Emojis IRL

Description of Assignment: “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 this Visual Assignment, in order to have my pictures side by side with the corresponding Emojis, I used an app I had previously used in another one of my visual assignments called “InstaCollage.” Once again, this app allows you to choose the amount of photos you want in your “collage” and then choose the layout you would like for your collage.

I chose to do this visual assignment mainly because I was able to have fun while completing an assignment for this class. When reading the description of what to do I immediately thought of a “story” I could tell using emoji faces. The story I chose to tell through the emoji faces was the faces that would be made while in the process of getting proposed to. I chose this story because I am recently engaged and these emoji faces could not describe better the faces I actually made during the proposal.

The first emoji face describes just a normal happy face that you should have on almost always when you are with your significant other. The second emoji face describes the face that was made when I was actually proposed to. I was in complete shock. The third emoji face describes my face after the fact that I said yes and we were happily engaged. These photos obviously mean a lot to me being that they were pretty much the exact faces I made when being proposed to.

This particular visual assignment is related to digital storytelling because it has digital media that tells a story of my engagement and the faces that I made throughout the proposal process.

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!

I decided to do this visual assignment, which asks to take pictures of yourself making the expressions of 3 emojis and then use those emojis to tell a story. I added a little twist to it, and framed the emojis & my recreation of them as my most common reactions to watching The Wire.

I used my iPhone 5S to create this. I typed the 3 emojis and “Emoji Reactions to The Wire” onto a blank page in the Notes app and then took screen shots of the emojis and words. I zoomed in on the screenshots and took new screenshots. The emoji selfies were pretty easy, as I just used the front-facing camera on my phone to take the pictures. For the crying emoji, I stuck strips of light blue Post-It Notes to my face to mirror the tears. Once I had all the pictures I needs,  I used the Frametastic app to put the pictures into one of the frames available. This app also allowed me to zoom in on the photos as much as I desired. I then uploaded the finished picture to Flickr.

I think these three emojis really represent the emotions viewers experience while watching the show (or at least I have these reactions). The crying emoji is felt in moments like when Kima is shot or Wallace is killed. The emoji pictured in the middle is representative of my reaction to a lot of the depressing, inescapable circumstances many of the characters are in, which is an idea the final episode of season 1 seems to cover. The teeth clenched emoji is something I feel when strenuous/ dangerous maneuvers are being pulled, such as the police apprehending various members of the drug ring or when all the players are moving in on each other and something bad is about to go down.

As far as my execution of this assignment, I think my biggest error was in the teeth clenched emoji, as I didn’t execute my recreation of it well. A lot of my recreations fell short because I was too busy looking at my phone, trying to see if I was doing it right or not, and thus my eyes did not match the emoji. On that same note, I think it might have been better if I had chosen the emoji where the teeth are clenched and the eyes are open rather than shut, because that seemed to be the face I was making and seems to better represent that reaction I have to watching the series. I also should have taken my earbuds out, but I also usually have my headphones in while watching The Wire, so maybe that’s a more accurate representation.

In order to put all the different pictures inside the same file, I first opened all the files inside Photoshop. Then I selected every picture and pasted them on the file that was going to be my final photo or collage. Each picture must go  in a different layer, so you can arrange them how you the want. Then [...]