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Final Summarization

My Final Project really brought my whole semester of ds106 together. I felt it really completed my whole blog/meaning of the semester. I frequently worked with my favorite movie, Finding Nemo. I would use pieces of the movie in random assignments. In my final project I tell the whole complete story and add a bit of a modern twist. I used web, visual/design, and audio in my assignment. I took different pieces and weaved the story together in the final post.

I still agree with my ideas of digital storytelling. I started my idea of what digital storytelling is by saying “To add digital to storytelling creates a whole new world”. I still believe that is true and I believe that I accomplished that through this class. I created new things from old things, remixed, created new audio, and new visual things. I still believe that digital opens up a whole new world to the idea of general storytelling. They can be accessed by so many people. I’ve had friends randomly come across one of my projects on youtube. It’s truly amazing what adding digital does to the idea of storytelling.

The idea of my new assignments and daily creates were to come up with a simple idea that I would have chosen if I was a new ds106 student. For my tutorials I wanted to do something helpful. I know when I was doing video assignments a big thing was a bit of trouble having to use WMM. So I did one tutorial on how to convert videos and general tips on WMM.

When deciding what went into my best work category I chose assignments that I had a good feeling about. I remember feeling really accomplished and proud when I finished these. And trust me, that was definitely rare. My all time favorite assignment was Howling for the Lady and the Tramp. I just felt like this assignment turned out really well. My Finding Nemo in Silence was probably my second favorite.

Basically just do you work is my advice. It’s truly that simple.

I’m honestly just glad this semester is over. It was definitely a long one.

Advice

For future students one of the main things is to do your work! Since my favorite party of the class was visual/design I choose to do this. I chose a fortune cookie because they are supposed to give advice and promising things. Basically just follow the weekly assignments perfectly. Make sure you correctly follow how to tag posts, link, and embed properly to really be successful. I feel most people take this class for an “easy A” and it definitely can be if you just DO THE WORK!!!

The Big Finale

The end is near for this class. For my final project I chose to continue with the Finding Nemo theme I had been using on other projects throughout the class. My ideas came together perfectly and I even added a few extras in.

When Marlin saw Nemo being taken, he panicked. He chased after the boat like a mad man to get his son back. However, he did realize that chasing Nemo around the ocean was in fact like looking for a needle in a hay stack. He decided that he was going to need help if he was ever to see his son again. A milk carton ad would be a good way to get Nemo’s face out in the ocean.

He also decided the fastest way to get Nemo’s face out there while he continued looking was to use the world wide web. He made a Craigslist ad in the lost and found section to see if anyone could recognize him.

http://p.webremixes.org/mfcvtmry

What Marlin didn’t know about the world wide web was that his son had a secret twitter account. However, I’m not sure even Nemo knew exactly where he was.

https://twitter.com/AFishNamedNeemo

With the help of many friends Nemo was eventually returned to his father and home. However, the one fish Marlin couldn’t have done it without was Nemo. Because of the Craigslist ad and Milk Carton ad Nemo’s story traveled all across the oceans and is very well known. Dory’s work also made her quite the hero. She was honored by being put on the Australian postage stamp. They decided that she was so caring and courageous that it was only appropriate to do this.

Because of Nemo’s famous return to his father, he had to get a PR to handle all of the publicity he was getting. She was gracious enough to make a “thank you” speech to all whom helped Nemo and Marlin be reunited while Nemo was enjoying school.

THANK YOU SPEECH

Tutorial: Makeup Your pet

The easiest way (I’ve found) is to use pixlr. It has a lot more options and effects than paint.

1. When you go to pixlr.com you open Pixlr Editor (advanced). It then gives you a few options to upload from your computer, create new, etc… You want to choose the open image from your computer.

2. Once you have your pet’s picture opened you can then start editing.

3. The toolbar will be your best friend during this assignment. Be very familiar with it. I’ve circled a few of the tools that I used the most.

4. The object of the assignment is to put makeup on your pet. So I suggest starting off with the basics: eye shadow, eye line, lipstick.

5. For the eye shadow I brought down the opacity so it really looks real. Once you click on the brush button on the tool bar the opacity bar will be brought up at the top.

6. Once you choose your color for the eye shadow sweep it across the top of the eyes.

7. The next step would be eye liner. Just take the brush again and change the color to your color of choice and outline the eyes. You might need to change the size of the brush (see above picture) and the opacity back to 100%. And to have a bit of fun adding big eyelashes would be cute!

8. The lipstick is a bit more difficult to make look natural on a dog. Choose your color and then carefully paint where lips should be.

9. To add some color to the cheeks bring the opacity back down and sweep the color of your choice across the cheek bones.

Above are the basics for the assignment. But below are some fun things you could add!

hat, bow, hair, change the background, bow-tie, jewelry, tie, etc…

Playing around with the effects (filter tab at top) can also add cool effects.

Adding to ds106: Daily Create

It’s getting close to the Holidays, but I feel as if I have been so bogged down with work lately I haven’t had the time to appreciate them. So I decided to dedicate a daily create to it. It’s simple: Just take a picture of something that reminds you of the Holidays. It can be any Holiday you choose! You can do Halloween, Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, or any other holiday.

I took a snapshot of me submitting my daily create:

And since it is close to Christmas our apartment is decorated so I chose to do a picture of one of our many Christmas trees scattered throughout:

Tutorial: Watching movies with the stereo on

This assignment is very basic, but there are some key parts. I will be using Windows Movie Maker for this assignment so there are some extra steps.

Step 1: Choose a video and audio that could work well together (they have the same theme etc..)

Step 2: Find this video using youtube

Step 3: Download the video to your desktop. (I used keepvid in internet explorer because you have to have the specific java plug-in)

Step 4: Download your audio (I used youtube and then found a youtube-mp3 converter)

Step 5: This is where I had to do some specific things for Windows Movie Maker. For some reason it won’t upload the mp4 files. They need to be converted to a .wmv file. You can download Real Player here. It’s free and hasn’t harmed my computer in any way.

Step 6: You can now open your video into Real Player (left click on the mp4 file on your desktop and click “open with” and scroll across to Real Player)

Step 7: (You can cut your video here if you would like, but I recommend waiting to do this later in the assignment so you can get a better match with your audio.) Once your video starts playing in Real Player you can scroll across the movie and in the bottom right there should be a button that says “convert”. Click this

Step 8: It will come up with a screen that looks like the below picture. And you just hit start. Real Player does the rest…

Step 8: You can then add your video into Windows Movie Maker using the import media button at the top of the tool bar. At this time you should also add your audio using this same button.

Step 9: You can then drag your audio and video to the timeline at the bottom of the screen.

Step 10: This is where you are kind of on your own. You need to try and make your video and audio mush together. They should flow with one another. You can easily trim the audio by the arrow at the end of the music bar on the timeline. You can do the same for the video in the video section of the time line.

Extras:

1. Adding effects make the video unique. Playing around with these can greatly enhance your video. You can find these on the toolbar on the left of the screen.

2. The tool bar on the left is also where you can find captions and titles. You can add words to the video using these.

3. If you need to change the tone, pitch, speed, etc. of your audio you will need to use audacity and then re-import this. This may be a vital step in making the two medias come together.

4. Below is a picture of the whole windows movie maker. I have numbered some important tools for you.

Red= Toolbar

1= effects, 2= Titles, 3= Publish (do this when you are done with the full movie)

Green= Timeline

1= Drag your video here, 2= Drag your audio here

Blue= Where you can watch your video. This is also where you can watch effects you want to sample

My example for this assignment is here. Enjoy and be creative!

New Assignment: Pictures into Words

For this new assignment the objective is to take pictures of objects in your surroundings that could possibly look like letters and form words with them. Try not to use letters in your surroundings, but I understand that some letters are hard to get!

New Assignment Idea: Makeup your pet!

I knew I wanted my assignment idea to involve some sort of animal. I feel there need to be more animal related assignments for ds106. I came up with the idea of “Makeup your pet”.

It involves taking a picture of your pet and painting “makeup” on him/her. I do not necessarily recommend actually putting makeup on your pet, as this can be harmful/a bit cruel to your pet. The idea of the assignment is to use your creativity and makeup your pet in any way you want!

I chose my dog Lilo and decided to use pixlr to paint her up! I added on eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara and eyelashes, blush, lipstick and even a little bow!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Summarization #13 & #14

Mashup week was actually one of the simpler weeks for me. I expected it to be difficult since this involved using more than one media and mixing them together. However, these assignments didn’t take me very long to do and I feel I got very good results. When I first looked at the week 13 and 14 assignment page I was very overwhelmed and confused. I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into for this week. But, this could have been due to the anticipation of Thanksgiving Break. I decided to take a chance and not do any of this work until after break (something I have never done in this class). It turned out fine! This was a good week to do that due to the simpleness of assignments.

I started the week with the Remix this blog assignment. I needed to know what I was heading into for the week. The references and examples explaining remix and the problems you might face with remixing really set the mood for the week.

I then started with the Mashup Assignments. I decided to use the recycled media in the Recycle the media assignment. I explain how I used the different media in my blog post about it. This assignment was 3 stars.

I then skipped around a bit and decided to head into remixing an assignment. I went through a few remixes until I got one that I thought would be fun! I remixed a game cover into a boring powerpoint presentation.

I then finished up the week finishing up my mashup assignments with What color is your world? (2 stars) and the Consumer Mashup (2 stars).

Consumer Mashup

For the assignment Consumer Mashup I actually had a hard time thinking of something I buy a lot at one specific place. In fact, I couldn’t think of any examples for me. However,one of my friends used to always buy candy at this random CITGO. She would rarely buy candy from any other place. I decided to use her as an inspiration and and do CANDYGO.

This assignment was fairly simple. I found a CITGO logo and uploaded it onto a powerpoint presentation (not sure why I used this, just seemed like a simple way to manipulate the picture). I then added a text box and tried to find the text that matched the original logo the best. I came up with aharoni. I then fixed the color and put a white box over the original logo and added my new text.

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