Week 15

Assignment: View everyone in our classes blogs and then assign 5 awards. Then we had to create a gadget on our page to link to the sites that we choose as the best. We used the link list to do this. We had to comment on the 5 sites that we chose.

Craft: Search through the blogs and use the capabilities of blogger to add our comments to their pages and link it to our own page.

Composition: The links our available on my blog as well as the comments I left on the people's blogs whose I chose as the best in some aspect.

Concept: Pick the best of the class in 5 different categories.

Week 14

To view my website click here

Week 13

Assignment: Create a webpage using iweb. It needs to consist of two pages, one page about oursleves and the other about the class.

Craft: First I selected a template and then I added my own information and images to make the webpage unique. I did so by rearranging the page, playing with the fonts and colors on the page. I also hyperlinked my blog to the page about the class. I exported my comic into the webpage and added a youtube video.

Compostion: I tried to control the viewers eye by making the photos pop out on the page and be the main focus. Another thing I did was create a similar color pattern, using red in the images and as a background for the fonts. One thing I need to change is so the different pages have a similar look so the viewer realizes it is the same webpage when flipping through the pages.

Concept: The webpage is supposed to give people an insight into the class and what we have created along with information about ourselves. We want our webpage to be unique and say something about ourselves.

Week 12

Assignment: Look at the critique that our classmates gave us on the back of our comic and fix it for the final critique.

Craft: For the final comic I had to make the layout clearer as to the order that the frames went in. I eliminated some of the issue by reducing the number of images per page. I also overlapped some of the slides with the one that comes first on top of the ones that followed.

Composition: By making different slides lie on top of other slides they draw the viewers eye first. Other than that I didn't change much of the composition.

Concept: To make my concept clearer I added a slide of the dad talking to the son telling him that he forgot the ring at home. This explains how the son knows and makes some of the other images make more sense. The rising action of the story involves that ring. The whole story is about love. That's why I choose those two pictures. I love that picture of my mom and dad. The fact that they got dressed up to take these pictures for me shows me that they love me.

Week 11

Assignment: Take the pictures that we created for the comic and place them into comic life. using comic life we were able to add talking bubbles, thought bubbles, and other words or narroration to improve our story.

Craft: Using comic life first we selected a template and dragged the pictures in chronological order into the boxes. Then using the program we were able to add a title, words, thought bubbles, and other things to improve our story and make it look more like a comic. We could add details by changing the color of the background and all of the words that we added. We could also pick the size and shape of the boxes and everything we added. By double clicking on the picture we could adjust the size to focus the viewers eyes. We would also drag the corners of the boxes to change the shape. For the frame I need to add I have to combine the two pictures to show that the dad figured out he forgot the ring. I need to replace the money with a different ring box. I like this picture because it shows his shocked face.

Compostition: I enlarged some of the pictures to cut out some of the background and focus in on some of the details. I could also shape the boxes to draw attention to certain aspects of my pictures. By adding the white quote bubbles or thought bubbles it drew the viewers eyes to them. I need to change the layout so that it is clear to the eye as to which frame comes next. Right now the order of the frames might be confusing to the reader.

Concept: The story is about a boy who wants to get married so he calls his dad to bring him a ring. However, the dad forgets the ring at home so the boy ends up buying a ring-pop and in the end everything works out. I need to add a picture showing that the mom called the dad telling him he forgot it or an encounter between the son and the dad where he realizes he doesn't have it. Right now there is a gap in the story and it is unclear as to how the boy knew that his dad forgot the ring.

Week 10

Assignment: Color the story with a 2-3 color scheme. The story should be 9-12 pictures that portray a story. The next step is to make it into comic book form.

Craft: Using photoshop I desaturated the color from the original photo and set-up a filter. I used multiply to get rid of the white tones and accentuate the black ones. The next step was to flatten the image and unlock the background layer. Then I added a layer for the background color which I picked the color and used the paint bucket. Then I added a different layer to add the color that I would paint the objects I wanted to pop out on the page. I had to use different shades within the color scheme that I choose.

Composition: To help focus the viewer's eyes I made the character remain the same color throughout the comic with the exception of the last slide when the characters merge their lives together they become the same color. The bright colors against the dark background make certain objects jump off the page and draw the attention to specific details in the picture that are important to the story. One thing that I can do is add the use of white to draw attention the the dialogue and thought bubbles that need to be added.

Concept: I need to change the traveling picture where the dad forgets the bag so that it is clear that he and his wife are in different locations. I can do this by adding a background to the picture and to clarify I can add dialogue to previous slides to help get the message across. The picture that I added will need to be the background to show the dad is traveling in his picture.

Week 9

Assignment: Print 10-12 full page photos for the story. If necessary mash-up photos so that the photos portray the message wanted to get across to the viewer. Together the photos should tell a story.

Craft: I used photoshop to combine the pictures of my parents with the pictures of my friends. I had to crop the photos and add thought bubbles to some of the photos and I'll have to add talking bubbles as well so that the story remains clear. I was also able to use photoshop to create pictures that I didn't have access to taking in real life. The photo of the boarding pass I'm going to use to show traveling instead of what I used now. I have to change the name on the ticket.

Composition: I need to work on the composition of some of my photos so that the viewer is able to comprhend the story. Some of the pictures have a small detail that if missed the concept of the story is also missed. I will have to work on drawing the viewer's attention to those details. I need to draw attention to the fact that he picked up the wrong bag. I will do this by showing the mom with the right bag at the house containing the ring.

Concept: The concept of my story changed slightly after I took the pictures. Instead of ordering a ring from the same man that his father got a ring from I'm going to have the main character get the ring from his dad. I think that this has more meaning and makes more sense that his dad would travel to go give his son the ring.

Special Edition-Lipstick and Dynamite

Today we had the opportunity to view a short film about women's professional wrestling. Before viewing the film I had never heard of this event in history. The film was very entertaining and very informative. the women who were interviewed were very funny as they shared their experiences with us. After listening to the filmmaker learned that Mullah was the hardst to get to participate but one of the most important. Only after the filmmaker "threatened" her by saying it was her one chance to justify her actions since all of the others would be talking about her anyway did she agree to do it.

Women's professional wrestling arroused viewers in the early 50's. The women were used at first as special attractions to draw in a crowd however they soon became the main event. At first they would only do this about 3-4 times a year because there weren't that many of them. Yet somehow the men still ended up profitting from them. One important person to the sport was Billy Wolfe. He promoted it and took 50% of the girls income. When one of the girl's father died she said she wanted to go home and he replied, what you going for? to hold his hand.

Mullah then began training her own girls. One girl who came to her was a midget named Katie. Mullah in a way took Katie in. Katie quit smoking just so that she could call Mullah, Ma. Wolfe did a similar thing taking in a girl who he adopted, her name was Janet. Janet however died in the ring.

The interesting thing about this film is the way that the wrestler's interacted with each other. All of them came to the premiere and they still hated each other. Unfortunately since the film both Mullah and Penny Banner have passed away. This film is a great way to give these women a chance ot be recognized. For them wrestling was practical. It was a way they could get out of the house and make an income on their own. Many of the women commented on how today wrestling is fake and degrading what they did only 50 years ago.

The film took almost 4 years to make. There was a lot of research and hardwork that needed to go into the making of this film. The other struggle that came across during the making of this film was getting WWE to allow some of the footage to be released and showed in the film. After much compromising the message was able to be delivered.

These women went through a lot. They were unproclaimed feminist of their time. Together they brought the sprot to a new level as they faced the challenges of being the first to do many of the things. Although very controversial they continued on. What was most amazing was seeing them re-enter the ring when they were in their 80's. These truly are remarkable women.

Week 8

Assignment: Sketch the story that we created in a storyboard format which is 9-12 boxes. Then we had to take photos that illustrate the story.

Craft: I went to a restaurant to take photos of the engagement between my main characters. I took photos of the other character doing the actions I wanted however he isn't in the right setting so I will need to mash-up some of the photos so that I am able to convey the storyline the way that I had imagined. Taking the pictures I realized that I may have to adjust my story slightly but the overall meaning will be the same. I also took pictures of my parents as the thought bubble. I tried to take it against a blank canvas so that they would be easy to cut out.

Composition: I am going to change my story so that the focus is brought to the ring in the beginnnig scenes and then the ring-pop at the end. I also want to focus on the faces so that the excitement and shear joy can be seen even without an extraordinary ring. I want the woman to show an overwhelming amount of love. I need the man's love to grow when he is with the love of his life. At first he cared about not getting the most wonderful ring but when he see's her he realizes none of it matters. I need to somehow show that he thought of the first time they met when he bought the ring-pop.

Concept: The story is all about love. Many people think that extravagant things make people happy which may be true. However, the real joy in life is being with the people that you love. It's the small things that count in life. Regarding gifts, it really is the thought that counts.

Week 7

Assignment:  Write a story that has one person traveling, one person waiting, and one of the people has a package for the other one.

Concept: 

Person Traveling:  Man who is delivering rings

Person Waiting:  Bill is waiting for the man to bring rings to propose to his girlfriend

Package:  It was supposed to be rings but the man grabbed the wrong suitcase and ended up with someone's clothes by mistake

 

A man, Bill, wanted to order an engagement ring from the same man that his father got his mom's wedding ring.  Bill gets a hold of the man and the man offers to fly in with a selection of rings for Bill.  Bill is a rather wealthy man and agrees to this proposal.  Bill goes to the airport to wait for the man with the rings.  Bill has already prepared all the other accommodations for the proposal to his girlfriend tonight.  They are to meet at the restaurant where the waiter will bring out the ring on the dessert tray after they eat their meal.  The man flying in with the rings flight was delayed and arrives only an hour before Bill was supposed to be at the restaurant.  The man carrying the rings was in a frenzy at the airport and happened to grab the wrong suitcase as he boarded the plane.  He was unaware of this until he opened it to show Bill the rings.  When the man opened the suitcase both men were very upset, Bill didn't have a ring and the other man lost a lot of very special jewelry.  With no time to spare Bill stops and picks up a ring-pop from the store and gives it to the waiter at the restaurant only seconds before his girlfriend arrives.  After dinner the waiter brings out the ring-pop and the girl is overjoyed when Bill proposes shouting "yes" and kissing him.  "Oh, you remembered I was eating a ring-pop the first time we met."  The man smiled and whispered "yes" in the woman's ear.  Bill could not have planned a more romantic proposal.  After Bill offered the man who came a large sum of money to make up for some of what he had lost on his trip.  Bill thanked him endlessly saying how he couldn't be happier that he grabbed the wrong suitcase.

Week 6

Assignment: Mash-up photos that I shot to create a message for my viewers

Craft: I used photoshop to cut photos out of one picture and paste them into a different one. I combined 4 different photos together. To accurately cut out the photos I hide the background layer and fused the eraser along with the marquee tool. After cutting the photos I used the scale to make the photos look realistc in the new background. Next I used paint to make one of the layers appear as if it were behind the other. Finally I used the brightness/contrast along with hue/saturation to match the colors of the photos because they were taken in different light.

Compostion: If I were to change one thing about my photo I would change the composition because most of the action is taking place in the lower part of my photo and there is a lot of extra background that is wasted space. To change this I will either add more people playing games to the upper region or somehow crop that area and bring the people playing games tighter together to control my viewer's eye more. This is one of the photos I might add to my final mash-up because I think another recreational game will bring the focus off athletics more because the 3 of the 4 pictures are of athletics.

Concept: My combination of photos is a tribute to games. Games are awesome regardless of who is playing or what the game is. Everyone should play games because games are fun.

Week 5

Assignment: Go out and take 25 photos to use for a mash-up.

Craft: I will use photoshop to combine a collection of pictures. The tools that I will be using are a combination of different marquees, blur, paintbrush, along with adjusting the scale, distorting the photo, changing the hue/saturation, brightness/contrast and many other things to help blend the two photos together without being able to see two seperate photos but instead one new photo.

Compostion: Right now I am thinking of adding together many different photos. I want the photo's to show the different qualities that athletes posses. I was thinking of somehow combining pictures of people lifting, running, practicing, studying, supporting eachother, and any other things that could be said about our athletic program here.

Concept: Using a combination of many pictures I want to make a tribute to athletes and inparticular at Saint xavier university. I want to show the hardwork and dedication that so many indivuals put in to become their best.

Week 4

Assignment: This week we had to come up with the final draft of our mash-up which was a combination from a lincoln era photo and a current photo. We had to edit the image that we created last week to stronger portray the message that we wanted to get across along with cleaning up the photoshop work.

Craft: Using Photoshop I shanged the shirt that I had Lincoln wearing. To do this I used the paint brush to make the shirt represent the school colors of U of I. Then I added the logo on the shirt to cover the design that had been there previously. I also colored the towels blue and orange to add to this theme of supporting the school. after coloring the towels I added a gradient to the towels to cover up some of the differences in color. I also added a logo to the hamper. Finally I used paint and blur to fix the color of the face along with reduce the wrinkles on Lincoln's old face to match his young body.

Compostion: The first thing that the eye is drawn to now is the t-shirt because the color and logo make it stand out in the white and black photo. The next thing that my eye moves to is Lincoln's face because it looks weird next to the long hair. Third an dfourth the eyes look at the other towels and the blackhawk logo. I made the blackhawk logo smaller so that it would not draw attention away from Lincoln's face or the Illinois logo which I wanted to be a bigger focus. The outer edges of the picture is glanced at but is not as relevant as the large centered person which is clearly the focus of the image.

Concept: I put Lincoln in an Illinois t-shirt because I found it likely that he would show pride in his state school. I also colored the towels orange and blue to show off that school spirit even more. I went with the logo of the chief and the team blackhawks because I found it almost ironic because Lincoln fought against and killed many Native Americans and fought in the Black Hawk War of 1832. At the same time this irony is occuring I also put Lincoln in the place of an average college student doing laundry. Lincoln appears to be laid back with the long hair but at the same time organized by seperating his laundry. I could see Lincoln having lots of school spirit especially for an Illinois school. I like this picture because of the satirical side.

Week 3

Assignment: Mash-up: Select a photo from the Lincoln era and the contemporary pictures that I wanted to put together to create a message.

Craft: I selected a photo from the recent pictures first and then found one of lincoln where his head matched up as close as possible. Using photoshop I opened both pictures and selected the area from both that I wanted to use. Using the marquee tool I cut around the head of Lincoln and placed it over the head in my contemporary picture. Then I used tools such as transformation to adjust/fix the scale, rotation, skew/distort. I also adjusted the brightness/contrast of the image along with the hue/saturation to make the colored photo match the black and white from lincoln's photo. I had to go back and to some of the layers to make the images blend together the best I could. I also used the blur tool and eraser to fix the images.

Composition: I changed the photos form the ones I choose previously because I wanted to but lincoln's face on a person. The message I wanted to send by mixing these two photos together was that if Lincoln was in our time he would have been a normal college student. I saw him as being more of the type to stay in study and do his chores. Hence the picture of him doing laundry. I see him as being organized and seperating his clothes. The long hair makes him seem almost like a hippie once again in the wrong time period. Before Lincoln might have been seen as ahead of his time now perhaps he is slightly behind.

Concpet: I want to change the picture by adding meaning to some of the objects in the picture. For example I want to make the shirt have something to do with Illinois because I believe that is where he would have went to school. I also would want to somehow make the school colors orange and blue stand out in that photo. Another thing I need to fix is the body is too young for the face and the coloring is slightly off. I could also make his shirt representative of the hippie idea or anything to add meaning.

Week 2

Assignment: Find 25 old photos of Lincoln and take 25 contemporary photos

Craft: To find the photos of Lincoln I went online and searched google images, went on wikipedia, and searched websites about Lincoln. When looking for the images it was important to look at the extra large images with higher quality and to find various shots of Lincoln. I also found other images pertaining to Lincoln such as photos from the civil war era. Then I used my digital camera to take 25 new photos. I took pictures in my dorm and around the campus. Then I had to upload the photos and using lightroom I was able to print them on one page.

Composition: The two photos I choose as the best are the top row of photos. The first is of the bags set my roommates dad made for us. It says Saint Xavier University with a picture of a volleyball on it and a bean bag going into the hole. I chose this photo because I think that bag set is amazing. It pretty much sums up college for me. My favorite picture of Lincoln looks like he spiked his hair. In most of the pictures Lincoln looks very similar because they were taken all around the same time. In this picture I thought he looked different.

Concept: I chose a classic profile picture of Abe Lincoln and a clock as the two photos I would mix together. By mixing these two photos I would want the message to be about time and how much things can change over time and yet be so much the same. The clock itself is contemproary compared to the photo of Lincoln. This picture of Lincoln looks exactly like a head shot would look today. I also liked that he has a beard in this picture. The clock in the picture is clearly not moving, almost as if it were stuck in time like all pictures are.

Week 1

Assignment: Set up Blog

Craft: Go on the blogger webiste to try to create an account only to get rejected from the website. After a few failed attempts I closed the browser and tryed again. Successful. Now all I had to do was catch up to the rest of the class. Not a problem with a little help from my neighbor.
Composition: Why this photo? Why this template? To answer the second question first, because simply I find it an easier question to answer, I picked the template primarily because of the colors. If someone were to ask me my favorite color I would pick the cooler colors such as green, blue and purple. Not to mention it reminded me of my room because of the polka dots. As for the picture I wanted to include one of my favorite things. The one thing I've loved my whole life is volleyball. I think it has helped to define me as a person. It taught me many qualities that I find important. This picture was taken on the bus to one of our games in high school.

Concept: If you had a soap box what would you yell to the world? If I had to choose one thing to yell to the world I would say be fearless. Fear is a wasted emotion that only prevents us from accomplishing all that we are capable of. Fear makes people hold back and miss out on so many wonderful things. So many of the things people worry about never happen. Stop waiting for the worst and live life.