from the future?

To make this video, I used my webcam and recorded myself going through the features of the ds. Since I set Victoire up to be a brunette and I’m very obviously NOT a brunette, I’m saying that she went blonde to keep undercover in her new environment. Yeah. Let’s roll with that for right now. I threw some editing effects into the video and some background music to keep it lively, and Viola. There you have it.

Although, I ran through this vid the first time realizing halfway through that my ds was out of battery so that was a bummer. I realized it would be super lame if I did a ds vid without actually showing a ds with all the stuff so I had to wait and do it all over again.

boo.

Also, I’m not sure what’s up with my webcam, but it did the stalling thing again. I will try to figure out a way to go around this for the interview project for this week. If it’s getting old for me, I can only imagine what it’s like to watch.

I’m on it!

This assignment required us to tell a story through flashcards and I thought this would be a great opportunity to delve deeper into Layla’s thoughts on Marcus.

Marcus and I have a strange relationship. We will easily go from kissing each other to arguing about the “unfortunate” death of a politician. Our work lives are so very intertwined that sometimes I can say that we have the same job. Regardless of anything that comes between us, we will easily defend the other against whoever opposes them. Our love story isn’t a normal one but it is still love. I will always love Marcus even when he kills me.

This assignment was fun. I had to create a video that explained who I am or, well, who Layla Arkwood is. It was very nice filming everything and cutting them together. This was a more relaxed assignment and I actually enjoyed it.

I’m not completely dangerous. I mean, you should really keep your distance but I am like any other person. I pick out my clothes, shrug off my shoes after a long day, dig around in my purse for things, and choose nail polish colors. This is me in the mundane. My mobster side is another story.

I chose to do the Narrative Ambiance and incorporate it with Layla. The poem Fire and Ice by Robert Frost goes very well with Layla (alarmingly so) and I thought that it would be perfect for her. I tried to speak in the way she would, you know like husky and low toned but I suck. Anyway, since we are “changing over” I’ll stop talking.

I had once considered the world a wonderful place. You could have called me a romantic but in my line of work that doesn’t last long. I don’t see the world that way anymore and I laugh at how naive I was. The world my brother lives in is so much different than mine. We aren’t on the same plane of existence anymore even though I can look straight into his eyes. We’ve seen so many different things and we’ll continue to see the world in two opposing ways. The world will end differently for Terrence and myself. And that’s the way it should be.

It may come as a surprise, but Victoire Absinthe isn’t much of a domestic goddess.

When it comes to her domestic abilities, she kind of draws the line at basic hot drinks. She’s got enough money an suitors to fill the rest of the meals of the day, to be completely honest.

But, at the end of a long day filled with debauchery and men, it’s nice to unwind with a cup of tea.

To make the video, I took a video on my phone of myself making tea. Made sure I added some commentary, nothing to major. I added a title and end sequence as well as some background jazz, and called it a day.