Touch the firehose of ds106, the most recent flow of content from all of the blogs syndicated into ds106. As of right now, there have been 92509 posts brought in here going back to December 2010. If you want to be part of the flow, first learn more about ds106. Then, if you are truly ready and up to the task of creating web art, sign up and start doing it.

Week 14: Final Project Part 1

Posted by
|

This week, I started doing all the assignments involved with creating my final project of finishing the story about my created character of Buck Smith tracking down Crazy Joe Shooter after there was evidence that pointed to Crazy Joe being the person that shot Mr. Blackhawk. Over the next two weeks I planned to split it into two parts of this week of finding where Crazy Joe is, then next week when Buck actually confronts Crazy Joe. So here is what I did this week for finding Crazy Joe.

I started off the week with the assignment that I titled “Splashing Color Raid” where I had to use the visual technique of Color splash to empasize details in the picture by only having one object colored in a black & white photo. I picked this assignment because I had recently gotten a new camera app on my computer of ColorStrokes which allowed me to use the visual technique of Color splash with photos.

Splashing Color Raid

This assignment was the perfect place to start because you could use any picture as a starting point in your storyline. I chose to start it at the point where Buck was raiding Crazy Joe’s house in hopes of arresting him; only to find that Crazy Joe wasn’t there. Then to setup the next post, I added the clue of a letter that was in the house about Train Man Inc.

However, to complete this assignment I tried to find a picture of an intimidating cowboy barging into a room. I couldn’t think of any place where to find a photo and was just randomly typing in anything cowboy related. Then I found a photo of a confused Toy Story Woody photo and uploaded it to the ColorStroke program and only filled in the Toy Story character. After finishing with that photo, I realized it didn’t really go with what I was trying to portray. So I searched some more on Google until I found a photo of an intimidating cowboy with a long barreled gun pointed into a room. I uploaded this cowboy to the ColorStrokes app and filled in the main character, to make him the focal point of the picture. After I had finished with editing both photos to have a black and white background, I sent both of them to my mom to see which one she liked the most. She chose the intimidating cowboy instead of the confused cowboy, and posted the intimidating photo into a blog post.

The next blog post that I created of “Train Man Inc.”, showed what exactly was on letter that was at Crazy Joe’s house that had a clue about his whereabouts. To incorporate it with the assignment I chose, I had to design a business brand logo that would be at the top of the letter (as if a specific company had sent Crazy Joe a letter). Then in the card, it would be written that the company of Train Man Inc. paid Crazy Joe Shooter to attack/scare the Indian community so that they would move out of the area. Train Man Inc. would then designate that area as a location for their railroad (cash cow for a company).

Train Man Inc.

At the very end of the letter it would then say that Crazy Joe should go to their company building to receive his payment. This gives the clue to Buck that Crazy Joe is probably in Train Man Inc. headquarters building. Buck knows that if Train Man Inc. was willing to kill someone to help with building their railroad that they have a lot riding on this railroad construction; and that they will do anything to stop someone from figuring out/stopping their plan. Buck figured that he probably needed backup, so he went back to the police station to call his good friend Jimbo. This is how I set up another post for this week.

To complete the assignment of designing a business brand logo, I wanted to incorporate a train into the design. So I looked up “train silhouettes” on Google and looked for a minimalist designed trained to use in the logo. I also found some gun silhouettes on Google to make the logo more intimidating and to coincide with the fact that the Train Man Inc. security team sent the letter. I figured security could be signified by having crossed guns in the background of the train. After I had found all the silhouette images that I wanted to use, I opened up my Sketchbook app and pasted the images into appropriate places. Then after I had placed everything the way that I wanted, I colored the silhouettes colors that would look good on a main tan colored background of an old-time letter of dark red or black. I placed a circle around all the objects to make it seem like one logo, and then came up with name for my business brand logo. Not much thought went into it, because I chose the first name that popped into my head.

As for the last part of this weeks story of finding Crazy Joe Shooter, I posted the phone conversation between Buck and his friend Jimbo. I used the assignment of “Have a Phone Conversation with Yourself” as a platform assignment because I would be voicing both characters in the conversation. This part of the story was just the recruitment of someone that can backup Buck just in case there is trouble with apprehending Crazy Joe. Then at the very end of the conversation I set up next weeks assignments of confronting Crazy Joe by stating (as Jimbo) that I would meet Buck at the Train Man Inc. building.

For completing this part of the story/assignment, I wrote myself a script on a Note app located on my computer. Then went into the other room and recorded the phone conversation. That was the easiest part of the assignment, because then I uploaded the audio file to Audacity for editing. To distinguish between the different voices on the phone call, I changed the pitch for Jimbo’s voice to -30.00 and Buck’s to -20.00 by going speaking part by speaking part to change them all so they would sound like big men with deep voices talking to each other. After I had done this, I saved it, and uploaded it to SoundCloud.

Overall, I really liked this week of progressing the story about Buck trying apprehend Crazy Joe by having Buck raid a house, investigate a letter, and call a friend for help. Next week I will progress the story even further by having Buck scope out the place, having a shootout with other cowboys, and arresting Crazy Joe Shooter.

Add a comment

ds106 in[SPIRE]