I got really excited when I saw this assignment because I love music and I have loved seeing all of the memes online that were done similarly.
For Playlist Poetry, you go onto Windows Media Player or iTunes (I decided to do Spotify since I think this assignment is aged a few years) and try to create a poem or story that is cohesive as possible using song titles.
I wanted to relate this one to the 80’s theme through using only 80’s music.
I thought this one was gonna be easy, but it turned out to be a little more difficult especially having to stick to a certain type of music.
With this, I did the best that I could. It’s not super cohesive, but I think it makes some sense. Maybe it could interpreted artistically because it isn’t smooth flowing.
I tried to make it sound like it was a construction worker who was proud of his hard work and basking in it, only to wake up in the morning and to move on to another project. What do you think?
This wasn’t an assignment that required taking pictures, but when I screenshotted and cropped the image, I tried to make it linear so that it is more visually pleasing.
This assignment, Create a Warning Poster, requires you to make a poster warning someone about something.
I thought this assignment was a good way to help me develop my digital creation skills, so I decided to give it a shot.
I wanted to make this assignment relate to our 80’s theme since there are a lot of “horror” movies from the 80’s that could fit into this poster.
As mentioned in one of my earlier blot posts, I love the Shining (and Stephen King). I also watched Ghostbusters this semester, so I thought it would be kinda funny to combine the both of them.
Ghostbusters has more to do with ridiculous ghosts, but the Shining is a lot more serious with the respect to the supernatural, as you can see when Jack Torrance tries to murder his family.
The poster is a little ridiculous because of how I combined the two contrasting movies, but I had a good time with it.
Check it out!
Although I didn’t use any “photography” skills in this visual assignment, I tried to follow some of the guidelines mentioned, such as keeping it balanced, clear, and incorporating color contrasting.
This assignment, What’s in your bag?, asks you to take pictures of items in your bag that you use daily and explain their importance.
It caught me eye because there are a few things that I can’t leave the house without that are a little unique, so I thought I would share them with the world.
I’m not a huge fan of wearing purses, especially when I’m at school, so a lot of my items just go into my backpack. When I do go out on the weekends, I either have duplicates of what I carry around in my purse, or I switch things over from my backpack to my purse.
The first item is my gum. I always have to have this with me and it has to be this specific brand. I started chewing gum in the seventh grade and I actually think I’ve become addicted it. After I eat, I have to have my mint gum or my stomach starts to get upset. Mint naturally helps digestive problems so I believe that it is possible that my body uses it as a regular digestive aid now.
Another thing that I can’t go without is my chap stick. It doesn’t have to be this brand in particular, but I need to at least have some with me. When I was in high school, I was on the drug Accutane twice and one of the side effects was dry skin/lips. Ever since I started taking Accutane, I have had dry lips. It definitely isn’t as bad as when I was actually on the medicine, but I still feel the need to have chap stick on me at all times.
Next is some migraine medicine. This isn’t something I need every day, but when I can feel a migraine coming on, it usually never slows down so I have to make sure I have some medicine on me to attempt to get through the rest of the day. Sometimes, though, the medicine doesn’t help and I have to go home, but it can normally affect it a little bit.
I really need my keys. I commute to school so I couldn’t get home without them. I even take my keys with me if I am not driving. I think it is reassuring/comforting to have them on me just in case something happens to where I have to get into my house without my boyfriend.
My laptop/Surface is really important for school. It has all of my notes on it and I don’t usually carry notebooks or binders, so if I get to school and realize I don’t have it, I’ll have to turn around to go and get it. I only ever take it to school, however. This isn’t something that I will put in my purse. Maybe that’s obvious, but I wanted to clarify.
My final item is my earbuds and their case. I love listening to music, especially when I’m walking across campus or working on an assignment. The days that I have forgotten my headphones have been the longest days of my life.
All of these items are important to my daily life. Could I live without them? Sure. But they sure make life a lot easier.
When I was taking the pictures for this assignment, I wasn’t trying to make them too fancy, but I tried to follow some of the guideline that were introduced this week. I attempted to make the photo balanced/centered, use a plain background so the items can be in focus, and tried to get good lighting by blocking out the glare.
Since I usually kind of manipulate what the assignment is asking for I decided to make this not a portrait, but rather full body shots of a friend of mine dancing. Originally I was going to have each image on top of each other and create a circle effect, but it looks better aligned like this. I used my camera’s quick shutter style to capture every angle of this move and then selected each image individually. Once I aligned them evenly I just faded each layer until it was the full opacity on the right. If I had taken more time on this assignment I would’ve touched up some spots like in between her fingers, and her hair. (those spots are so difficult with the quick select tool). The elongation of her leg counteracted by the way her arm is going creates really great lines that make your eye move in a million different directions. This was overall really fun, and I am super excited that this week is the photoshop week because that is what I have the most experience with and what I like to do the most.
This assignment is my first for the week and is worth 3 stars.
As I scrolled through my camera roll for this visual assignment (2 stars), I found this picture from my landing flight into Akita, Japan after my 3-day weekend trip to Tokyo in late November. It’s a pretty bad picture, but I thought it caught Akita’s rural beauty just right.
I did the best I could on the Photoshop Express app on my phone to make the picture have a vintage effect, but as for what to write in Helvetica, I wanted to do a quote from a famous movie in the 80s. I decided on “Wax on, wax off,” from The Karate Kid (1984).
Why would I choose something that’s so seemingly random and mundane? It’s because of its mundaneness (and the movie’s connection to Japanese culture) that I thought that it would be perfect for this picture.
The quote itself emphasizes the importance of the everyday things we do in our lives that become almost second nature. For Daniel, the mundane task of washing Mr. Miyagi’s car made his learning of karate easier because of the way his muscles had been trained while car washing. Now, I may be stretching this a bit much, but I think this can be somewhat applied to life (or maybe my life) in Akita. Here me out.
Akita is a rural prefecture, and although there is public transportation, the buses and trains–though efficient and punctual–don’t come in 5 minute intervals like people expect from Tokyo. Over time you’ll find that there isn’t much to do, and life in Akita can get pretty routine. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved it there, but there does come a time when Akita loses its novelty. To be very honest, I still found something to do in Akita (mostly because I was so caught up doing my everyday tasks I never had the chance to explore more).
One look at this picture and you can already get an impression that this place lacks excitement, but with those preconceptions, you’d be missing out on Akita’s vibrant culture and warm, affectionate people despite the bitter cold. While my day to day, week to week life in Akita had been fairly the same, my time there changed me. My life in Japan, in Akita, made living a healthier lifestyle, doing mundane chores and shopping, cooking, and walking around everywhere so much easier. It made it easier to do this scary thing called “adulting.” I still have a ways to go, but the mundane shaped me to be a more capable individual.
Maybe I am stretching this analogy a bit much. Oh well, please enjoy picture I edited!
For this week’s first assignment, I decided to do something that I thought seemed like fun. Maybe it’s too easy or too hard, but I thought it would be worth a shot.
This assignment is called “That’s Not What I Expected,” where the purpose is to take a picture of something zoomed in and try to get people to guess what it is.
I wanted to try this one out because it would allow me to use a bit of the photography info that we have been studying this week.
For my picture, I decided to zoom in on this household item. When taking the picture, I thought about the perspective (what may make it look not like itself?), lighting, balance (the kind-of symmetry), and contrast.
I took some other pictures that I was interested in posting instead, but I really liked the last one I took, which is the one embedded in this blog. I think the color is beautiful and it contrasts well with the black. It was a spontaneous photo, which I think fits this assignment and theme this week best.
Did you know that in Japan (and in some other countries), the sewer covers have unique designs depending what region and city/town you’re in? I encountered this–or at least, actually noticed this–in the summer the weekend before my classes in Japan began. This was en route to the ?magari Fireworks Festival. Sadly, I never stopped to other sewer covers during my study abroad to compare each one, but I’m glad I got even one picture.
Sewer cover in ?magari, Akita, Japan
At the bottom of the cover, it says ???????and?????which means “?magari” and “sewage,” respectively. Since ?magari is well known for its annual fireworks festival, you can see the carvings of the fireworks coming from the top of the mountain. To the left and right are trees, and running along through the center is a bridge, with water running beneath it. The attention to detail and the significance of the images presented here on this cover astounded me. It was too beautiful to not take a picture.
Pondering what to do for my first visual assignment for this week, I stumbled across Colorize It (3 stars), which prompted me to adjust the colors of a picture I had previously taken. I scrolled through my Japan album and came across this picture once again. I wanted to pop some color to this plain sewer color to really represent the explosion of colors that come from the fireworks.
I used the Photoshop Express app on my phone and used the dynamic filter.
The “dynamic” filter on the Photoshop Express app
The filter added hues of blue and green while accenting the yellow from the original picture. It almost makes the cover look as if it sits atop a grassy mountain than concrete while the bright colors pop out like fireworks. Please enjoy this picture of the colorized version!
I chose to do this assignment from the Design Assignment Bank. The assignment says:
Using Gimp or a similar program, create a public service announcement billboard on something that really aggravates you about people, society, the world, etc. It can be serious, goofy, but not offensive. Use a 680 x 300 work space in order to mimic the space of a billboard and have fun with how your positioning, font, colors, and images can help get your message across in a small space. Take it to the next level but superimposing it on a photo of an existing billboard!
In order to create my billboard I downloaded and used GIMP. Once I opened the application I sat there and stared at the screen for a bit and clicked all sorts of buttons to figure out how to get started. Once I figured out how to create the working space for the billboard I then played with all the tools to add the text and images as well as change the background color. I would say that it took me about 30 minutes after I learned the tool to complete the assignment. I chose the color because it is eye-catching and the photo of the dog because it is sad looking and looks as if it might be a pit bull. I think my statement is straight to the point so that there is no confusion.
I chose this PSA because I think that there are many people who don’t understand animal welfare. I think it is important for people to become aware of animal welfare and understand where they are on the issue. Treating all animals humanely is not about captivity or not but really providing basic needs.
My final assignment for the week was to recreate a famous movie scene. This one was festering in me all week, and I was having the hardest decision on which scene to recreate. As usual, I can only decide on something when it’s down to the final moments. With the help of some family, I went with this scene from Forrest Gump.
Now, we had one problem when recreating this: it was 8 PM, and the sun had gone down long ago. We had to improvise, and used the lights of a car to light up a bench at our house. The picture didn’t come out amazing, but for a last minute effort, I’d say it wasn’t too bad. My mom actually had a box of chocolates with a ribbon on it by coincidence, so that was one of the few props true to the movie.
This assignment requires you to find a picture of two people in love, and write a short story/description of the two. I couldn’t sit down and seriously write a story of two random people in love, so I decided to have some fun with this project.
Tim and Pizza
Tim’s eyes lit up and a smile grew across his face as he gazed at his love. Tim had been with Pizza for only 3 minutes, but his love was already overwhelming. There was no judgment in Pizza, and Tim felt free to be himself, unrestrained by fear of ridicule. He had been scorn in his past by other women, leaving him an emotionless husk, but Pizza had turned all that around. “Life is worth living,” thought Tim, “as long as something as great as Pizza is around.” However, this adoration was not solely within Tim. “…” thought Pizza, lovingly. Their date at its end, Tim dropped Pizza off at its box. “I hope Pizza invites me in,” prayed Tim. His prayers were answered, and as he opened the door to Pizza’s box, his eyes grew wide in astonishment. The amazement caused half the hair to fall of his head, and arrange itself into a beard and goatee.
“Pizza is an octuplet!” he said in complete shock. Moments later, the real Pizza party began.
