I definitely feel like I stepped up my ds106 game a bit this week and put more effort into my assignments. Here’s what I’ve done this week.

Video Discussion

I participated in my second video discussion this week. I did season 2 episode 10 where we all chose 2 screenshots of the episode to take about different design elements. These are the two shots I picked.

I talked about the interesting costume choice for Omar. His shirt says I AM THE AMERICAN DREAM. I thought it was kind of ironic because his job is robbing drug dealers.

For these images we discussed the use of reds and greens throughout not only this episode, but in the rest of the show as well. They are complimentary colors and stand out against one another. These are 6 of the red and green shots I found in the episode.

Blogging

GREAT NEWS, I have finally figured out how to organize my assignments in my blog thanks to Brittany. She showed me how to create the categories and make the different pages for each of the different types of assignments so my page is just about completely organized with my assignment bank, daily creates, weekly summaries and more! Horray!

Commenting

I definitely stepped up my commenting game this week. I about double my number of comments to 10. Commenting is life!

Daily Creates

Writing response: What did the pirates take?

I did today’s daily create which was to trace a picture of myself. I used a picture with my brother and I from my high school graduation. I actually really like how this trace looks! I didn’t want to mess it up by trying to trace facial features, but I think it looks pretty neat without it.

 

I didn’t get a chance to post this yesterday, but the daily create was to celebrate the 1000th TDC! Here’s a collage I made with the pic stitch app on my phone of some past daily creates.

 

Design Assignments

I completed 16 and a half stars worth of design assignments and 9 of them were related to The Wire

The assignment was to create an image of a popular song while also including a picture of myself. This assignment was worth 3 stars, but it took me forever since I figured I’d start using GIMP instead of just sticking to paint and making sloppy pictures. Here’s a little on my process and how it turned out.

So first I used this picture of myself because I needed something that might resemble me driving a car.

 

Then I used paint to create this picture by just added text

Now here’s where things started to get a little tricky. I uploaded the picture of me in GIMP and used the scissor tool to get rid of the background. By selecting “select” and then “invert” and then selecting layer -> transparency -> add alpha channel -> delete, it got rid of the background. I then added a new layer with the car and did the same thing to get rid of it’s white background. It ended up looking like this.

Then I opened the Earth picture I created in paint and moved the layer of me in the car on top and merged the layers. Here’s what I got.

I think the final product looks kind of ridiculous and like a kid did it, but hey, go easy on me this stuff is new to me! Can you guess what popular song this is?

 

The Creative Mashup was an assignment to mix up a classical painting with a scene from The Wire. Since McNulty and Lester always go to the railroad tracks at night, I stitched together a scene of them at the tracks with Van Gough’s “The Starry Night.” I just used paint to crop together the pictures and gave it a border to make it looked framed. This assignment was worth 2 stars. I actually like the way it looks. If it was more stars I might have gotten messy with Gimp again, but I think this is all I needed to convey what the assignment entailed. Here it is!

 

 

This assignment was to take someone’s head and put it on an animal or vise-versa. Since we all know when it comes to Jimmy McNulty and women he’s a dog. We also have seen the common theme of dogs howling during scenes with him. I decided to take a picture of a dogs head and put it on McNulty’s body.

Here’s the two original pictures I used with the dog and McNulty that I found online.

Using GIMP, I used the scissor tool to cut out the dogs head. I then took that layer and placed it over Jimmy’s head. The scissor tool was giving me some issues so that took me a little while. I used the airbrush tool to blend the neck a little better. Here’s what I ended up with.

 

I think I could have done a better job blending around the edges of the head. It also looks a little creepier than I anticipated. But, overall it’s much better than my last attempt at photoshopping with GIMP.

 

This design assignment was to chose 4 icons to summarize a movie or show into 4 basic icons and have others guess. Since I want to relate it to The Wire, I’m just going to let you know I chose season 2 episode 9 and explain why I picked these 4. I got these icons from the Noun Project.

I picked the gun because of the gunfight at the Westside projects where the little boy got shot through the window.

The women represents the Greek brothel that the department busted.

The duck is Ziggy’s pet whom he killed by feeding it hard liquor.

Last, the syringe symbolizing the ongoing drug deals and addicts in the episode and throughout the show.

 

I was very excited I was able to have an excuse to crop myself into a picture with Dominic West. The assignment was to crop yourself into a picture with a celebrity, so to relate this to The Wire and just to show everyone how great we look together I chose I shot of McNulty on the boat.

I used GIMP and the magnetic lasso to crop out the background of a picture of myself  so it looked like like this.

 

The scissor tool was really frustrating me so I didn’t get the straight edges that I would have with that tool, but the lasso worked alright. Then I opened the McNulty picture in another layer and placed my picture on top to make it look like I was holding his arm.

 

 

I know everyone is probably starting to think I’m crazy and obsessed. But you know what….. that’s ok.

 

This assignment was to GIF the weather. I took 5 photos at about 15 minutes intervals of the sunset over a golf course. I uploaded the layers in GIMP and exported them as a GIF.

 

Design Blitz

Typography is the “visual component of the written word.” Signs, logos, it’s all topography. I chose to show this element of design with the F-150 logo of my dad’s truck. I believe this represents the car brand because it uses a bold font with a heavy weight. You wouldn’t want to use this for a tiny sports car. It is definitely a good use of typography to have for a big truck.

 

The condos in this neighborhood I thought was a good representation of rhythm. They’re all identical with the brick garages and paneled upper level. I think the repetition is a very nice design for this neighborhood.

I believe this alleyway between two condos is a good representation of symmetrical balance. The bushes, windows and lights (one is actually out on the right) are all almost identical to each other.It almost looks like each side is a mirror of the other. Everything is doubled except for the single tree in the middle which brings everything together.

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I like the use of proportion of the rocks in this picture. They are all different shapes and sizes, but together they all kind of fill in one another to create this balance as a whole wall.