Weekly Summary-Week 12-Frustrating Again!
I expected this week to be harder/less enjoyable than last week, since last week was an enjoyable, less frustrating week, and fun/frustrating weeks tend to switch off. I was right!
Saturday
I went home for the weekend, so I didn’t much Saturday. I did pick out which mash-ups I wanted to do.
Sunday
On Sunday, I did my first Daily Create of the week, about Veteran’s Day. As I say in my tweet, I don’t have anything that hasn’t been said better before. I am just so thankful to those who serve our country, as I know I don’t have the fortitude and strength (physically, mentally, or emotionally) to do it.
So many have said it better than I, so I'll keep it simple: Happy Veterans Day! I thank all who have served and protected our country, as well as those who currently do so@ds106dc #tdc2496 #ds106 pic.twitter.com/pG4qK2xRv4
— Francesca Maisano (@FCMaisano) November 11, 2018
Monday
On Monday, I did my second Daily Create of the week, about making a poem or picture to make people in the cold warm. I’m not very good at making poems, but I’d rather write than draw, so I tried a haiku, as that was shorter. I love hot chocolate, so that is what I based the poem on!
It's not quite winter
but it is cold and windy
Hot chocolate's warmThere's my attempt at a haiku!@ds106dc #tdc2497 #ds106 pic.twitter.com/zQBTUgacbn
— Francesca Maisano (@FCMaisano) November 12, 2018
I also completed 2 of my 4 mashup assignments.
My first one was making a video using at most 2 seconds of 6 of your favorite movies. This was a fun and easier assignment. The hardest part was choosing the movies! I got practice with video trimming in the Microsoft Photos app, which is sure to be useful, as right now it’s my favorite way to make videos. Part of the reason why this was a more enjoyable assignment is because I didn’t run into any issues, like I did with the other assignment that I did that day!
So, my other assignment was where I had to make a slideshow using FlickrSounds. This assignment frustrated the heck out of me! I chose Jure Grando as I came upon him when I was researching strigoi, one of my character Maria’s favorite creatures. While I figured out while I was making this that he isn’t a strigoi, according to Wikipedia he “may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records” and as such Maria would undoubtedly be fascinated by the story. Why did this assignment frustrate me? I am a bit of a perfectionist, so I wanted to get just the right pictures and audio, which did not happen. It took forever to get combinations that I was OK with! I also wanted to embed the slideshow, but I couldn’t figure out how to safely! Basically, I just ran into trouble and annoyance. At least I did get more practice with FlickrSounds, which I might be able to incorporate into later assignments.
I also started to take pictures for my assignment “The Color Brown In My Life” which you can read about under Thursday.
Tuesday
On Tuesday, I did two more assignment-one remix and one mashup.
For the remix, I had to make a post about of a short story from the point of view of your favorite fear, and the remix part if that it had to make the assignment more pink. I hate spiders, so I went with that. My old room had pink walls and at one point a pink rug, so I decided to set the story in my room. This was a fairly simple and straightforward assignment, as it was just writing. I enjoyed writing this, though I did NOT enjoy looking up pictures to be the Featured image. Yeah, I still can’t say that I like spiders any better!
For the mashup I did that day, I had to make a video combing a song with geographic references and a video of a Google map of the locations. I chose the song “Rocky Road to Dublin” written by D.K. Gavan and covered by Celtic Thunder. I like Celtic music and Celtic Thunder, and I liked that I could tell a story with the Google map. My character Maria would also like this song, as its a folk tune, and as a folklorist, she does like folk tunes. This was another frustrating assignment. I really wanted the map and the music video to be on the screen and recording together, but I just could not get that to happen. At least, this assignment did give me more practice with recording the screen using Game Mode/Game bar and find out what the limitation are.
I took more pictures for my assignment “The Color Brown In My Life” which you can read about under Thursday.
Wednesday
On Wednesday, I did two more assignments-my second remix and my tutorial.
For my second remix, I had to play Google Quick Draw and post on twitter my drawings, and for the remix part, I had to incorporate mustaches (‘staches). I decided to incorporate mustaches by trying to draw mustaches on all of my drawings. This was another frustrating assignment, though not as much as the others since at least this one involves playing a game! It took many tries to get mustaches on all of the drawings and have the A.I. guess more than half of them. If I could do this again, I would try and see if I could color in all of the ‘staches to make them look more like ‘staches. Despite my frustration, playing a normal game of Google Quick Draw is fun, even though I absolutely cannot draw!
So, for one of my remixes, I had to combine Google Quick Draw and mustaches. Well, I tried! Suffice to say that my drawing skills aren't very good at all! pic.twitter.com/eyniHySsxQ
— Francesca Maisano (@FCMaisano) November 14, 2018
My tutorial was on Inklewriter, which I used to make story and this this blog post. I really enjoyed making the story I created, and liked the story I made, so I decided to make a tutorial. This was fairly straightforward. I just went through the process of making a story and took screen snipping (with the Snipping Tool) as I went along. The hardest part was that I am not a complete expert yet, so I had to figure some things out myself first before I wrote about them! I did have some frustration with Inklewriter, as it kept not saving my work or making me sign in a lot. So, the frustration theme of this week continues on!
I took even more pictures for my assignment “The Color Brown In My Life” which you can read about under Thursday.
Thursday
On Thursday, I did my final mashup assignment. Yes, it’s “The Color Brown In My Life” that I’ve been mentioning. I chose brown as I wanted to tie my character Maria into it and, for me, she is connected to the color brown. All week, I had been taking pictures of brown things I saw. On Thursday, I made the video. This was a less-frustrating way to end the week, which was nice! Two of hardest part were just figuring out what order everything should go in and finding a song that fit with “brown” that I liked. The song I ended up choosing was the Van Morrison song “Brown Eyed Girl”, covered by Jimmy Buffett. The hardest part was taking the pictures while feeling incredibly awkward at the fact that I’m just taking random pictures of things no one else takes pictures of. However, I do feel a bit more comfortable with this, so if I have to do it at any point in these next few week, I can!
I also started to work on this post!
Friday
On Friday, I did my commenting for the week.
First, I commented on this assignment by Jessica Spranger where she played Google Quick Draw and, as a remix, made a badly-designed PowerPoint. Wow, she truly did make an awful PowerPoint. It’s so awful it’s hilarious!
Another assignment I commented on was Emily Hutchins’ tutorial on how to combine several of your favorite holidays into one picture. I really like the picture she made. Despite everything coming from different holidays, it all went together very well!
The third assignment that I commented on was Kara’s post of combining a picture she had made previously of her character with emojis that matched his face. She asked which emoji best matched, and I think the top one (the cat) does, mostly because of the eyebrows, but also because of the slightly frowning expression the man has.
Finally, I commented on Tiffany Tueros’s assignment where she used the fox Apple animoji and made it lip sinc to the song “The Fox” by Ylivs, or more commonly known as “What Does the Fox Say?”. I like how she has the fox animoji mimic making the noises that the song is alluding to when it says “what does the fox say”. I also love the fox’s facial expressions! It’s so cute!
I also finished writing this post and turned it in!
This week was not quite as enjoyable as last week. I don’t get quite the same level of enjoyment with making mashups or remixes like I do with straight videos, and I had more trouble and frustrations this week. In general, I didn’t get the same level of satisfaction when completing these assignments as I did with other weeks. However, it wasn’t too bad, and I did put myself out of my comfort zone more this week, so that’s good.
I’m not sure if I’m feeling optimistic or pessimistic about next week. Either way, I hope I can tie in Thanksgiving into whatever I do next week!
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