This assignment was partially inspired by a friend of mine who was showing me how to make a visualizer in a program called After effects. Since I had been having trouble with Adobe Animate on my other assignment, I took him up on his offer and thought it’d be fitting to work it into a task.
The song itself was something I made for a small music tournament a few years ago, while the background was made by me in Grafx2 and the visualizer made in After Effects. The song was meant for a grassy and unexplored area, so I wanted not only the background to match but the visualizer as well. I put it at the bottom of the screen and made it a nice green to replicate grass moving in the wind. Besides the other assignment, I’m much more pleased with how this one turned out in comparison. It doesn’t feel polished to me, but considering this was my first try with making a music video with a visualizer I think it went surprisingly well.
I’ll preface this assignment by saying that this week was insanely unorganized for me as I started working a second job as well as some family stuff going on, so I’m frustrated to say that this assignment didn’t go as I wanted. I hate to use excuses but my end product is so underwhelming in comparison to what I could’ve done with more time.
I wanted to have a calm scene with some nice backing sound effects as my quick story. A bird flits about looking for its nest as the trees rustle gently in the wind. My original goal was going to have live video instead, but I kept running into issues transferring the videos from my phone to my computer so I ended up switching to drawing instead.
This video was made with a combination of different programs. I used Grafx2 to draw, Beepbox to create the wind and bird sound effects, and lastly Adobe Animate to stitch everything together and adjust the colors and timing. I took an animation course a few years ago and sadly all my knowledge of the program has long left my bones, so I had to struggle with it for a while before finally getting my end result. I can safely say that I’m not pleased with the work I have here and in the future I’ll have my process figured out prior to beginning the task.
For this assignment we had to take a photo that was not as nice as it could be and make it nicer with some flowers. I chose to fix up this old haunted house and make it feel more homey with some landscaping! It doesn’t look so haunted anymore.
For this assignment I had to take a dog doing something funny and turn it into a GIF. I found a video of a dog playing in the snow because of all snow we have been getting this season!
For this assignment I had to make a story map for a trip I took. I chose to document my trip I took 2 years ago to Toronto, Canada for spring break. It was such a fun trip to take with friends and I definitely recommend going if you have the chance!
For this assignment I had to make a collage of photos I took of my friends when they were not paying attention. I am not currently at school so I put my own little twist on this assignment. I used old “candid” photos of me and my friends instead. We knew that pictures were being taken but we were not exactly ~ready~ for them.
The great thing about studying abroad is that I have plenty of stories to tell, accompanied by a plethora of pictures and videos to tell these stories. The most difficult part is having so many photos that picking 5 to tell even one particular story! Even so, that’s exactly why I choose to challenge myself to the Five Frame Story (3.5 stars) as my final visual assignment for week 4.
For this assignment, I chose Akita International University’s annual school festival (aka AIU Festival). You may be familiar with the Multicultural Festival at UMW, but school festivals in Japan are on a whole different level. Unlike here where all our food and most of the venders are sponsored by actual stores, the school festivals in Japan (AIU included) are run mostly by students–they’ll even sell street food, sweets, and trinkets, mostly to raise money for their clubs and committees. The AIU Festival ran from October 13-14, 2019, and in these pictures, I will summarize as much as possible in as little as 5 pictures.
AIU Festival opening
The AIU Festival began 9am on October 13, 2019, a Sunday, with a performance by Traditional Calligraphy. The theme for the festival was ??? (“Izayoi”), which translates into “sixteen-day-old moon.” Unfortunately, I don’t remember the story or deeper meaning behind the name of the theme.
Many performances are done by a variety of clubs and committees, including the Yatose Team Arudan. Can you figure out where I am?
On both days, there are many performances by a variety of clubs and committees, including the Yatose Team Arudan, pictured above. Yatose is a Japanese style street dance mixing traditional Japanese music and J-pop. If you’ve seen UMW’s Eagle Bhangra, Yatose is somewhat like that in the sense that there’s a lot of energy!
Towards the end of the festival is a performance by the Kanto team.
Towards the end of the second day of the festival, the Kanto team performed. Kanto is usually performed by men with poles 5-12 meters long, bearing 24-46 lanterns, and weighing up to 50kg (as pictured above)! The men balance these poles on their palms, foreheads, shoulders, or lower backs while men and women play music with flutes and the taiko. In Akita, there is a Kanto festival held in Akita Prefecture in early August.
We end the day’s festivities with fireworks.
To end the day’s festivities, what’s more fitting than fireworks?
Of all of the food stalls, the Choco Banana group earned the most votes and won 6 kg of meat!
Last but not least was the closing ceremony. Like I said before, student clubs and committees have food stands, and they compete with each other for votes from the public. In the picture above are the winners for the most votes, and they won 6 kg of meat!
While I wish I could share my 4-part vlog on the festival as well as my hundreds of pictures, I hope these 5 pictures give you a good idea of what festivals in Japan are like, as well as how much of a blast I had when I was there! This made me think about the photography readings we had, and I got thinking about how I could use my photos to tell stories. This is only the start, so it’s rough, but I hope I’m getting somewhere with this.
For my next Visual Assignment, I chose What A Crappy Font Will Do (3.5 stars), and I went with the Cold Stone Creamery logo since this ice cream shop opened in 1988.
Original Cold Stone Creamery logo
I used the photo editor on my phone to white out the original logo, and then using the photo editor on my laptop, I typed “Cold Stone” in all caps in Comic Sans and “Creamery” in Helvetica.
“Cold Stone” in Comic Sans (before putting it in all caps)“Creamery” in Helvetica
I chose these fonts, particularly the Comic Sans font, because they are notorious for being poor quality, default fonts that you see anywhere and anywhere. They’re a cheap way out of using Times New Roman, but that’s all those two fonts are–cheap. As such, I think using these fonts to represent Cold Stone Creamery makes the shop appear cheap and lacking in quality, the opposite of what I think it is.
This assignment, a relatively easy one, asks you to post your favorite photo and explain why it is so. It is called favorite photo.
This assignment isn’t worth a lot of stars, but I was excited to come across it because I do have a favorite photo that I would love to share with the world.
I know that I talk about my cats a lot and that I may be considered an annoying cat person, but my cats are really my first experiences with a pet and they have an interesting backstory.
I got the black cat (then kitten, Luna) in the beginning of September 2018. She was awesome but was really annoying and needed another friend to play with so I could do my homework.
A few weeks later, we went and got the grey cat (then kitten, Willow) who was labeled aggressive because they believed that she was a feral kitten.
They didn’t get along. Willow would hide, hiss, growl, and swat at Luna. We thought we were going to have to take her back.
A few days later, something clicked and they became best friends. They’ve been this way ever since.
I love this photo because it so accurately displays the personalities of the cat. Luna’s head tilt shows how she’s super outgoing and friendly. Willow is her timid sidekick who will give you tons of love when she wants it, but only when she does.
This was a spur of the moment picture when we saw both of the cats sitting together on the chair. I’m honestly surprised I was able to snap it. Any time that they are sitting together now, when I try to take a picture, they see that I am paying attention to them and move from where they are at so that they could get pet.
When I took the photo, I wasn’t trying to make it a “good” picture because I was so worried that they were going to move. However, I think it turned out well because the cats are posing as if it is a portrait, it is balanced, and their color stands out in the monochrome background.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed typing it. This assignment was worth 1.5 stars.
