https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/600438785813118979/670493850443317288/20190526053957_1.jpg That is my favorite Picture, because I was able to create a strong empire in a crowded multiplayer setting
Menu
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/600438785813118979/670493850443317288/20190526053957_1.jpg That is my favorite Picture, because I was able to create a strong empire in a crowded multiplayer setting
Greetings! I’m back with something fun for my first assignment. I followed the theme of the 80s by targeting the movie my blog is currently themed around: They Live (1988), by John Carpenter starring Roddy Piper and Meg Foster. The assignment I chose is called “Before and After The End” by Martha. Here is its synopsis: “Take a before/after photo of a person, place, or thing that has survived the apocalpyse. Then use Juxtapose to share a comparison of your two photos. Try not to rely too heavily on Photoshop or other photo editors to show the changes.”
First, let me tell you about my inspiration: They Live. They Live is a science-fiction and action film based in dystopian Los Angeles. Roddy Piper plays the wanderer “Nada,” who overhears someone ‘getting soapbox’ and talking about powerful people and beings that are controlling humanity. Eventually, he recovers a pair of sunglasses that turn his world black-and-white and replace advertisements with words displaying their true intent. Some people are revealed to actually be aliens, and it is up to Nada to survive and reveal the truth as it was shown to him. So while this doesn’t exactly target the zombie-filled apocalypse we know, it targets a dystopia that may as well be an apocalypse to those who discover it. In a way, the fact that it is right under our noses makes it worse, and draws many parallels to the heartless intent of messages in modern society.
If you’re curious, here is the trailer. You can watch it on Hulu if you have an account. (Warning: guns, a muttering Roddy Piper, and repetition of the word ‘THEY’):
This assignment was rated 3 stars, but I spent a solid few hours working on this one to make the ‘alien’ overlay look natural. The assignment made it seem like one should show the difference more subtly in expression, though it is ‘subtle’ in the movie in that no one can see them. After all, I enjoy image editing, and it was cool to put myself in this dystopian society. First, I took two pictures of myself. Then, I selected this screenshot from the movie to overlay over my face using Pixlr Editor:
It was a little difficult to position correctly over my face, though it was still much easier to match human proportions to each other than that of a cat to a person (check out my attempt at that from today’s daily create!). Since the man’s bangs and clothes made his exposed forehead and neck much shorter, respectively, I had to duplicate them and stretch them out to fit my own. I used a spot-blending tool to cover some of the edges. I also had to color part of my face in black since the lighting on the skeleton face is much different than the room I was in, and it was more effective for me to make the edges of my face into shadows. This black color was also used in my hair, since it was too light compared to the shadows on my face.
Here is a colored GIF of my work, just for kicks:
I would have loved to go to a Prince concert
Every new week brings new challenges. Navigating through the Assignment Bank was a new type of freedom I, as a student, have never felt before. this being my first ever online class has sure had its fair share of culture shock. Once the shock wore off, I quickly found 3 fun assignments to take on. This is my journey from start to finish this week.
First, I decided to do the Averaged Portrait assignment because I am not one for taking selfies so this immediately got me out of my comfort zone. The act of taking several pictures in the same spot with different expressions is a unique form of picture I’ve never thought about before.
I accomplished this by taking 12 almost-identical photos and importing them into an iPad app called Procreate. In this app, I’m able to insert each photo into its own layer on top of each other. On every layer, I turned the opacity to 50% so every layer was noticeable. And that, friends, is how I got this monstrosity of a masterpiece.
The next assignment was a bit more light-hearted and funny. The objective being “take a photo of somebody and give them huge, creepy, anime eyes” grabbed my attention right away. So I got right to work.
To start, I found a photo of a famous 1980s pop star, to fit the theme of course. My poor subject was nobody other than the man, the myth, the legend: David Bowie. Fortunately, because I have a smart phone, I have an app called Snapchat. Using this app I took a picture of David Bowie and applied a filter on the picture I found. Poor David, I’m sorry for putting you through this, you deserve more than this.
Everybody knows the classic movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, premiered June 11th, 1986. I was not born in the 1980s but if I was, I would have wanted to see this in movie theaters as soon as possible. What better way to find out about a movie coming out, you ask? Excellent question friend, that would be a radio advertisement in the family kitchen on a Thursday night right before dinner. So I made just the thing. Using a couple computer programs called Audacity and iMovie to record my voice and add some rad 80s music in the background, I was able to make a pretty convincing 1980s radio commercial that I then uploaded to YouTube for everybody’s viewing pleasure. Please enjoy.
The mix of fun and creative assignments this week was refreshing from the mundane college work in my other courses I’m taking this semester. From getting to use my new microphone to taking selfies in my bathroom, I ventured out of my comfort zone a fair amount this week and I look forward to doing it more and more.
As I walked into my house, I noticed something different. Something didnât feel right. I took out my phone, ready to call someone. I walked over to the light and turned it on. Right there in front of me was a random person sitting on my couch! I was already on my phone, so I flipped it to camera and was able to snap this photo before the person ran away. Or is it a person?
It was quite hard to pick my favorite photo because there are so many that mean so much to me, but I finally decided on this one. This picture was taken last spring after my Track team won the conference championship. After having practice at least once a day for the entire school year, and sacrificing most of my weekends to train, It felt so good to finally get the result that I wanted. It was amazing to see how excited and happy my teammates were as well. I feel like this picture captures the happy place after a long road of struggle.
# VisualAssignments #VisualAssignments2152
The final assignment bank prompt I chose for this week was in the gif section. I’ve never made one so I didn’t know if it would be hard or not. Surprisingly it was easy to make and pretty quick. The prompt was to make a gif with contradicting thoughts so this is the first one that came to mind
At one point in time all I did was live and breathe Micheal Jackson, as he remains an icon in our music culture. The one concert I wouldâve wanted to be at was his, as they were electric and adventurous (at one point I had memorized the opening act number and dance sequence to the Bad world tour concert). I was extremely devastated when he passed, as he passed away in August of 2009 and my father had surprised my sister and I in May of that year with tickets to see his âThis Is Itâ tour in October. For this assignment I copied a photo from google and imported into photoshop for my mac, where I then also imported a selfie of myself (and how I would react at a concert of his) and with the cut tool removed the background of my photo to look as if I were an audience member. (I learned that I still obviously need a bit more work in photoshop)Â
This week I chose to watch the movie Batman, that was released in 1989 as I found it interesting for being such a superhero fan, I had never watched any of the Batman films (I guess you can say Iâm more of a Marvel fan.) I also found it interesting that it was a top grossing film in the 80s, so I thought why not? I found myself fascinating over the actor who played the Joker, Jack Nicholsan, in this movie and began to compare it to the Joker movie that came out recently, who starred the actor Joaquin Phoenix, and Iâd say both actors executed their role excellent. There was one particular scene I found amusing when the robbers thought they were safe, then all of a sudden Batman appears and they start to run for their lives. I thought that would be a funny meme or gif, thus when I found this assignment in the assignment box It was perfect. I screen recorded this certain scene off of Amazon Prime videos (the streaming device I watched the movie on), and turned it into a gif through a gif generator app called GIF Maker, and viola! I can make my own gifs now, a useful skill I have gained this week.  Now I just need to learn how to embed them on here (which is why I posted it to twitter.)
Gotham filled with crimeÂ
Know who will arrive in timeÂ
Batman saves the nightÂ
I found this to be a perfect assignment as I had just received a refresher on haikus from a daily create assignment, so I took the opportunity to incorporate my 80s movie I chose to watch and well, created this masterpiece (Joking! Iâm a joker, if you havenât already noticed. See what I did there?)
I started this week late due to family visiting my home and unfortunate events with my spouseâs vehicle, but when I finally checked in I was stoked to see the inclusion of the daily create. I wanted to participate in them, but it would slip my mind. Now that it is a requirement, Iâll be forced to remember to do them with an alarm on my phone. Here are the four I completed this week followed by the thinking process for each one.
For Tuesdayâs submission, I didnât even have to think a minute before I knew exactly what I wanted to use. I constantly find myself thinking of this moment in the Princess Bride when people say things and Iâm pretty sure theyâre full of itâŠso I had to use it for this daily create.
Wednesdayâs prompt was simple. I opened the link and used my current location, which was in Jepson waiting for class to start. When class was done, I went outside and snapped a photo of the building with my phone. I then used the Layout app to put them into the same image and posted it.
On Thursday I had time to sit down between homework assignments and spotted my daughterâs colored pencils. I took about ten minutes sketching my map. I didnât focus on shopping because it doesnât happen often enough, and the stores arenât close to each other like in the map used for the demo. I chose to map out my daily travels during the school week. Ironically (if I even used that term correctly), I forgot to add the day care drop off/pick up until I was about to post the map without it on there â even though I was using her pencils.
For Friday’s daily create, I couldn’t figure out a simple way to make her face look painted, so I reverted to the classic hole in the face photos available online and turned my daughter into the form she was meant to be in at this age.
After posting Tuesdayâs tweet (and telling my husband how
proud I was of it), I started skimming the Assignment Bank. I found some of
them boring, some quite intriguing and some downright tempting to complete.
Overall, I felt intimidated by most of the ones I liked due to my level of knowledge
with the media platforms they prescribed. My husband has a small 3D printer
meant for creating tabletop game miniatures, so Iâll be able to ask him for
help if I want to attempt those.
I decided to follow the recommendation to watch a movie from the 1980s and base an assignment off of it. I watched the original version of âThe Bourne Identityâ which was released in two two-hour installments on ABC as a television film in May 1988. It was much more consistent with the original novel which I found to be refreshing.
The first assignment I completed I posted on twitter on Thursday. It was âWho Said Whatâ from the Visual Assignments section. In this task you are told to pick an image of a famous spy and combine it with a quote from a different spy, additionally signing the quote by a third spy. I choose the image of Richard Chamberlain version of Jason Bourne, quote from âEye of the Needleâ (another â80s spy film), and authored it by James Bond which had multiple movies released in the 80s. I found the image and quote in a google search. I completed the image in what I felt was the easiest way for me. I opened power point, inserted the photo, pasted the quote on it, made the font look acceptable, and then saved the image through there. Posted it to twitter and thatâs that.
For the second assignment, I learned a bit more about twitter! I had to google how to do it, but I completed the assignment by creating t thread on twitter! Sorry for all the !!!!s⊠this is exciting stuff, okay? This âGuess the Storyâ task, from the Web Assignments bank, called for the use of gifs to tell a myth, folklore, or legend. I decided to complete it but change the directions to fit the 1980s theme by describing an 80s movie with gifs. I started by telling myself to create a limit first and decided that would be 25 gifs. I completed the story in 23. I couldâve done it in fewer, but I really wanted to include specific gifs I enjoy. For those seeking the answer â it was based on The Goonies.
The third task I chose was one of the Design Assignments called Super Tattoo. In this assignment I was tasked to design a tattoo that would represent my superpower or explain what I would do as a superhero. I chose an image Iâve had for a while of Fawkes the phoenix from Harry Potter. He defends people and has the ability of rebirth. I felt like it parallels my service in the Army and my rebirth into the civilian world after retirement.
I spent two days during the first week customizing my blog,
so I didnât really commit much time to that this week. I did spend time
troubleshooting an issue with the code that was preventing me from enabling
comments to the blog posts. It was refreshing to finally resolve that issue and
made me feel like I accomplished SOMETHING productive on that front. On
Thursday I went on a twitter following spree. I added everyone I could identify
with the #ds106 hashtag. I started âheartingâ some posts and commented here and
there. I also started visiting other blogs and checking out the assignments people
were sharing. I sprinkled some thoughts and went about my business. There were
still quite a few that didnât have comments enabled so I couldnât spread the
love as much as I had planned.
Iâm looking forward to what next week holds!
After a long journey traveling the universe, Thor stopped by my place. We are good friends so I wasn’t too surprised. I figured that he had more important things to take care of than see me. I felt quite honored.
I made this GIF with https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker . All you have to do is record a video and upload it to their easy GIF creator. This whole process took maybe 5 minutes. Give it a try!
