DesignAssignments — Camp Magic MacGuffin

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Thursday, June 14th, 2012

I absolutely love where I am from. Colonial Beach, Va. It is a very small beach, but it gets a lot of attention during the holidays and the summer. When I saw this assignment I got a tad bit excited. Mainly because not many people know where Colonial Beach, Virginia is.

This again was an easy assignment to do. I just uploaded the pictures to “PicsArt” and clicked “Add Text.” Again, I just typed what I wanted in the box and dragged and dropped it where I wanted it. I made the colors orange and yellow because they seem “beachy” and also do make it work a little with the background.

For More. Click Here. –>>[Where I Come From]<<–

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Come join the Youth and Beauty Brigade

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

The Decemberists are unparalleled storytellers and the best band that ever lived, so selecting one of their songs to use for a DS106 class project seemed appropriate. For this assignment I decided to use a lyric from “California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade,” which appears on Castaways and Cutouts.

Here they are performing the song:

Castaways and Cutouts was released in 2002. It went undiscovered by me until the winter of 2004. I had just started making friends with some folks in Richmond. One of them was a young hipster who had better taste in music than I did.

“California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade” remains on my list of favorite Decemberists songs for a few reasons. The first half of the song is about driving route 1, which runs along the California coastline, and drinking wine. Who doesn’t like a road trips and wine? And look at these lyrics: “Take a long drive with me on California One” and “Take a long dram with me on California wine.” Clever, Colin Meloy. Effing Clever.

It’s “Youth and Beauty Brigade” that I really adore. I’m neither youthful nor beautiful, but boy oh boy do I relate to the misanthropes and misfits that populate The Decemberists’ Youth and Beauty Brigade: bed-wetters*, ambulance chasers, bored bench warmers, castaways, cutouts, irresponsible library users. Yes! And that brings me to this:

Lyric Typography Poster featuring The Decemberists

Jaysus. I’m looking at the image now, and thinking that I really built that up with the back story.

I also worked in Photoshop too. Photoshop is still a challenge for me. Layers and working within said layers is counterintuitive. I’m thinking it may have something to do with the fact that I’ve spent decades in word processing software built for the “everyman.” I’ll figure it out though. Here’s the Photoshop version:

Photoshopped version

There’s not enough space at the top, and the font type isn’t all that adventurous or exciting (especially after seeing the stuff at Music Philosophy) or uniform, but screw it. It’s a draft.

The police car photo is from Robert Kuykendall’s Flickr stream. I found the image by doing an advanced search in Flickr for Creative Commons-licensed images.

* I am not a bed-wetter, by the way. I don’t chase ambulances either. I’m not much for warming benches, because I don’t play sports. I am notorious for not getting my library books back on time.

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Right out of Piedmont

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

With activity ramping up for me at the Northern Voice conference this week, my window for MADI (Making Art Damn It) is closing, hence here I sit working an hour on a faux book cover for the I Can Read Movies assiognment:

Create a film-based book cover using
the aesthetic framed by Spacesic

See the original images

I’d seen people do this one before, but was a first for me. I tried recalling movies I was drawn to as a kid, and the original Andromeda Strain was one I watched a few times, maybe it was the sci-fi escape the suburbs thing, maybe it was the allure of the southwest as a foreign land for a kid on the east coast, maybe it was the mad science angle.

The one thing that I did recall, and could not find too many elements was the notion that there were these five levels of the underground Wildfire facility, and things got worse as you went down (was this a precursor to War Games use of DEFCON levels?).

What I did find was one graphic image of the structure at the University of Michigan Science Filmsite

And the Wildfire logo (though this looks like from the more recent one but it harkens back to some of the book covers

I used as a base the spacesic image for The Labrything, filling the cover in with black, and in GIMP using the noise filters to .. make noise, and mushed things around with the smudge tool.

For the images, a=I frankly lost track of what I did! I used some layer modes, and I think the cartoon filter on the model. I wavered on just o=using one of the images, but could not decide, so I layered them and made the wildfire logo faded.

Whats it mean? We ought to be careful of things that fall from space and how the government handles them… especially if we live in Piedmont New Mexico.

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… in its’ right place.

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

Here’s my go at the Lyric Typography Poster, which is located here.

In honor of me going to see them this weekend, I choose the Radiohead classic, Everything In Its Right Place. I’m sure many of you listen to them so I’ll spare the description.

Made this in Photoshop. I wanted to use graph paper as a background because I wanted to illustrate obsessive neatness, which is what I believe the song to be about. Modernist graphic design comes to mind when I listen to this song. That came into play when choosing Helvetica (haters gonna hate).

On a slightly different note, listen to this song and gaze at the work of Michael Johansson, I think they blend quite perfectly.

Without further ado:

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Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

Take a famous character’s catchphrase and illustrate it into an image.

I loved this assignment and had too many ideas, so I decided to make a tutorial. My sister and I love Lost in Space. We were introduced to the show when we didn’t understand why our mother went around saying, “Danger, Danger Will Robinson!” She promptly sat us down with the entire show on DVD.

Step One: Use photoshop and open the two pictures you will use.

Step Two: Use the Lasso Tool and carefully trace around Will Robinson’s face.

Step Three: Copy what you just traced and paste onto the other picture.

Step Four: Use Free Transform to resize the face.

Step Five: Group the Layers together. Then Duplicate the image.

Step Six: Select the duplication. Copy Merged and Paste into first group.

Step Seven: Move the layers so that one of them is partially hidden beneath the other.

Save your image and your finished! You successfully created an image for a catchphrase form Lost in Space.

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Guess that Catchphrase!

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

This image was created in two parts. First, in Word, I created the body out of shapes and text. Second, in photoshop, I layered what I had done in Word on top of a rainbow background. Then erased the white background from around the body.

Brainstorming is always the hardest part of anassignment. This was no different. I love many characters that have many wonderful catchphrases. Which one do I choose? In the end, this catchphrase won out. You have to guess, so I can’t give too much away. Yet, my love for this catchphrase and the character behind it all started with my mother. She loves to educate me on older shows that my generation do not know. It often starts with her saying a phrase that I don’t understand. She will explain where it came from and sometimes I actually get to see for myself. The show that this catchphrase comes from captured my attention immediately and I couldn’t get enough. This is Jolie, signing off from Camp Magic MacGuffin!

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/illustrate-a-catchphrase-2/

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The Social Downes

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

I started remaking this poster as bava art, but then I realized that nobody fits this poster better than the great Stephen Downes. Nobody more prolific, nobody more willing to speak his mind, and nobody less afraid to piss other people off! NOBODY!

All that said, nobody could be further away from the Facebook idea of corporate control and lock-in, which I guess is the joke. I’m gonna file this under the “If movie posters told the truth” design assignment, but that isn’t exactly what this is. Anyway, this was too much fun to make.

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Music is Life

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

My life revolves around music. Music is one of my main types of communication. Words that I couldn’t say, I would find a song that stated how I felt and played it for the person, or ask the person to listen to it. I was always on the top of my music but listening to all types of music and trying my hardest to relate to it. When I seen I could design my own autobiography cover, I knew exactly what I wanted.

I started this collage by finding a picture of something dealing with music and had a heart in it. When I came across this picture on “PicsArt” I downloaded it to the “PicsArt” program. I then clicked “Add Text” and added the words “musics speaks to my heart” and dragged it onto the picture. I chose to add the text so people could know exactly what music does for me and why I love it so much.

For More. Click Here –>>[Design the Cover of Your Autobiography]<<–

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Together We Can

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

This picture of four people holding hands is a great design for DS106. Everyone pretty much knows that this is an online class so we don’t physically see each other everyday. But with that, it is amazing to me how we can all come together as one and get things done. For example, the collage for the bunks. It was a hard task to get everyone to submit their pictures. I had to find everyone in my bunk on Twitter and send out a group message several times. In the end, we all came together, like the people in the picture, and made on big happy bunk family. That is the main reason why I think this is a great design to symbolize the unity of DS106.

For More. Click Here. –>>[DS106 Design Review] <<–

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Firewalk with Me

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

I decided I wanted to do a design assignment today, so I started browsing the Assignment Repository. There’s so much great stuff in there (although I do think some of our “Design” assignments need to be re-categorized as “Visual” assignments). I settled on Alternative Book Cover.

To get inspiration, I started browsing my digital book downloads on Amazon. (Yes, I know I’m the loser who pays more than eBooks are really worth, but, goddammit, I’ve read more in the last 18 months than I had in the last 8 years thanks to my Kindle and iPad). A few years ago I ploughed through the Stieg Larsson series and loved it. It’s not fine literature, but it’s riveting and the characters are pretty fascinating. I decided to do an alternative cover for The Girl Who Played with Fire. I thought I’d find some cute kid shot of a kid. . playing with matches. Then I realized that wasn’t so cute; it was scary.

THEN I started to think about scary kids and fires, and I remembered conversation Jim and I had yesterday about our favorite Stephen King novels. Aha! I decided to photoshop a picture of Drew Barrymore from Firestarter onto a book cover for The Girl Who Played with Fire.

THEN I thought about the animated magazine covers that Jim’s been doing, and I knew what I needed to do:

This was pretty tough for a few reasons. I wanted to stay as true as possible to the original cover of the American edition of the Larsson novel. It’s a pretty stark layout, and the letters are heavily fragmented. But, with some work, I was able to clean them up and add a dropshadow that matches the original.

I did have to change the spacing of the title to make room for the image. In the end, you can see how the text design of the Larsson book works great on THAT cover, but it’s not nearly as effective on this cover.

That’s okay, I still think it’s a cool cover.

I have two problems with it, I guess. First, it’s way big: 2.2MB. Second, the animation doesn’t seamlessly loop, but to do that I’d have to add more frames and the file would just get bigger.

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