This picture is of a tree outside of where I work. When I saw the berries i knew that it would be perfect of the color splash assignment. Not knowing how to make a “color splash” image in GIMP I consulted YouTube. Here is the link that I used to learn how to do this assignment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi6e8Z7MxG4 Once I was walked through the steps this was a relatively easy assignment. The most painful part was moving my mouse around in small circles to make the berries red. My hand started to cramp up after a while of doing this. Hopefully this is not a serious injury. The things I do for DS106!

I have to after completing the “Album Cover” visual assignment.  Who wants to be a part of the Black Thunder Rugby Football Club with me?  Basically I’m looking for insanely talented musicians and singers to make up for the talent I severely lack when it comes to musicality.  You bring the tunes, I’ll bring the pizazz.  How can we not succeed with a band name like this?!?

The Best Band Ever!, a photo by maura_monahan on Flickr.

This assignment was as quick and easy as the description claims it is.  I simply copied the links into my browers and away we went!  I promise that the Black Thunder Rugby Football Club Wikipedia page honestly was the first search result returned.  For the album title I once again copied the link provided in the assignment description and used the last four words of the final quote on the page.  I actually love the album title.  It would work really well for a band’s final album together or a compilation of their greatest hits.

I had a little more trouble with finding the picture to use as the cover art.  I used the link provided but I wanted to make sure I didn’t use a picture that had “All Rights Reserved” on Flickr.  I kept refreshing the page while still only choosing the third image returned but I wasn’t having much luck.  Instead, I searched “interesting” in Flickr Commons and used the third image from that search.  I played around with the color of the picture a little bit in Picnik before adding the text (also in Picnik).

This assignment was simple but I am really happy with the final product.  Part of me wishes I had played around with the color of the text a bit more but I just couldn’t find a shade of color I preferred over simple black and white.  Number one album on iTunes?

For some reason I was determined to complete this “Cropped Signs” visual assignment.  I was just drawn to it – maybe because there was a lot of room for humor and not too much skill required.  Photoshop, one day I will conquer you.  But back to this, the original white sign read “Thru Trucks Prohibited” and the yellow one included an arrow head pointing to the left.

Which Trucks?, a photo by maura_monahan on Flickr.

My idea for getting rid of the “Thru” and the arrow was just something that popped into my head as I imagined a town where trucks were the devil’s automobile of choice.  So what did the townspeople do?  They banned them of course!  Oh, also forbidden in this town, Lady Gaga music.  I don’t want to go into details but there was a meat-dress fiasco at last year’s senior prom.  So no trucks.  And no Lady Gaga.  And absolutely no listening to “Bad Romance” while driving around in your truck.

And the first white sign worked for a little while.  The townspeople were quite pleased.  They drove around in their town-cars and mid-size SUVs content with their Gaga-less lifestyles.  But one day, somebody crossed the line and rolled into town driving a *GASP* Nissan Frontier!

(You know, one of those weird “compact” pick-up trucks.)

The townspeople were shocked!  How could this happen in their community?  Their safe, Gaga-less community!  How to remedy this situation?  Oh of course – a yellow sign.  A yellow sign that clarified the message of the white sign.  Which trucks are prohibited?  All trucks are prohibited!  Underlining it just adds that tone of austerity the white sign was lacking.

This is the photo I took for the visual assignment “Unlikely Intersection.”  I love American history but I couldn’t tell you very much about what progress Van Buren made when he served as president.  Maybe a history major would like to enlighten me?

What Progress?, a photo by maura_monahan on Flickr.

So here is my first completed visual assignment. It is a story made up of song titles from my iTunes library. I recorded myself telling the story because I saw that Alan had suggested that on a previous rendition. Ironic how much the audio adds to this visual assignment.

I really enjoyed doing this project. Browsing through all my music and trying to form a coherent story tested my creativity and was a welcome break after a week of monotonous classes and economic research…oh the dismal science.

There is a plethora of stereotypical chick music in my iTunes (<3 Taylor Swift) so naturally a love story developed:

Love Songs and a Love Story, a photo by maura_monahan on Flickr.

Visual Assignment46 Audio by maura_monahan

A big thanks to Annie Belle for her awesome tutorial on getting SoundCloud clips into blog posts!

I took this picture while sitting outside Snap, a little French restaurant in DC that sells crepes and bubble tea. I noticed that across the street was the cutest cotton candy-colored house I’d ever seen. The pink door was especially cute.

To achieve this color popping effect, I used Picnik. After I uploaded my photo onto Picnik, I cropped it, then selected “Effects.” I selected “Black and White” then painted the door pink using the paint brush tool.

The scene featured in the animation above is from (500) Days of Summer, which is one of my favorite movies. It tells a realistic story in a hopeful way. So many movies about love either have a cliche romcom ending or a depressingly sad ending. (500) Days of Summer is “not a love story,” it is a “story about love.” It’s truthful and heartbreaking and comforting all at the same time.

I chose this scene because it’s the anchoring point of the movie. As stated in the script (pictured above), the movie opened with this scene on day 488, then went all the way back at day 1. Throughout the movie, different days are shown, highlighting snippets of Summer and Tom’s relationship, and finally day 488 rolls around again.

Summer holding Tom’s hand was a sign of comfort and reassurance. It was her unspoken apology and promise that everything would be okay.

To make this animation, I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 and this tutorial I found on Google. First, I found the video clip that I wanted to use, edited it down using Windows Live Movie Maker and saved it. I then followed the tutorial to convert the video clip into an animation and voila! A finish product. Using Photoshop to make animations is very simple. You can crop the entire animation, add text and captions, and many other things. For this assignment, I simply cropped the picture and resized it, but I look forward to making more animations in the future.