I was born. Yes, I’m a Christmas Eve Baby. But something else really cool happened that day, in 1970 that is. Hold on to that thought though, I want to explain this assignment first. This has been my favorite one … Continue reading →

Brownie Points (sorry I don’t have the power to give out extra star points) for whoever can name that song I’m pulling that line from in the title!! Since I have an impending trip coming up in a week and … Continue reading →

For this assignment, we had to remake logos to be more fitting for the zombie apocalypse.  I did a couple of them for fun. Brano, for cleaning your brain filled pipes (or maybe to clear out your chest).  For this ...

Here’s a quick 1-start assignment that was fun, easy and quick to do. Pause [Four] A Moment requires you to take your favorite photo of yourself, keep one as the original and edit the other 3 photos in different ways … Continue reading →

Now for a limited time you can get the new “Insanity Twilight”  Trading Card! Once played on the field, this card is unstoppable! I love Yugioh cards, and I love My Little Pony, so why not combine the two and … Continue reading →

When it came time to do my One Story, Four Icons assignment, I’ve realized that I have a bit of an odd taste in movies. I’d much rather see live theatre or go to a concert than watch a film, and the films I do tend to watch tend to be not all that mainstream. ...

The first time that the Fandom Princess had witnessed a Spectacle, she was 16 years old and her younger sister, Princess Courtney, was 12. The King and Queen had sent for their royal horse and carriage, and together as a family, they rode towards the theater in which the Spectacle … Continue reading →

Shh….come, look this way. Right between those two trees. You see it? Yes, that my friends is a rare element in its natural habitat. The family in which it comes from is known as Design, and it’s not alone out … Continue reading →

For this assignment, I designed a moving poster for the move Inception.  Here it is. For this I loaded the poster of Inception into Gimp.  I smart cutted the head of Mr DiCaprio out of the image and reversed it.  ...

In August I noted the oddity that you could upload animated GIFs to Google Drive but you could not insert them in any documents. A comment on that post had me re-checking, and woah, you can directly upload an animated GIF anyplace you can upload an image, here is a gDoc with two GIFs I just slipped inside. It’s even easier in a GDoc presentation, you can just drag and drop one in from your desktop, check out this quickie. You can have more than one per slide. I can see a way of using this to assemble a series as maybe a movie of GIFs? I wonder if the auto advance features will work on this embed? (YES IT DOES! I could now assemble a series of animated GIFs…) Hmm.) Yup, this is getting cool- here is the series of GIFs I made from the classic movie Fort Apache, ...

I decided to do the 4 Icon Story assignment. As soon as I read the assignment I knew immediately which story I wanted to do. I loved this story and it is still very fresh in my mind. I would … Read More →

How many times have we said that sentence before, we are talking about a movie and want to reference it but can’t remember the title!!! Maybe we know an actor or two, but other than that we pretty much are left to Goolge-ing random things or trying to trace IMDB actors to the desired film. (continue reading...)

This is my design for the PSA Billboard assignment. I created the image in GIMP by first taking a photo of spilled medication, then overlaying each pill in the foreground with family members. The pills in the background have keywords … Continue reading →

For this assignment, we had to make a minimalist design that reflected a movie or tv show.  Instead of doing exactly that, I chose to do video games.  The first one I did was Mario.  Here it is. I did ...

I am finding out that I love design week just like I loved photo week, not as much but it’s getting there! The next design assignment I did was the Lyric Topography Assignment (**). The task was to take lyrics from...

When I found out that we were doing photography this week, I was understandably excited. I got an amazing Sony Hyperzoom camera for Christmas this year and was excited to experiment some more with it. Starting off this week, I actually had to go in a different direction for a bit. We were told to ...

You always hear how two wrongs don’t make a right, but what about three? When approached with the opportunity to design a Venn Diagram involving pop culture I decided to do the pop culture I’m best at, Disney! I’ll pause for a second while you be surprised. You good? Okay. So I immediately had this (continue reading...)

To really get you thinking visually, I chose to do the One Story/Four Icons assignment (**). It may sound easy at first, but picking four images to represent a story, without giving it away, is actually challenging! And I loved creating...

So this assignment was literally propaganda.  I had to redesign a WWII poster to propogate our class.  Now, everyone has seen the craze of Keep Calm and Chive On, Keep Calm and Shop On, Keep Calm and Drink Coffee, etc.  ...

For my One Story/Four Icons image, I used 4 images from The Noun Project website. That’s all I am going to say, and it is up to YOU to guess the movie!

Monday, February 11: Take a photo of someone other than you using your favorite type of technology Wednesday, February 13: Take a picture of something brand new. Like shiny. Sunday, February 17: Take a picture of something you made, be it food, art, ...

The next assignment I decided to do was One Story/Four Icons. This assignment was to “reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons, four of them.” Another part … Continue reading →

Here is my second design assignment for the week! This one is a 3-star Minimalist TV/Movie Poster. All you need to do is pick a movie/TV show and then create a poster that “captures the essence of the story.” For … Continue reading →

I did not think that my Newspaper Blackout Poetry assignment would be so challenging when I started it, but it was. I chose an editorial about Obama’s Inaugural Speech from the New York Times and managed to turn it into a poem about the history of the Gay Rights Movement. I had to scan my piece into my Macbook ...

We are on to design week, this week. And I’m ready to show you my first assignment! This is a required 2-star assignment called “One Story/4 icons.” Basically you need to get 4 icons that describe the movie/story/event you are … Continue reading →

My first ever design assignment task was to create a DS106 propaganda poster {***}. This was the one I chose from the Designing Posters category. We had to pick a poster from WW2. I know these propaganda posters are well-known and...

I had planned to stop working on my ds106 stuff about an hour ago but I decided I wanted to “try out” one more before calling it a night.  Turns out “try out” means play with gimp continuously until I make … Continue reading →

This week in ds106, we’ve moved on from visual assignments straight into Design Assignments.  To get better acquainted with designing, we have to complete at least 15 stars worth of design assignments from the ds106 Assignment Bank.   Everyone must ...

We got some really sad news today, a death in the ds106 family. Motherboard is dead. What am I supposed to do for #ds106 this week!? — Fairuz Maggio(@fairuzmaggio) February 19, 2013 Yes, a computer has died. While Fairuz is in mourning (or shopping), let’s deal with it in the ds106 way — and make some art! Hence a new design assignment, A Memorial For Fairuz’s PC: Fairuz is a UMW student for the Spring 2013 ds106 class, and suffered a catastrophic loss of her PC. We should honor its memory by designing something as a memorial- a funeral announcement, an animated GIF headstone, a floral wreath of RAM chips. REMEMBER THE PC! I made up a bit of graveyard commentary: cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It must have been ds106′s fault! It is the Raven! The weight of all that media, the taxing ...

This week, I was encouraged to use some tips from TEN: Ten Ways to Improve Your Craft. None of Them Involve Buying Gear in order to improve your photography. I found some of these to be tricky to do but ultimately used many of the tips while working on my assignments this week and plan to use ...