I have always wanted to create a Meme, they are always so amusing to me lol. I used uthinkido.com for this one, it is super easy. I decided to just make it a comical parody of myself in a sense. The first picture on the top left is how my mother thinks I eat all prim and proper… the one below it is how I really eat (when I’m hungry lol). The second column is what people think I do at events as an ISA (Islamic Student Association) Executive Board member… and what I actually do. The last one is how I percieve myself as a computer science major … nothing less than the great Morpheus from The Matrix (that movie has part of my heart), when in reality I just sit in my room and make weird faces at code that refuses to run properly the first go.
I thought to do a single aspect of myself- like a meme on CPSC majors, Egyptians, Africans, Muslim, how I drive my car- but thought it more individual and personally amusing to do one specifically for Mohamed himself.
WHAT THE FONT? OCTOPUS cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by cryptovalence : http://www.flickr.com/photos/cryptovalence/6910903081/
As I searched through the DS106 Inspire page I found this piece of artwork. As I enlarged the image and took a closer look at it, I was amazed at all the design elements incorporated into it. It looks beautiful! The color scheme chosen creates a very mellow mood, the rhythm of the colors created by the patterns of dark and light ovals/circles gives it a very deep and wavy feel. Everything is consistent in the picture too, even oval shapes are used to draw the octupus itself! This picture was created using layers of variations of sizes and background of the letter “o”! I loved the creative application taken here, as well as a very thorough explanation on how it was done. The assignment was done very uniquely, truly in the spirit of DS106.
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by englishspartan : www.flickr.com/photos/31151097@N06/4173243665/
This is the Creative Commons poster I created. When I think of CC, an irrigation system comes to mind. We want to be able to share our creative works with everyone, because it will feed more creativity and knowledge. When we don’t share our knowledge with others through teaching, application, etc… it becomes stale and almost useless in my opinion.
DS 106 Light Switch assignment, this one took a little longer because I kept overlooking the freehand draw button. Oh well here goes. DS 106 Light Switch.
In looking for a film to fit into the I Can Read Movies assignment, I decided would start by repurposing my initial Monkey House vector graphic and work with Terry Gilliam’s 1995 film, 12 Monkeys. Like Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil, the film is set in a dystopian future, but also introduces the wrinkle of time travel. Visually stunning and mind-bending, the film is worth viewing if you haven’t seen it.
I decided to work at extending my skills using Illustrator by trying to recreate the graphics template from the original book series. While that was easily doable, the further task of “aging” the book put a bit of a crimp in my timeline. I tried following the Photoshop tutorial by MOME, but struggled to get the right textures, and so, in the interests of time, I sought out some aged paper textures on the Internet, and eventually settled on Old_Scroll_Texture_II_by_Isthar_art, going back to Illustrator to get a partial effect. Unfortunately, of necessity, the layering put the effect under the text, so the text and images on the cover don’t really look aged to match the paper. However, as I was getting ready to post this, I decided to go back and try the tutorial once more, and managed to figure it out in Photoshop. Maybe I was sleepy the first time!
So here are two versions. First the Illustrator-only version, and second, the fiddled-with brushes-in-Photoshop version.
“I Can Read Movies: 12 Monkeys” by aforgrave, on Flickr
“I Can Read Movies: 12 Monkeys” by aforgrave, on Flickr
However, in doing a bit of research into the movie, I came across an amazing antecedent for the film, discovering that Gilliam’s film was actually a re-make/re-imaging of a quirky black and white still-motion sci-fi film from 1962 by Chris Marker, entitled La Jetée.
Searching online revealed a section of the film. Check it out.
Cool, eh? If there isn’t already a ds106 video assignment focusing on telling a narrative like this using using still images, there should be. This film produces a wonderful result. It’s reminiscent of the missing sections of Frank Capra’s 1937 Lost Horizon that have been replaced with existing promotion stills (to accompany the remaining audio track). It’s an eerie effect. And quite dramatic. It creates an interesting space for you to fill in some gaps on your own. Maybe I’ll aim for something like that when we get to video…
Now, as an add-in bonus, while searching for existing images for 12 Monkeys, I found this:
Brad Pitt from 12 Monkeys as an animated GIF (not mine!)
I’ve been looking for a film to explore the cinematic animated GIF assignment, Say It Like Peanut Butter. Perhaps I’ll take a further look into 12 Monkeys…
And, if that weren’t sufficient monkey-related input for summer reflection, my copy of our Camp Magic MacGuffin Monkey House name inspiration arrived recently in the mail.
“Summer Reading for Monkeys” by aforgrave, on Flickr
I did assemble this for the Postcards from Magical Places assignment, which we had our UMW students with a requirement that the image come from Minecraft.
Design the front and back of a postcard that might be sent from the location of a movie or a work of fiction. Both sides of the cards must be created as graphics.
The fornt should use graphic design elements that provide a sense of place or use the classic motifs of old postcards (“Greetings from ______”)_, both pictures and text. The back of the post card should contain a stamp and postmark that fits with the theme of the movie, as well as an addressee and a message that fits the plot as well.
During our first camp fire hangout in Minecraft, I played with putting my new dog skin in the fire, and this seemed to work well as a camp prank of hot dogs. I started out in GIMP but got frustrated with the inability to do some effects on text, and with a loaned copy of PhotoShop, I did this image with rather simple edits, some text warp for the post mark.
I chose one of my favorite movies for the I Can Read Movies design assignment, Groundhog Day from 1993. It is one of those movies that I can flip to on TV and start watching it from any point and still enjoy it. Usually, I notice some little thing that I had never seen before. The amount of thought that went into its production is just amazing – how did they think of so many little things?
I think I thought of it for this assignment because it had so many repeating elements in its theme, it fit naturally into the I Can Read Movies book cover style. I chose the groundhog element because it is one constant from each day, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to produce with my limited artistic abilities. I looked for a CC licensed line art groundhog to use, but could only find ones that I would either have to pay for or were not licensed to be used other than in their original state. Then I started searching for pictures and found the one below by John Kratz which allowed me to use and remix it however I wished. Perfect!
I dropped the image into SketchBookX on my iPad so I could finger-sketch the outline over the image as a new layer, resulting in the repeated groundhog graphic. The alarm clock was just a “Stencil” font surrounded by a rounded edged rectangle.
I chose the same “Share Alike” Creative Commons license as the groundhog image, seemed like the right thing to do.
After last week’s excitement, I have fallen a little short of my own expectations this week. I’ve not been near minecraft, didn’t even get started on the Design Safari. I manage one Design Assignment, the creative commons one and then tried the Lyric Typography Poster.. I saw a couple of greatresults (and this looks like something professional) for this and though it didn’t look too hard. I cranked through iTunes until I remembered one of my favourite song Judge Not, there are a few different reggae songs with this title but the one I like is by Dennis Brown:
The phrase I like is Judge Not, for we all fall short of the glory of Jah. I’ve taken Jah out of the quote as I am not religious. I like the idea of trying and falling short more than Judge not lest you be judged (Matt. 7:1).
I started thinking about this, googling King James font, I saw a reference to calson, so decided to go with Big Calson which seems to be on my mac. I was hoping to get a sort of old looking text and spent a couple of hours failing to get anything like my imagination. I did consider the old english type of font. I was also thinking for some reason about flags and decided on a flag background; red gold and green seemed obvious. Many tutorials and tests later I ended up with this:
This falls very short of the target: Choose one of your favorite lines from a song and illustrate it using only typography. Consider how the font, color, sizes and placement of the typography can reflect or emphasize the meaning of the words.
Nevertheless I have now spent a deal of time playing with photoshop and trying out various tutorials, hopefully this will help.
Here are a few of the tutorials I read through:
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
