Graphic Novel Librarian’s New Logo – Daily Create Week 16

Daily Create #tdc1581 challenged users to use online text logo design tool MarkMaker to create a personal logo. I have been so engaged in the development of my digital ego – the graphic novel librarian – that I thought it would be cool to have a loge. Playing with the MarkMarker tool was fun – it is interesting to choose some interesting designs and have the tool produce new options based off your choices. I found many elements that worked for me that I wanted to incorporate into the final design of the G N Librarian logo and hundreds of other elements that were cool but did not work for me. That is the strength of this tool the number of elements make simple to choose a randomly generated but stylish logo. Where the tool became less user friendly was went I wanted to mix and match elements I had seen in a non-randomly generated way, I found that in the editing space specific elements were not labeled and finding specific styles of elements became guess work.

.

My Sandwich in a Movie – DS106 Visual Assignment week 14

I wanted to practice with some more photo editing and decided to take on an extra visual assignment to tryout Pixlr, which I have read is a powerful free and online photo editing tool. I was drawn to Visual Assignment 559: Creep on a Movie Scene, because I love Star Wars remixes. I decided to go in a little different direction and instead of inserting myself into the scene I added my sandwich, my awesome Death Sandwich! (The secret is using a Death Star waffle iron as a panini press)

To make my final image I need to learn how to do three actions with the Pixlr tool. First I wanted to color the sandwich to look more like the Death Star, I used the magic wand tool to select regions of specific colors and then was able to fill a new color of paint into those regions. I also learned how to make new layers of text so I could move it around independently. Finally, and most important I was able to remove the sandwich image from its background, in order to add it into the classic “That’s no moon” scene from Star Wars.

Triangle Rex – Daily Create week 12

I have a little cartoon I like to draw and his name is Rex Patrick. When I saw today’s daily create challenging us to create a drawing using Triangulart I knew I would have to try to make Rex. I like the simple nature of this program and it was fun to experiment. I wish there was a way to move groups of triangles around the canvas, because I started my picture to high up and I ran out of space to make his hair. Beyond being to squished on the canvas the hair was hard to render in the way I normally draw it. With more room I would have experienced with a more standard haircut.

The Great Train Advertisement – Daily Create Week 10

I am so excited for the new downtown to DIA train that is opening in Denver CO, on April 22nd. The Daily Create assessment tdc1530 ask to make a gif, with a caption, from the classic silent movie “The Great Train Robbery”, here is my response:

I had to make some difficult decisions for this gif. I had originally imagined that the gif would involve a short video of the train running down the track, with a caption sharing the opening date for the airport train. I decided to switch to the shot of the robbers jumping onto the train because of the great arm signal by the first bandit telling his compatriots to “come on”, which tied in nicely with an “all aboard” in the caption. I also had to choose if I wanted to lengthen the clip to include the train pulling away from the station, but the train takes five or six seconds to get moving and that created a lot of dead space in the gif and I decided to focus on the robbers getting on the train. I hope you like my piece and are excited about the new airport train as I am.

Oasis Farms – Find Refuge from the Food Desert – Daily Create week 9

This week I decided to tackle Daily Create #1522: Make a Sign For Your Randomly Generated Ranch Name. I think using name generators then having to create something form the name is an awesome idea, I could see doing this exact activity with my students and extending the activity to having the farm be a setting in a short story.

The name generator gave me Oasis Farms, which I was drawn too because it provides the perfect counter part to the term food desert – which describes a neighborhood with limited or no access to fresh produce or other non-packaged foods. I used familiar imagery form both an oasis and farm for the Oasis Farms sign. I wanted create a sign that not only invoked nostalgia of farm fresh foods but also the relief from suffering provided by an oasis.

Have You Seen This Stranger? – ds106 Design Assignment

I love The Big Lebowski and one question keeps drawing me back into the movie every time I see it is – What is The Stranger doing in L.A.? Is he on the run? Does he have family in town? Is this his vacation? But I never find a satisfying answer. The ds106 design assignment I chose gave me a chance to think about he people back home for The Stranger and to give them a hand in finding the lost cowboy. Design assignment 1888 asked to create a missing person poster and I made one for The Stranger

The process of making the poster was enjoyable. I did some research about Sam Eliot, the actor who played the stranger, to have actuate age (in 1998 the year The Big Lebowski came out), weight, and height. I also used a fake telephone number with an area code for Deadwood SD, because I wanted to connect with a real location that I view as having cowboy roots. This has been a fun activity and I am going to keep the template and let my students use it to make posters for characters from the books they are reading!

The Birth of Discow: The Man and Moovement – Daily Create week 8

I have been anticipating/dreading the creation of gifs as expand my experience in the creation of digital stories. I think gifs are great ways to express quick thoughts or stories but I also think the format seem imposing to create. I saw this gif daily create and thought it was a great opportunity to practice creating a gif before diving in on the ds106 gif assignment. I was surprised at how easy it was to create the gif. I used imgflip to make make the gif and all I had to do was upload images and then adjust settings. Imgflip provided a preview so I could see how I was adjusting the gif and could see the final product. I got images from freeimages, and was able to find almost everything I wanted for the gif. I originally envisioned Discow emerging from a magicians cloud but but could not find one, I then experimented with fireworks and color swirls, which I almost used a combination of both. Fortunately  I stumbled on the black and white hands when I searched ‘creation’, because they are so much creepier better. The only work I really had to do was use photo shop to crop the images so they were the same size and not distorted to fit together in the gif.

The Dark World of a Tech-Noir – ILT 5340 Digital Story Critique Week 7

*I have been reading and critiquing digital comics, for my Master level studies, in a continuing series to develop my exposure to and understanding of this New Literacy

Last week I reviewed Mark Waid’s talk at the 2013 O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, in his talk Waid discuses and presents some examples of the digital comics that he and his collaborators are sharing, FOR FREE, on the site Thrillbent.com . The examples from the talk were amazing and I have been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to critique a Thrillbent comic. To maintain consistency in my critiques of digital comics I will use the same evaluation traits as previous critiques:

• Story
• Flow, Organization, and Pacing (FOP)
• Media Application

These traits seem to me to be the most important factors in determining if a digital comic is, not only an engaging and worthwhile read, but also if the comic is truly a digital story or merely an analog comic book rendered in a digital space.  

The comic I chose for my critique this week is Pax Arena (link) – written by Mast with art by Geoffo. I was initially drawn to this comic because it fits my favorite niche comic genre, science fiction noir also known as tech-noir – movie buffs think Blade Runner. I thought if there was one comic on Thirllbent, and there are dozens, that could grab my attention it would be Pax Arena and this comic did not disappoint.

Story

The Pax Arena story revolves around a police investigator who takes the law into her own hands, when an innocent accountant is placed in a gladiatorial match on the Pax Arena satellite.  Pax Arena serves as a prison and provider of the most popular form of entertainment in this dystopian future – pitting inmates against each other in death matches and broadcasting the events back to earth; reality TV style. The establishment tries to sweep the accountant’s murder under the rug as a regrettable mistake but our hero, Agent Zoë, knows better and will not rest until guilty parties are made to pay. The story checks all the important boxes for a tech-noir. A dystopian future, gritty black and white art, a hero that is both futuristic and invokes old school sensibilities of the film noir detectives. Zoë takes no nonsense, will not let the guilty go unpunished and blackens the eyes (figuratively and literally) of any bureaucrats or yes men that stand in her way.  

FOP

I loved this story, I do think, however that the story run may have been shortened after the plot had already been developed, because of some idiosyncratic scenes that seemed dropped in to set up the action packed climax, these build up scenes seemed out of place and jarring in the lead up to the awesome conclusion. Overall, however, FOP in Pax Arena was great. The action starts off right away in the gladiatorial match on the satellite, and rarely lets off the gas for the rest of the, relatively short, eight chapter run of the story. The author and artist do a beautiful job of introducing rich characters and developing a scary future world, while keeping the viewer on the edge of the seat wanting to see what happens next.

Media Application

Thrillbent employs digital pages to showcase their comics. These pages are closer to a PowerPoint slides than a traditional paper page. Static images can be layered on top of each other to create the feelings of movement or depth.  Parts or panels on the page can disappear and appear in order to move the readers eyes to important images or text. Or old backgrounds and images can fade away to reveal completely new scenes. Pax Arena uses all of these digital comic storytelling devices very well and is a great introduction to the Thrillbent approach to digital comics. I even realized that Waid used sections from Pax Arena during talk to demonstrate how he envisions the future of digital comics and the digital page.

Pax Arena is definitely a digital comic, the story would be funimnetaly changed in a print format and is a fun, but not groundbreaking, tech-noir story. This comic is a great introduction into the digital comics of Thrillbent Comics and their concept of the digital page. Which I feel does a better job of facilitating action than do the digital comics that employ the infinite canvas concept.  

Ask a Teacher to Make a Word Problem – Daily Create Week 7

I am a teacher – I make word problems for breakfast. So when I saw this daily create challenge to make a cowboy word problem I knew that I could nail it. I found the perfect image, font and problem to convey my western theme, and the problem itself is straight out of my lesson plans for next week!

Sir Spamalot – a ds106 Audio Assignment

I feel that I am not old enough yet to be getting spam for burial life insurance but I guess I am wrong. I went dumpster diving in my spam folder to find something interesting for an audio creation assignment, that asked I record and transform a piece of spam. Interesting I think I found:

Click for audio!