I actually liked doing this a lot! I think I might do this a bunch of times since I have over 6000 songs on my itunes to work with. I only looked through A B and C’s for this first one, so I have a ton more to look through. Look out for more of my playlist poetry!
The goal was to take one photo and chop it up to make something that tells a story or creates some kind of tension by breaking the image into pieces. I had the idea for the “assignment” after seeing this shot1 on #FFFFFound.
I’ll rate this one a partial success. It’s not quite what I want. I don’t feel the upper shots are as interesting individually as they should be. I wanted to make it seem like the boy was walking into the woods seeing nothing, then as he traveled deeper he spotted the deer and that moment- when he froze finally seeing the deer is the moment captured in the final pane.
1 Which isn’t a single image but is close enough for me.
This is my contribution to the ds106 Visual Assignment “Four Icon Challenge”:
Reduce a movie, story, or event into itās basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons.
As you might guess, it was hand-drawn and then scanned.
This semester, I took on the challenge of keeping up with, lurking, participating when I can with an online Digital Storytelling class offered by Jim Groom through the University of Mary Washington. The past few weeks have been a total bust per even the level of lurking, but this week I found a little time and became intrigued by one of the assignments called The Four Icon Challenge. The challenge is to find four icons that boil a movie down to its essence and then arrange them in order. Then, other people try and guess the movie title.
I find this assignment intriguing for two reasons. First, I am a visual-holic and in my secret life (is that second life?) aspire to become an artist (even though I only dream about it). So, the visual aspect of the icons has a strong pull for me. Second, I believe that to boil things down to their essence you have to study them and understand them at deep level. As Mark Twain said, āif I had more time, I would write a shorter letterā.
Without further ado, then, and too much writingā¦is my contribution to the assignment 4 Icon Challenge. Can you guess the movie title or even what it is about?
I did this one with itunes. I started looking through my songs and just dragged some into a playlist that had interesting titles and after I had about 5 songs I decided to actually look at the playlist and see what I could make sense of and this is what came out of it. This is my poem. Itās a typical subject, but hey, thatās what I have on my computer. Itās about a girl that gets cheated on and is upset. Finally, she says forget him and decides to start fresh (and sheās happy without him). I think itās kind of empowering for women.
I present to you, the new Indie Acoustic soft melodies of Radioimmunodetection with their first album, Ā ”At the Expense of Truth.”
This new band of a sweet rabbit and her squirrel background dancers sing titles such as, “Hibernating With you,” “Breaking Into the Vegetable Garden,” and my personal favorite, “Do You Want to Do What Bunnies Do (if you know what I mean)?” This CD is sure to sooth the soul and warm you up on any cold night. On sale now for only seven carrots and twelve acorns! What a steal!
I found the picture from the random Flickr like the assignment said, the last words are from the quote, “Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth” by Johann Georg von Zimmerman (10 points if you comment here and know what he did). I then uploaded the picture to picnik.com and played around with the brightness, the exposure, different color patterns, lighting, and the fonts for the album title. I think I got really lucky with an already cool picture from the random search and a word as pretentious as that could be the name of an Indie band.
Now to figure out what in the world to do for design…Expect some Harry Potter though (how have I had this blog for this long and not outnerded myself with my dedication to HP?).
Here is my attempt at The Four Icon Challenge created by Kyle Tezak and submitted by Tim Owens.
I drew all of them in Microsoft Paint.
In case you cannot decipher them…/What should be running through your head if you’re like “WTF mate?”…
1. A pilgrim hat with the initials “SP” written in a heart.
2. Hot pink hair of a girl.
3. A “VS” or “versus” symbol.
4. The name and phone number of some person (a girl?) named “Ramona” with seven x’s underneath it. Kisses?
***Spoilers Below. ***
Analysis…
1. Scott Pilgrim-”Every Pilgrim reaches the end of its journey…some sooner than others.”-Roxy. I decided to go with a Pilgrim hat to reference that his last name is “Pilgrim” and that they often reference him as being a Mayflower pilgrim. The initials “SP” on the buckle with the heart are supposed to reference the Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt he wears when he goes to battle Gideon. I figured this was the most important depiction of him-the main character.
2. Ramona’s hairstyle and color of when we and Scott first meet her. Also references the drawing Scott holds up in the movie to ask Comeau, “Hey, Comeau, you know everybody…Have you seen a girl with hair like this?” I wanted to have Ramona as my second icon because the movie is basically about how he gets to be with her.
3. “VS” symbol seen at the beginnings of each battle between Scott and Ramona’s evil exes, usually in blue (although with Roxy’s fight it is pink). I thought this would reference the video game/fighting game aspect of the movie.
4. My attempt at a replication of the note Ramona gives Scott when he asks her for her phone number. With “seven DEADLY X’s,” not kisses like Scott originally thought. I originally just drew 7 deadly x’s, but then I thought it would be cooler to replicate the note he gives to Ramona because for awhile Scott doesn’t even realize why he has to fight.
I hope this amuses you, dear reader.
Final note: If you have not seen Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, please do so now. That is all.
Reduce a movie to 4 icons, is a great challenge.
The important is focus in the guide ideas of the movie, and I think I made this.
Let’s see the comments, to check if the people identify easily the movie 
