For my take on the what’s in your bag assignment I’m doing in from the perspective of my character Cleo Barrow, a bank robber. I could’ve gone into detail and included her favorite lipstick which makes her look super sassy, but she doesn’t care enough to touch up her make up through the day, or I could’ve put in a gun which she used to rob the bank, but really she’d keep that strapped to he side. I think Cleo would want to travel as light as possible and would only carry whatever she’d just stolen. So here is what’s in her bag.

The A-Z photo collage (worth 3 points) was rather difficult to do when I chose to only do pictures about my character. All the pictures I chose represent Caleb in some way. They range from things to do with his job as a sheriff to his random hobbies.

a- ammunition (he needs these for his job)

b- boots (what he wears on the farm)

c- cigarettes (what he smokes)

d- donuts (his favorite breakfast)

e- eagle (sign of freedom)

f- farm (where he lives)

g- gun (what he uses for his job)

h- handcuffs (what he uses for his job)

i- ice cream (one of his favorite food)

j- jacket (he only wears the same leather jacket)

k- keys (what he has to carry)

l- laptop (where he keeps all his information)

m- money (what he loves more than anything)

n- nails (he uses these to fix the farm)

o- orange (his favorite snack)

p- phone (he uses to keep in contact)

q- question (he asks a lot of them)

r- radio (he likes his music)

s- shots (what he drinks every night)

t- taser (what he uses for work)

u- uniform (what he has to wear for work)

v- vest (something else he wears for the job)

w- watch ( what he wears)

x- xylophone (his secrete favorite instrument)

y- yogurt (his favorite breakfast when he is being healthy)

z- zipper (what his jacket has)

Here is the warning sign assignment that is three points. I wanted to do something funny and literal so I took and interesting warning image and explained it literally.

I decided to do the “empty your bag” assignment from the perspective of my noir character, Jim Sardic.  I observed my backpack’s contents as an investigator would who is looking for the person who owns it and is going through his stuff.  It seemed like a fitting prompt for noir themed investigation.

The contents of Jason Nemeth’s backpack lay splayed out in front of me.  He had been missing for about a week.  His friends contacted me yesterday about his disappearance, saying he had been talking about checking out the Puncture for quite a while now.  One day he went out, and never came back.  They called the cops, and the boys in blue took their statements and put their friend on the ever-growing watchlist of “disappeared individuals”.  I won’t hold my breath though.  I guess Nemeth’s friends had the same thought, because a few days later they gave me a call too.  He’s student here in the city, 21 years old.  It’ll be a real shame if an outsider got him.

Nemeth’s housemates invited me into their small home they’re renting for school.  I took a look around in his room, and almost immediately spotted his backpack.  That’s a good place to start.  I upturned it on his bed, hoping to find some clue to his whereabouts.  Then I quickly jotted down the contents in my little case notebook.

• A book – Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• Some pencils (mechanical) and pens
• Acrylic paint – three tubes – red, blue, and black
• A tube of toothpaste
• A single notebook – green – contains notes from various classes, and doodles.  Didn’t see any personal notes.
• A passport – very recently ordered
• Gloves – leather
• Flashcards – contains notes for a computer science class
• Glue stick
• Scotch Tape reel
• Sharpie marker
• Laptop – Asus

A lot of this stuff is usual enough. Pens and pencils, the notebook, flashcards, it looks like a pretty typical college student’s backpack.  There are also some things in here that are a little more ambiguous; the paint, tape, and glue could be for some art class, or something else.  Hard to say.  The passport is an oddity though.  Who keeps a passport in their backpack?  I picked it up and flipped through the pages.  It was brand new, the issue date was only a month ago, so I wasn’t surprised to see the book was blank.  It’s odd, but it doesn’t give me much to go on.  What’s even stranger is the laptop; electronics haven’t worked in the city for years, since the Puncture opened.  Why would this kid have a laptop in the first place, and then keep it on him all the time?  There isn’t even a power cable in the backpack.  Picking up the technological relic, I opened it and pushed the power button.  Sure enough, nothing happened.  I grunted as I dropped it back onto the bed.  I checked out the rest of the room but didn’t find anything useful for finding where he could have gone.  Walking down the stairs, I couldn’t help but think this was already looking like an outsider abduction.  Or hell, maybe Nemeth actually entered the Puncture on his own volition.  It’s tough to get to it since the government keeps it guarded, but it can be done.  People have entered it before.  I’ll interview his friends; they may have something for me to work with.  And then the hunt is on.

For my last character assignment of the week, I am doing the “What’s in your bag?” assignment worth three points. Jack Spencer is all business, but he does have a soft side. This can be seen from the photo of his late mother poking out of his Italian leather wallet. This photo is kept in his wallet so she is with him at all times. Also in Spence’s bag are his iPhone 6 plus, hand sanitizer, files on the upcoming merger, a silver pen, and his MacBook. The silver pen on top of the file folder is the one Spence used when him and Sebastian first signed their business contract together. Hand sanitizer is carried with him everywhere out of habit from when he was taking care of his mother in her last few months of life. His phone, files, and computer are carried at all times because he is never really off the clock.

Here is a link to the original assignment:

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/whats-in-your-bag/

For this assignment, we were asked to create at warning sign for something of our choosing.  I decided to do something relatively goofy and make one of those “danger beyond this point” warning signs, but located at the end of the universe.  I looked up some of those types of signs, like the underwater cave ones, and tried to mimic the format.  They’re text heavy, outlining the dangers of the area beyond the sign, with some symbolic imagery.  I did the same in my sign, but instead of an image symbolizing death, I used a singularity funnel to symbolize something more vague and ominous when leaving the universe.

When I saw this software in the visual assignment post, I thought it’d be a really cool way to tell a story of a trip.  The interface is elegant; it can’t be easy making software that a person can use to create a multimedia timeline.  I like the idea of a visual storytelling system that uses all sorts of visual aids like this one does.  I was able to write little descriptions of each place I went, while posting pictures I had taken in each place, all while pointing to those places on the underlying map. The map aspect gives a great foundation to represent a story that takes place over a great deal of both space and time.  I can see this software being perfect for laying out a road trip across the country, or even just one state.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get too specific in my trip to Europe.  I only had access to a very limited number of the pictures I had taken while I was there, and I didn’t want to use pictures that weren’t mine.  However, I can see how incredibly detailed a trip’s walk-through can be on a site like this.  The zooming ability of the map can allow people to operate on the scale of country to country, or as small as neighboring villages.  If I were ever to document a road trip, it would be exciting to do it in this way.

These notes from the desk of Jack Spencer, Co-President and CEO of The Highland Corporation are both his own personal notes and notes left by his secretary, Miriam. Spence is in the middle of another hectic work week with the potential new merger, client lunches, and upcoming business trip.

To help understand the mood of the moment, above is a sound video to listen to while reading the notes.

Here is a link to the original assignment worth two points.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/post-it-notes-and-grocery-lists/

Looking at Yourself (3 Points)

I chose to do the self-portrait visual assignment for my last 3 points. However, instead of doing a self-portrait of myself,  I made a self-portrait of my character, Sarah Mustard. I have not posted pictures of my character up until this point on purpose, because I still wasn’t entirely sure how she would look exactly and I didn’t like the idea of using a picture of a celebrity. So I thought this assignment would be a good way to describe my vision for Sarah Mustard.

I chose to dress Sarah in a gray overcoat with a matching hat, because of her profession as a private investigator. It blends into her environment more and doesn’t stand out as much. Underneath the overcoat she is wearing a blue dress, because she is also a reserved person in real life as well and I consider blue to be more of a reserved color. However, I chose to make her purse bright red, because I believe that Sarah is not content with her passive lifestyle and there is a part of her that wants to burst out of the shadows and be seen. Red is a color that gets a lot of attention and Sarah, on some level, also wants attention. She wears her long, dark brown hair down with her bangs almost covering her eyes, hoping to go unnoticed in that respect as well.

I chose to put various objects in the background of Sarah’s self portrait as well to represent her character. A mustard bottle, to represent her name and her family, sunglasses, because she likes to conceal herself from the world, Little Women, her favorite novel, a German flag, because she speaks German, pen and paper, to represent her observation skills, a pink pacifier to represent her illegitimate daughter she gave up for adoption, and lastly a ginger cat, because she now has a pet cat named Bailey (who has a remarkable resemblance to Crookshanks in the Harry Potter films).

I liked being able to draw her self portrait rather than finding a photograph for Sarah, because I had an image in my mind and this way I was able to stay true to my imagination. I’m no artist, so that made this take time, but I guess all my doodling during classes helped with making this drawing a bit.

For one of my week three assignments, I decided to do the assignment, Emojis IRL that was submitted by Fairuz Maggio.

The assignment is to “Choose at least 3 emojis (from the provided picture or one you find on Google) and recreate the action/face with a self-portrait or pictures of other people! Make it as close to the picture as possible! Try to make a story out of the emojis you choose. For example, a birthday surprise (normal face, shocked face, cake, etc.)”. This assignment is worth 2 points.

I had my friend Julia take the pictures of my emoji IRL faces on my Nikon D3100. Then, I uploaded my pictures so that I could put them all next to each other. I found the emojis online. In order to put all of the pictures side by side, I used a website to join the collages together.

My story is a reminder to me and everyone else to wear sunscreen. When you go outside and you’re feelin’ all sassy because you’ve got your shades on don’t think you will be fine without sunscreen or you will get burnt. Please remember to always wear sunscreen!

I love emojis! They are my favorite, so this assignment was fun because everyone loves acting out emojis when they are explaining stories. Facial expressions tell a lot. I am obsessed with using emojis, so I loved being able to make a story using emojis with my own face! HAHA!