Author: Arantxa Lashley

Final Blog Post: Reflecting on the Semester!

Hi everyone!

Wow, it’s already the end of the semester huh? I’m both excited and sad to be graduating from York this semester; it’s really been a long ride.

I remember coming into CT 101 on the first day, nervous because I hadn’t had any sort of experience with blogging, website design or anything really relating to the back-end side of the internet. (It makes me feel so much cooler using tech terminology like that :D)

However, my fears were soon put out because all of our assignments have been fun learning experiences. I got to try creating so many different types of digital media like GIFs, memes, typography and (now) my personal favorite, Vaporwave!

My website, https://strawberriesandcream.net/ , is a personal blog where I share my art and cake designs!

I got off to a very slow start with my website development, mostly because I kept on making minor changes, and going back and forth between the back and front end of the website. I initially had some technical difficulties signing up for the website, but the ReclaimHosting support team came to the rescue in under 15 minutes!

I wish that I had taken this class earlier in my academic career, because these skills would have helped me in so many other club projects and art assignments I did. I would have also liked to take more classes in CT to get a better feel of what web design and coding are like. I’d like to do a course in this sometime in the future. I also hope I can get a job in graphic design so I can further develop my skills!

I really hope that I earned an ‘A’ in this course, because I tried to apply as much of what I learned into each one of my posts, and I had so much fun creating them along the way. I tried to make my posts more fun to read by using a lot of images, and typed as if I was just having a normal conversation šŸ™‚

Overall, this was a very fun semester for me, and I’m glad I got to meet and interact with so many other talented individuals. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday everyone! Stay safe šŸ˜€

Assignment #12: Copyright!

Hi everyone!

You know, when I opened Larry Lessig’s TED talk, I wondered for a moment why he had a picture of Andy Warhol in the background, then it clicked. Yeah, there’s gonna be a LOT of legal grey area here.

So for those of you who don’t know, Andy Warhol was a 20th century pop artist, famous for his silkscreened images of famous people. You may have seen his work around the internet:

 

Warhol was very careful/lucky when it came to copyright infringement. He did the Marilyn Munroe silkscreens after her death so it was regarded as a tribute. In the case of Campbell Soup, he was insanely lucky. They literally wrote him a letter thanking him for promoting their product AND sent him free soup!

Keep in mind, Warhol was making money off of this, none of which went to Campbell Soup. I literally can’t imagine any company today doing the same. There was a very interesting case brought up against his foundation on whether his work with the Prince series was considered “fair use” or not after the photographer sued the foundation. The decision was ruled in favor of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

 

“I’m talking about people taking and recreating using other people’s content, using digital technologies to say things differently.”

– Larry Lessig

But in today’s society, it’s really hard to determine what constitutes “fair use”, because it heavily varies from case to case. Can I sue Andy Warhol for using my photograph in his work? That’s about as effective as trying to sue Picasso for appropriating African art and culture.

Yup, copyright is a double-edged sword. However, I don’t think that this should discourage us from creating art. Everyone has a right to express how they think and feel through art, and maybe your creativity is stimulated by seeing the things in your environment. No harm in looking for inspiration from the things around you.

Assignment #11: Vaporwave!

Hi everyone!

It’s official: I’m in love with Vaporwave art <3

I love everything from the retro aesthetic to the vibrant, neon colors. Here’s two versions of a Vaporwave artwork I made with the character L from Death Note.

If you’ve watched the show, you know that apples and potato chips are significant to the plot, and it wasn’t until I finished both of the versions that I realized how much it reminded me of the second opening theme.

I had so much fun recoloring the chips and adjusting the sizes and orientations of the apples. The kanji over L’s eyes in the second version translates to “genius” in Japanese, and the chips I chose are a very popular brand that I personally enjoy eating. If you haven’t tried seaweed-flavored Calbee potato chips, now is the time! šŸ˜€

Assignment #10: Visiting A Classmate’s Website!

Hi everyone!

I was looking through all of the awesome websites that my classmates created. Everyone did such a good job with the design and layout of their webpages so far.

I visited Claudia’s website, ClaudiaBakes, and wow! I really enjoyed reading through her recipes, and the pictures were absolutely mouth-watering. The recipes were laid out in a very neat, easy-to-read format, and her instructions were clear to follow. As a fellow baker, I hope I can try out some of these new recipes! I think I’ll begin with the homemade carrot cake šŸ˜€

I also visited Brandon’s site, NBABrandon. As someone who knows little to nothing about basketball, I thought that his site was very informative. It was mostly image-based and kept you up-to-date with whatever’s happening in the NBA currently without overloading the reader with too much information. I look forward to seeing the new content when the NBA season starts!

Assignment #9 – Midterm Reflection!

Hi everyone!

Wow, this semester is just flying by! I’m graduating at the end of December, so I’m both excited and sad to be finished with college.

I remember being so nervous at the start of this semester because this class would be completely new territory for me. I had no previous experience in website creation or web design, or even blogging.

However, Prof. Seslow was very patient with making sure that we understood everything, and I think that the class moves at a comfortable pace for beginners.

One of the highlights of this class for me has been working on the DS 106 projects. It was so much fun doing some of the creative projects there and adding my own twist to some of them too. I think it’s a good way to get out of an artistic slump because there’s so many different things to do!

I had so much fun working on the very first project I did with typography. It really helped me to expand my knowledge with Photoshop. Another highlight for me has been finding and embedding GIFs into my posts. I feel that it really adds some personality to the text!

So far, I really enjoyed learning about new things in CT 101, and can’t wait to see what’s next šŸ™‚

Assignment #8 – Personalizing My Website!

Hi everyone!

After following the instructions to install WordPress, I chose the Twenty Seventeen theme because I loved the layout of the homepage.

I started to customize my website by working out the visual aspects first. I didn’t really find any stock images that I wanted to use, so I created a simple header background for my website using Clip Studio Paint. I also changed the color of the header text and added a tagline.

I also created and tested a few other versions of this image, and I liked how some of these looked as well, so I chose the “Randomize Uploaded Headers” option.

I think that I’d like to make another background that’s more tailored to my website sometime in the future.

The next thing I’d like to work on is the menu layout and changing the default content on some of the pages.

Assignment #7 – Creating a Website!

Hi everyone!

I decided to go with strawberriesandcream.net as my domain name! I’m hoping to post both art and baking related content here šŸ™‚

My signup process was a little complicated because after creating my account on Reclaim Hosting, I couldn’t access my cPanel tab! I tried restarting my laptop and clearing my cache, but this didn’t work (although my computer got like 50% faster).

After this, I submitted a ticket to Reclaim Hosting. Their support team was really fast in responding to my situation, and they quickly applied the necessary changes to my account so I could access my cPanel and website!

I can’t wait to start editing and posting content to my website!

Assignment #6 – Choosing A Name!

Hi everyone!

I’ve been debating about what kind of website I should make. I love to bake and decorate cakes, so I was thinking of doing a baking website with a new cake design each week + the process behind it. I’m not sure if I’d have the equipment to film the entire process, but I might include a short description of how I did it.

For the name, I was thinking of either strawberriesandcream.com or bakedbytia.com. Honestly, I’m a bit partial to the first name because I adore anything strawberry flavored, plus it just sounds appetizing.

For my second idea, I wanted to make an online portfolio of my artwork. This would just be a mix of work I’ve completed + process videos on whatever I’m doing at the moment. For the name, I was thinking of just using my artist handle, ranchan15.com.

So far, these are my ideas for what kind of website I’d like to create, as well as the content I’d like to publish on it.

Assignment #5 – DS 106 – Remix!

Hi everyone!

For my second DS 106 assignment, I chose to remix the Valentine’s Day Caption Challenge.

The gist of the assignment was basically to create a caption for these romance novel covers that would best suit the image. However, I thought it would be more fun to meme them instead. I’ve always found these covers to be ridiculously dramatic in terms of composition, content and lighting, which is why I chose to make them a little more fun to look at.

The link included in the assignment description to the Flickr album with all of the templates was broken, so I just looked for related images through Google Search.

After I chose my images, I used Adobe Illustrator to place fonts of different sizes and colors on the covers. Even though these were basically gag covers, I wanted them to look as if they were real, so I tried my best to not make the fonts look out of place.

Let me know what you think!

Ā 

Assignment #4 – DS 106!

Hi everyone!

For my first assignment, I chose to do something with typography. I had a little intro to typography in my graphic design class and decided to try my hand at this cipher assignment because it looked pretty cool!

Cipher Typography Photo Images

Basically, you can encode any phrase that you want into a cipher, and use these alpha-numerical digits to form a picture. The final product should have two versions: one with the cipher, and one with the translated message.

For my project, I encoded my message to Base32 using Cryptii.com

As for the content, I kept using the theme of apples. You should know by now that I’m a huge anime fan, and I couldn’t think of a more perfect phrase to encode than this one:

Ver. 1 : Encoded

Ver. 2 : Decoded w/ under layer

This took me around 3+ hours to color and complete in Photoshop, but I’m pretty happy with how it came out! If you zoom in on the second image, the letters created this cool effect with the color under them. I had to make the cipher font really small because the spaces between the letters looked kind of inconsistent if they were any larger.

For my second assignment, I chose to try doing a book cover design.

Apocalyptic Alternative Book Cover

I’ve never really done any formal design projects like this, so I thought it would be interesting to try this. I hope I’ll get to learn a thing or two about what colors I should choose, what appeals to the audience etc. I think that this could go in soooo many directions: supervillains, killer robots, maybe even zombies!

Can’t wait to try it out!

Assignment #3 – Memes = Art?

Hi everyone!

Memes are a form of self expression, much like many other renowned artworks, so why is there such a hesitance when it comes to acknowledging them as art?

Something we covered in one of my other classes was that throughout art history, creating and owning art was often a symbol of class and status. A working class artist would have to try 10 times harder to succeed thanĀ  his upper class counterpart!

That’s part of why I think that there’s such a controversy over recognizing memes as art. On one hand, you’re expressing your self (the textbook definition of what art is considered to be), but on the other, everyone’s doing it, so does that negate it’s artistic quality? Does that make it less special?

I always liked this piece by Duchamp, because I considered it to be the very first meme:

L.H.O.O.Q (1919) depicts theĀ Mona LisaĀ with a moustache, and the text is an abbreviation of the phrase “elle a chaud au cul”, meaning “she has a hot butt”. Basically, it was a part of the Dada movement, which emphasized the humorous and nonsensical things in life.

Memes are basically the seasoning of our lives. We can express how we feel, infer how others feel, and relate to each other in this way. I can say I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by this year:

Ā  Ā 

But looking through memes online always put me in a better mood:

Ā  Ā  Ā 

On top of everything, I get to make memes for homework!

Soooo, are memes art? I definitely think so. Art is subjective. I believe that it can be anything that you want/consider it to be, and anyone can be an artist; but that’s just my opinion.

Assignment #2 – Sooo Many GIFs!

Last semester in my advanced sculpture class, I made a very good friend.

She is currently a CT major, and was telling me about what her classes were like. She said that they do coding, web design and animation, which sounded very interesting to me!

She recommended that I take CT 101, and told me that it was a lot of fun.

My first impression of this class was that it would be very exciting, but I was still a little nervous at the time because I had never really done anything like blogging or creating content like this online before.

Picking out a video to create my first GIF was a little nerve-wracking because there was so much to choose from!

….But 20+ GIFs later, here we are!

 

Assignment #1 – Internet Happiness!

Yahallo everyone!

Since its release in 2013, one of my favorite series, hands down, has been Oregairu.

My Teen Romantic Comedy Is All Wrong (or Oregairu for short) is a Japanese light novel, anime and manga series created by Wataru Watari. It follows the story of Hikigaya Hachiman, a loner who gets roped into joining his schoolā€™s Service Club along with two other girls. They solve the problems of the people around them and begin to grow closer to each other in the process.

I grew more and more interested in the series because of how well-written and relatable the characters were, especially the main character, Hachiman.

With the light novel completed in April and manga still ongoing, the anime entered its final season this summer. Because of how busy this semester has been, I didnā€™t have a chance to catch up on the final seasonā€™s episodes until a few nights ago.

Despite the character facial animations being a little wonky this season, one of the undoubtedly best animated moments was the rap battle scene. It definitely caught me by surprise, and now I canā€™t count how many times Iā€™ve re-watched it!

Hikigaya has since then been fondly dubbed by the anime community as ā€œone of the top ten rappers that Eminem was too afraid to dissā€.

Check out the video below! šŸ˜€