I was inspired to do the 2 star worthy Visual Assignment Draw It, from the ds106 Assignment Bank,after reading Cole Wyrough’s blog post, Online Sketching.
I decided to do a flower set of photos, so first, I chose the pictures I wanted to use. I then opened Picasa and edited each one by clicking Pencil Sketch.
Once I did all the photos, I put the old and new ones side-by-side, so you could see the difference, and uploaded them to Flickr. Enjoy!
I have a bit of an odd sense of humor which I realized would be perfect for this week’s Valentine’s Day Caption Challenge assignment. As soon as I saw this illustration, I knew what I wanted to do. I decided to make a joke out of the man’s crotch, which the woman in the photo seems to be staring at. I am also a bit of a CNN junkie and have heard the term ‘stimulus package’ thrown around quite a bit in the past few months and thought it would be perfect to use as part of the caption.
To make my valentine, I downloaded the illustration and immediately re-uploaded it to my account, tagging it and giving it a title. I then chose to edit it using the built in Aviary editor that Flickr has built into it and added the text “I hope you like my stimulus package…” to the top of the illustration using the Zeyada font that is been built in to Aviary, finding it to be stylistically appropriate.
Overall, I did not find the assignment to be all that difficult Thinking up the caption was the hardest part for me but I really enjoyed doing this assignment.
This 3 star assignment, A-Z photo collage, was SO fun yet SO challenging to do! The goal was the create a collage of themed pictures in alphabetical order. I wanted to do this assignment because I wanted a challenge. Anyone can take a picture of something or photo shop, but this one needed time, and a lot fo creative thought {and since it was visual week, I thought what the heck!}
The theme I chose was education. I am an aspiring teacher {and will soon be finishing up – wahoo!} and I thought that it would be an appropriate theme to do for this assignment. It was a little tricky at times {the letter X}, but I think you can tell what the picture is and why I chose for it to be in my education themed collage. If you don’t, just ask :)
I got the pictures off of Google and I copy and pasted them into a collage. I love picture collages but I’ve never made them on the computer, just in scrapbooks and on my cork boards.
P.S- HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!
The first visual assignment we were told to do was create a caption for a cheesy Valentine’s Day card. I thought the cards were hilarious and was excited to do it! After trying (and failing) to create the caption on GIMP I decided to resort to Photoshop since I have it. The problem I was having [...]
*Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!*
Today I am sharing with you a really fun, but challenging for me, assignment. This is a 3-star A-Z Photo Collage. The purpose of the assignment is to pick a theme- I went with African Savanna Animals and then to find photos that go with the theme. You have to pick a photo to go with every letter of the alphabet.
I used former ds106er Kiersten’s tutorial as a guide for making this collage. The only thing that wasn’t mentioned and I couldn’t figure out was how to scale the different layers. I tweeted @cogdog and he had a suggestion. I didn’t see exactly what he was referring too, but I found another method with looking around.
In GIMP, you just have to go to “Layers”, scroll down to “Stack”, hoover over the arrow and like “previous layer” or “next layer” depending if which direction you need to go in.
I had to restart this project twice, because I kept “losing” pictures. They were off to the side of Canvas and I couldn’t find them. But once I got everything together and lined up, I was really happy with the outcome.
Here are the list of African Savanna Animals – I had to get creative with a few!
A-Aardvark
B-Buffalo (African Buffalo- similar to water buffalo)
C-Cheetah
D-Dog (African Wild Dog)
E-Elephant
F-Flamingos
G-Giraffe
H-Hippo
I-Impala (similar to an antelope)
J-Jaguar
K-Kilpspringer (similar to an antelope,but miniature size)
L-Lion
M-Meerkats
N-Naked Mole Rat
O-Ostrich
P-Python
Q-Quelea (African bird)
R-Rhino
S-Scorpion
T-Toad (African Toad)
U-Umbrette
V-Vulture
W-Warthog
X-Xerus (African Squirrel)
Y-Yellow Baboon (Had to go with the color here, as I couldn’t find a “y” named African Animal
Z-Zebra
Since this is a 3 star assignment this take me up to 11/10 stars!
All these Visual Assignments have been really fun!
This three star visual assignment really made me think about my story as a college student. I knew right away that I was going to do a picture from freshman year, mainly because I have pictures printed out from then and I also needed the location to be in Fredericksburg since I’m not going to New Jersey for a while. I took a look at the pictures that I had printed out and was suddenly brought back with tons of memories from my first year at college and my first year away from home. But I really wanted to pay a tribute to Goolrick Gymnasium. So here it is, my ‘ode’ to Goolrick.
So if you have been to the beautiful campus of the University of Mary Washington you may be familiar with Goolrick Gym. I know that I know almost every nook and cranny of that place. Being on the volleyball team for four years the gym has been a huge part of my college career, even after the Anderson Center was built. So let’s go back in time to three and a half years ago when I was just starting my college career out. After having no competitive experience playing volleyball I decided to try out and hope I made the team. I called my mother almost every day telling her about our three-a-day practices and explained how I was not anywhere close to the level that the girls trying out were. After a few grueling days of being unable to properly walk I finally found out I made the team (which is a funny story in itself). Success was mine, but I still was no where near the level that these girls were playing at. It was in Goolrick I had my first college mental breakdown, it was in Goolrick where I made friends that I’ll have for the rest of my life, it was in Goolrick where I had a team that was actually a family, and most importantly it was in Goolrick where we beat Salisbury University in the conference semi finals to close out the gym for the last time. Now there is the Anderson Center which is big and brand new and really amazing in so many ways, but to me Goolrick represents who I was when I got to school, kind of overlooked and trying to just blend in. Now, I too have developed not only as a player, but as a person as well; and I owe that all to Goolrick. So maybe it was just me being sentimental because it was basketball’s senior night tonight, or maybe this project gave me the opportunity to reflect on my time as a collegiate athlete, but I once again returned to the place where it all started, Goolrick.
Believe it or not, this picture was kind of hard to get. Getting the angle just right was a challenge and I was trying to match up the eagle on the middle of the courts together. I took a few different pictures by showing more of one side than the other, but this one was the one that I liked the best.
Hope you enjoyed,
Princess Karissa
Instead of hitting the “randomly pick one” button while searching through the ds106 Assignment Bank for a Visual Assignment to complete (like I usually do), I searched through them via their titles. I came across an interesting 3 star assignment called A-Z Photo Collage. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Make a photo collage with each image standing for a letter of the alphabet, surrounding a theme. I didn’t worry about the theme, because I didn’t think I had enough photos to choose from one topic, but I ended up using all photos that I’ve taken throughout my life, so my theme is me!
To begin, I went through and chose all the photos I wanted to use and added them to a new folder. Once I found all my photos, I opened Picasa, selected that folder, and hit “Create a Collage” under the Create tab. Since there were 26 photos, I couldn’t do a grid because it wasn’t coming out to even rows and columns. Instead, I chose a mosaic collage and rearranged the photos from A-Z.
I saved the collage and uploaded it to Flickr. Enjoy!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lhampson/8472705358/in/photostream/
Here is what I chose each photo to stand for:
A-Anemone N-Nurse
B-Baby O-Otters
C-Chair P-Pumpkin
D-Daffodil Q-Quarterhorse
E-Elephant R-Rose
F-Field S-Snake
G-Gerbil T-Tiger
H-Horse U-University
I-Icing V-Vineyard
J-Jack-O-Lantern W-Wave
K-Kitten X-Xmas
L-Leaves Y-Yawn
M-Moon Z-Zinnia
As always, I shared my new visual assignment with the ds106 community via Twitter.
#ds106 Check out my new photo collage! ds106.larahampson.com/photography-co…
— Lara Hampson (@l_hampson23) February 14, 2013
“Friends Forever, … or just for Life?” by iamtalkytina, on Flickr
I was so happy when I read that my good and dear friend Alan (@cogdog)was encouraging us all to share our Valentine love! This little challenge by SaraK (cali4beach) is just wonderful! I am so looking forward to receiving your Valentine’s Day greetings!
I found this special picture and then searched high and low for hours, looking for just the right fonts. By searching using the terms “free fonts romantic” I was finally able to settle on two — Blessed Day font (by Billy Argel, for personal use only) and Precious (by Bolt Cutter Design , commercial-use friendly), both shared on fontspace.com. Aren’t they nice fonts? They are very friendly, and oh-so-romantic, too. Just wonderful for my special friends!!
After importing the image into Photoshop, and working to fit my title “Friends Forever” into the upper left corner, I decided I needed some extra space, and so I increased the Canvas Size (upwards and to the left, by clicking the cell in the lower right corner to fix the original image there) to gain a bit more space for a slightly larger font size and some white space for wiggle room. To fill in the left and top margins, I used primarily the Clone Stamp tool, with a bit of the Healing Brush tool, to fill and smoothen. I also gave both the girl and the boy some nice hair extensions — can you tell? I especially like the stylish skunk-streak the girl has coming out of her forehead. .
Once the background was fixed, I moved the text around, added a whole slew of fx settings to the text (bevel, emboss, inner glow, outer glow, drop shadow — the works), just to get my special fonts looking so wonderful. I stuck with pink and red — the colour of Valentine’s Day — as the primary choices. I think red has something to do with blood, and how hot it runs? Isn’t that true?
Once done, I exported my image as a 1200 pixel wide jpg — nice for looking at online — uploaded it to my new Flickr account, and then embedded a 640 pixel wide image here on my blog. I also tagged it with the proper tags, ds106, VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments931, and the assignment title, “Valentines Day Caption Challenge.” I also tagged cali4beach, Alan Levine, @cogdog, Friends Forever, card, Valentines Day, and, as always, Friends.
I hope you all like it! Happy Valentine’s Day. I will be watching my inbox and twitter account for signs of your own shared love for me.
While browsing through the ds106 Assignment Bank, I found a 2 star rated Visual Assignment called Picasso Yourself. It called to create a Picasso-esque portrait of my own face!
I didn’t know how to start this one, so I looked through any tutorials on the assignment, but they weren’t very helpful, because I didn’t want to use a webcam to edit my face. Instead, I googled how to warp photos and found Morpheus Photo Warper.
After downloading and opening this program, I opened a new layout and chose the photo I wanted to warp:
Once my photo was loaded, I added dots all over my face, so that I could manipulate those areas of my face. From here on, I just played with what my face would look like if I moved a certain dot. The program showed two photos, one original and one edited, so that I could see what I was doing:
Finally, I saved the photo and uploaded it to Flickr. Et voilà!
I feel as though this 2 star challenge is my calling. I love Valentine’s Day, I spend every Valentine’s weekend with two of my three sisters and we always watch John Tucker Must Die and eat pints of ice cream and just catch up (since out of the six people in my family we live in 4 different states). So while Valentine’s Day is special to me, I never have really shared it with someone special (whomppp). So here comes the best part, this assignment lets us pick a blank Valentine’s Day card and add a caption for it. First of all, these selections were just too perfect, but I ended up picking this picture because it just seemed to be one of the most awkward ones.
Instantly I thought that the boy in the background was particularly creeping on the girl in the front, so I wanted to do something like that. The story I had imagined in my head was that he had a huge crush on her and finally had the guts to give the “popular girl” a note confessing his love to her. Seems realistic right? So I saved the picture and imported it into GIMP. I then used the text box editor to add text in three spots; the top of the picture, bottom of the picture, and on the note itself. In order to make the color of the text tell you who the perspective was from, I used the same color from the guy’s sweater to be text color (which I thought was a nice touch). So what did I write? Why don’t you find out right now!
Thanks for reading!
Princess Karissa
