Category Archives: Assignments

An Audience of One

storytelling, Writing Assignments


Photo Credit-Jim Richardson

I just visited a website of an unnamed person doing the DS106 digital storytelling course and I experienced a classic error that my own students tend to do when I ask them to publish school work in a blog format. That person wrote for an audience of one – the teacher. There was a generic reference to the chapter, but no indication of what the text might have been. So a random visitor from the Internet – me, has no context for what I am reading and no way to learn more about it myself.

Have you ever stumbled into a conversation that really wasn’t meant for you? Awkward, isn’t it? That is what these sort of posts do to the reader. How much better would it be to envision a broader possible audience and write to that audience? After all, whenever you publish anything to the web, indeed you do have a very broad potential audience, don’t you?

I think students everywhere would do well to adopt this practice in all of their classes, and their writing would immediately improve. Stop writing for an audience of one – the teacher, and start writing for a broader audience. What might your grandmother want to know about this topic? A long-lost friend? A random stranger on the street? How would having a larger audience upon whom you would like to make a good impression affect the tone and style of what you write?

If you will simply write for this larger audience in mind, and stop writing what you think your teacher might wish to hear, everyone involved will appreciate it, including your teacher, because you will be doing better writing.

 

 

Happy 50th Star Trek!

Video Assignments

Fifty years ago, one of the best television shows ever made was first aired – Star Trek! We love Star Trek at my house. A few years ago I made this video of myself and I thought it appropriate for today.

But then I saw this tweet:

So we made this video in our Digital Media class. Sulu, get those shields up!

Thanks to Paul Bond for sharing the idea with us and the commentary. http://blog.raptnrent.me/2016/09/08/awesome-moments-of-spontaneous-creativity/

PS I made a vector of Spock in celebration of Star Trek 50 too!

Spock Vector Drawing

What A Crappy Font Will Do

Visual Assignments, ,

John Deere Logo

This is a DS106 visual assignment that challenges us to remix an existing corporate logo with a bad font (or an improved font). At 4 stars, I think the difficulty rating is somewhat inflated. Granted, I’ve been doing this kind of work for a while, but this assignment only took me 5 minutes to complete. It is taking me longer to create and publish a post about it.

My process used was simple. I did a Google image search for the “John Deere Logo.” Then I downloaded the image and placed it into Adobe Illustrator. I used a clipping mask to remove the old John Deere Text. Then I used the text tool to reset the type in the over-used Papyrus font. I then saved the image as a PNG graphic and uploaded to this website. Boom- done! My rating for the assignment difficulty was a 1 star. For a beginner with no graphic-making experience, it might take a little longer, but certainly no more than 2 or 2.5 stars.

So to take it up a notch, I followed Paul Bond’s lead and put the Papyrus font onto a John Deer product.

This took more time than the original assignment. I had to find a tractor using Google once again. Then I used the clone tool of Photoshop to remove the original John Deer lettering. I tried using Photoshop to add the lettering back in, but I wasn’t pleased with how it turned out, so I saved the edited photo as a JPG and brought it back into Illustrator, where I used the text tool to set the type. I then saved the photo as a web ready JPG image. Here is the result:

John Deere Tractor

Kinetic Typography

Assignments, Design Assignments, ,

I am working with Adobe After Effects in the motion graphics class. One of the popular uses of this software I’ve seen in putting type into motion – sometimes known as ‘kinetic typography.’ This week I’m looking at examples of this kind of work. I’m using this post to collect the examples so I can refer back to them. Maybe someone else can find them useful as well.

I found a post of 34 ‘Must See’ examples of kinetic typography, so I watched them all. I’m sharing some with comments below:

The Hush Sound – Lion’s Roar by Mig Reyes

We watched this one in class, and it is pretty flawless. The only thing I see that could improve it is doing the entire song. I seem to see a flickering effect, that simulates what you would sometimes see if you watched a movie through a film projector. I also like how things seem to zoom in and out. Everything is not on a 2-D plane, things appear to get closer and farther away as well.

Shine A Light by Bait

This one was amazing. One there are lots of textures and vibrant colors. I really like the simulated 3D effect. There is something like confetti floating around a rotating pyramid in the background. That would take a lot of work to create in AfterEffects. I wonder if some other form of 3D software was used instead?

You Are Not So Smart

This is a great book, and a great piece of kinetic typography. I really like how certain words are emphasized by using a different font or style of type. I also liked how words appear horizontally, but sometimes rotate for emphasis.

Bob


This one strikes me as more of an animation than what we would consider ‘kinetic typeography’ but I include it nevertheless.

Shop Vac

 

 
This one is really fun. Probably my favorite so far! We lead off on a simulated highway scene, with the text moving down the road in perspective. I’m blown away by the use of textures. Everything fits. For example, when the bathroom is mentioned, we see a fuzzy bathroom rug or towel background. I also liked how certain corporate logo motifs were used. The words appear, popping open like bubbles or something. Lots of graphics. Yes, this is my favorite so far.

Karloff

 

Conan

 

This one makes me seasick. And I’m an ex-sailor. Who never got seasick.

Make It Better

 

I like the sound effects in this one. I wonder if I can somehow use sound effects like this in the piece I am planning?

Back to the Future

 

I like this one mainly for its simplicity.

Wouldn’t it be Nice

 

This one uses a lot of cute graphical elements in the classic Beach Boys song.

Ira Glass – Storytelling

I liked Ira’s message more than the typography on this one. While I appreciate simplicity, this one was too simple. I don’t think the type really added anything to the message.

Ok, I think that is enough for now. Now I need to move on to thinking about my own piece I’m planning. More on that soon…

Layer Tennis Part 2

Assignments, Design Assignments,

A second layer tennis match happened while @DangerRanger11b and I were going at it on the other court.  This one was between @a_merrymary and @fenderbendr1994. @a_merrymary served this picture:

and @fenderbendr1994 returned with this:

then @a_merrymary quickly slammed this one back:

which was responded to with this:

Following a new line of thought was @a_merrymary

to which @fenderbendr1994 dinked this:

and @a_merrymary slammed home this surprise ending:

Well played, you two!

Bathroom On The Right

Assignments, Audio Assignments, , , ,

When I was a kid, most of the music we listened to came to us from the radio. There was no internet and no album jackets with song lyrics, we just relied completely on our ears. When I got older and started buying records and tapes, I was finally able read the words to the songs I listened to. Now, with the internet, almost any song’s lyrics are just a Google search away.

One thing that sometimes happened to me when I listened to music is that I would mis-hear (and mis-sing along with) favorite songs. Evidently I am not the only one this has happened to, because there is a website called Kiss This Guy. Kiss This Guy is named after a famous mis-heard lyric from the Jimi Hendrix song. The actual lyric is ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky, but plenty of people heard ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.

So, without further adieu, here is my favorite misheard lyric: There’s a Bathroom on the Right, by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Process:

First, I submitted this assignment to the DS106 Assignment Bank. Then, I recorded the song Bad Moon Rising off of an old CCR cassette tape into Audacity. I edited the song down to just include the intro and the refrain. I recorded my daughter & I singing the misheard lyrics, “there’s a bathroom on the right.” Then we edited the two tracks together. I saved to an MP3 and published the piece on Soundcloud.

Napoleon Gifs

Assignments, Video Assignments,

Pull me to town Tina you fat lard

Tonight, I did the Say It Like Peanut Butter assignment on DS106. I used to make a lot of animated gifs, but have gotten away from the practice. But apparently, ,the tools have gotten a lot better. I used Photoshop CS6 to do mine. I actually have Photoshop CS5 and CC on my Macbook, but either of these gave me an error saying that video import was not supported on Mac. For some reason, the CS6 version was happy to import a video clip.

For my 2 gifs, I chose scenes from Napoleon Dynamite. My kids & I love this movie, but my wife, and plenty of other people just don’t “get” it. To me, it is a lot like a non-sensical Monty Python film, but come to think of it, my wife doesn’t care for those either. It takes a special brand of humor, I think.

As for my process, since it’s been a while, I googled for an animated gif tutorial and found this one that told me what I needed to know.

*** Edit – Ok, I looked at this and decided I could tell you a bit more about the process I used. I was in a hurry and wanted to get this post made, but I’ll tell you more here.

I used Handbrake to rip the movie DVD. Handbrake is hands-down the best tool I’ve used to make a video file from a DVD. It’s free, and simple to use. It works on Mac, Windows and Linux.

Once I got the entire film into a digital file, I brought it into my favorite editor for quick video projects, Camtasia. It is $179 with an education discount, but really powerful andwell worth it if you make a lot of video projects. It is best known for screen capture, but also has a really nice, simple-to-use editor. If I needed to, I could have skipped the Handbrake step and just recorded the scenes I wanted directly from the DVD in Camtasia.

But I already had the fully ripped film so I brought it into Camtasia, and edited it down to the scenes I wanted to use. I rendered to a new file a smaller video that had only these scenes. Once I had this digital file, I imported it into Photoshop using the “import as layers” command. After it was in Photoshop, under the “Window” menu, I selected “Timeline” so the video frames were visible. From there, I deleted any frames I didn’t want, and used “File -> Save For Web” to save the project as an animated GIF.

A Letter From Out of the Blue

Assignments, Writing Assignments, ,

letter2015

Recently, my family and I were visiting the Eisenhower Center in Abilene, KS for a quick “staycation” not far from home. My daughter noticed a basket full of little American flags with notes intended for veterans of the US armed services. I picked one out for you, Dad, she said. So I took it home with me.

The note came from elderly woman from California, and I received it here in Kansas. My note reads: “My oldest brother did not come home after WW2. He is always in my heart as you all are.”

Since her full name was on the note, and a hometown, I was able to do a little digital detective work and find a street address. I sat down and wrote the woman a thank you letter and dropped it in the mail. I’m not exactly sure when was the last time I mailed a hand-written letter, but it has been some time. About a week later, I was pleased to receive a reply in the mail from her. What a treat it is to receive mail that is something besides bills or advertisements!

So this is my assignment for you. Sit down and write out a letter longhand to someone who will appreciate it.Be sure to get some evidence of your “snail mail” exchange, either by photographing your letter, or even better still, the reply you got back. Extra internet points if you do like I did and write it to someone whom you do not know, but still feel a common connection with.