Matthew Danquah – CT101 Digital Storytelling

END OF SEMESTER POST

Welp I guess its about the time guys. The end of the semester is upon us and it is time for our final posts. WHEW. Let me just start off by saying that I’m extremely thankful to Professor Ryan for recording all of the class meetings on zoom. I think I speak for us all when I say that without out them, we would all be TOAST. It helped me a lot throughout this course and kept me in the know whenever I felt like I was getting a bit confused.

Me learning how to use software’s and applications like photopea, giphy, make a meme was an absolute blast. My absolute favorite of them all was definitely Photopea and giphy. I’ve never used photoshop before this course but its actually really intriguing and fun.

You can change so many things and put your own spins and twists on an image without even breaking a sweat. I can definitely see myself using photopea for other projects in the future. Giphy was just so much fun to use. I have always been a lover of gifs because there’s one for literally every emotion/reaction. How could you not love it?

Also I enjoyed most of all in this class is that I was able to let my sense of humor show more and put myself in a different position than I was used to. At first I was afraid that my posts wouldn’t be entertaining or thorough enough, but as time went on I got more and more comfortable and just let myself be. Not many courses out there enable their students to unleash the creative parts of themselves, and I will always remember this course for being an outlet to us.

I’m not exactly certain when I’ll need to use the skills that I learned in this class again, but one thing I do know is that I will definitely know what I’m doing . I’m sure that it’ll be way easier for me in the future.

In my humble opinion, I believe that I have earned myself a B in this course. Although I was a bit behind on a few of the blog posts, I got up, dusted my shoulders off and pushed forward the way I know how. I was determined not to disappoint myself or the professor because I actually truly enjoy this course, and wanted to prove it to myself that I could go against the tides and finish all of posts before the deadline. The passion and the drive that I put into all of my blog posts for sure earned me B.

Building my own website was an all around humbling experience. When I first heard about it in my mind I thought “It can’t be that bad right?” boy oh boy was I wrong. There’s so many things that I wanted to do that I didn’t get to execute because I was short on time and overwhelmed. Also WordPress wasn’t cooperating with me the way I needed it to so I kinda just let it do its own thing. I wanted to be very specific with the placements of everything but I was having troubles.

In all honestly I’m a tad traumatized and don’t think I will be doing anything like this anytime soon

awkward get me out of here GIF by Talk Stoop

On a brighter note, I made the logo to my website myself using good ole photopea, and I’m extremely proud with the way it came out on the website.

The link to my website is here. I wanted it embody the look of a pocket dimension. A visualization of all my interests and my personal favorite color palettes. I wanted a general peaceful and aesthetic vibe for my website, and hopefully I was able to achieve that.

Welp folks, I guess this is the end of our time together. It’s been real *wipes tears*

Customizing My Website

I have been working really hard on putting together what I had envisioned for my website. It’s a lot more difficult than I expected, and things aren’t really going my way but I’m going to keep pushing! For my website design I took inspiration from Solange’s website. I wanted my website to mainly consist of brown tones, and neutral colors.

I played around with quite a few themes until I found one that best suited what I was looking for. The colors are a big part of the website for me so I mostly focused on that more than anything else. I also made my own logo for the website using Photopea which was a lot easier and smoother than I thought it would be.

Domain Name Registration!

I am ready to get to work and register my domain!!! I made absolute sure to follow along with the zoom recording very diligently because I was deathly afraid of pressing onto something that I wasn’t supposed to.

The very first step was making my way over to the sign up page, and checking the availability of my domain names. I decided to go in with my favorite among all of the ones that I had came up with: intotheorbit.net

I was kind of nervous that somebody might’ve had a website already named after my idea, but thankfully it was available. I wasted no further time with the process and put all of the information in as requested.

After I had all of the information filled out and situated, I made my way over to Reclaim Hosting and did a bit of browsing to get a clearer understanding of it. Overall the process was pretty easy and it was a breeze following along.

Picking A Domain Name

Animated GIF

I have quite a few ideas for a domain name, but I’m not sure which one will have the biggest impression.

I’ve never done anything like making my own website before so this is certainly challenging. Here are some of my ideas for a domain name:

myaquaticpeace: I’ve always considered water to be such a powerful force. It literally brings life to people as easy as it can take it. I also find peace in the ocean.

seveleven: With my middle name being Seven, one of my nicknames was sev, or seven eleven, and I wanted to find a way to combine those two

brightstarlight: I have the name starlight in most of my social media handles so I just wanted to find a way to incorporate it here. It’s also named after one of my favorite songs

intotheorbit: Ever since I was a kid I was always fascinated with the concept of space so this is kind of an homage to that.

On my website, I want to include all of my interests in there. such as music, anime, books, african folklore etc. I want in to sort of be an aesthetically pleasing look into my brain and the things that I like. I’m a bit nervous as to whether or not I’ll be able to properly put together a website. I don’t want it to look unpleasant to the eye so I’m going to give it all that I’ve got.

Assignment #7 – The Mid-Semester Reflection Post

WELCOME TO MY MID SEMESTER REFLECTION POST THAT ISN’T REALLY A MID SEMESTER REFLECTION. On a serious note! I’ve been working OVERTIME trying to juggle all 5 of my courses but the workload got the best of me.

I have to admit that I haven’t been consistent or up to date with this course as much as I should be, but I’m certainly determined to get ALL of my posts up ASAP. With just one day before the deadline, I’m working like my life depends on it (it kinda does *nervous laugh*)

What I’ve learned and retained the most during this course is how to effectively using images and memes to help tell my story rather than simply using my words. I definitely think that my ability to find the right pieces of media to support my posts has been displayed regularly within all of my blog posts so far. As someone who doesn’t post on social media or share much about myself publicly, this course was an absolute blast that pushed me to be a bit more vulnerable than usual. I must say my storytelling skills have surely leveled up

What I now know how to do is photoshop using photopea! I have never used any sort of photoshopping software at all in my life, an although it was quite challenging to understand at first, I can proudly say that I got the hang of it. I honestly had no clue that you could do so many things with just a few clicks of a button. I feel that I deserve at leassssst a B in this class. I may not have been fully present in the class weekly, but I put my mind to completing all of the blog posts no matter how much sleep I lost. I think my passion and my drive is what matters most here.

Assignment #6 Digital Immediacy

When reading the assignment for this post, I had to think deeply about the questions being asked to me. I usually do a lot of self reflection, so I wanted to dig deeper and find an answer to these questions that felt right to me.

Being alive to me means to have complete inner peace. So often in this world, it’s very easy to get lost within all of the tragedy and sadness that it can become suffocating. We also tend to bombard ourselves with the expectation of others and allow ourselves to get caught up in how other people perceive us, at some point you just have to step back and think about what makes YOU happy, and what bring YOU peace. As long as you have peace in your mind, then nobody can intercept that fortress. A song that truly embodies that feeling of peace and being alive to me is Good Days by SZA, which heavily inspired my project.

When I think of peace, I think of sitting at the beach and listening to the music that your surroundings make. The sound of the waves crashing upon the shore, the seagulls squawking up high, and the bustling of the wind.

I want to share peace and some type of enlightenment to the word in some way. I feel like what holds me back is that I see myself as this small speck in this huge world and tend to doubt myself and the impact that I could make if I decided to step out of myself and help others.

I decided to use figma when curating this particular project. I liked how it gave me more freedom and space to play around with the images and layer them in different ways to get the right vibe. Speaking of layering, that was the one thing I had the most trouble with.

This here is my final product and I know its not perfect, but I’m actually really proud of what I came up with. At some points I wanted to give up, but I kept pushing. I did not want it to be too crowded because I wanted there to be more of a focus on the setting. My vision was to encapsulate areas where I think I’d feel most peaceful.

Assignment #5 DS106 Story Telling

The project prompt that I gravitated towards was the “Populate The Landscape” Assignment. I wanted to put different images together to portray a certain theme, and put my storytelling skills to the test.

So I decided to actually use TWO bob ross paintings for my assignment. One that’s dark, and the other being relatively bright. I did this to make a clear contrast within my creation.

I then went ahead and used Photopea to take the two paintings, and put them side by side to visualize the juxtaposition that I wanted to convey.

The two characters that I chose the Populate the landscape are Madoka and Homura from one of my favorite anime’s: Puella Magi Madoka Magica. This anime was released in 2011, and animated by shaft studios.

This here is the finished product. I took inspiration from puella magi madoka magica and I wanted to encapsulate how the two characters differentiate from each other. The anime is based around magical girls who fight witches. Their souls are extracted from their bodies and put into soul gems once they make their wish to become magical girls. However once their soul gems become completely tainted they turn into witches, the very thing that they fight against. Madoka’s selfless wish turned her into a godlike entity, and Homura’s selfish wish turned her into a demonic entity. I used the bob ross paintings to capture their essence as characters.

What Am I Passionate About?

I can wholeheartedly say that the first thing I thought of when reading the assignment for this post was MUSIC. I. LOVE. MUSIC. Ever since I was a kid I’ve always been drawn to music.

With that being said, I would NEVER consider joining the music industry or taking music seriously as a career because it is rough, and I’ve heard a lot of horror stories. So I decide to just sit back and appreciate the art that comes from it.

I was first introduced to music by my family of course. My mother as well as my siblings would always have music blasting throughout the house no matter the occasion.

First day of school? MUSIC

Christmas Eve? MUSIC

Family visiting from overseas? MUSIC

It was almost like it was a party in the house everyday. I started off listening to mostly gospel music due to my mother being a devout Christian woman. She always made sure we knew how much she loved the lord, and one of the main ways she did that was through music. Waking up to “The Battle Is The Lord’s” By Yolanda Adams (my mom’s favorite singer), meant that it was cleaning day and everybody needed to WAKE UP

Now my personal favorite genre of music is undoubtedly R&B. The genre that mostly consists of enchanting melodies, and lyrics that tug on your heartstrings. It was one of the many genres played around me growing up, but it was also the genre that I became attached to, and continued to keep up with. When I begin to feel overwhelmed by school or other things going on, I just turn on some R&B to keep myself calm and it works wonders.

Are Memes Art?

Despite the frivolous nature of memes, I truly believe that they are modern forms of art. Dating all the way back to pre-historic times, Art is something that has been used to convey all kinds of emotions and tells many stories. Does that sound familiar to you? That is exactly what memes are used for. Memes are a form of expression for many, and can sum up a story in just about a few words and a single image. They’re able to perfectly encapsulate the emotion that a person could be feeling, or serve as a spot on reaction to something.

For example:

Just these few memes show so many different emotions.

Memes are something that won’t be leaving the presence of the media anytime soon and will continue to evolve as time progresses. I don’t believe that this will necessarily be a bad thing for are because this is simply just one form of it. The traditional forms of art still exist and are still appreciated in today’s society. If anything, memes have enhanced the way people communicate. Sometimes when words aren’t enough to do your feelings justice, there’s a perfect meme out there that speaks for you perfectly.

HOWEVER… just like everything else in this world, there can be a bad side to memes

During my time on the internet, I have definitely seen people try to make memes out of genuinely tragic situations that should not be made fun of. Some people do go out of their way to be insensitive, using memes as their tool to do so. Yandy Smith, a reality tv personality and entrepreneur has fallen victim to this. While out peacefully protesting , Yandy was attacked and pepper sprayed by the police.

The internet thought it was okay to use this picture of the incident as a meme for whenever they feel distressed or are expressing hopelessness:

On a lighter note, I’d like to share some memes that make me laugh :

I had plenty of fun coming up with ct101 based memes. Here are some of the many than I had an absolute blast making:

GIF Narrative Post

About a day after the semester began while frantically looking for classes to put my schedule together, I stumbled upon this class. I wondered what digital storytelling really meant. I made my way to “rate my professor” in an attempt to get some insight on what kind of professor Ryan Seslow was like. Luckily I only saw good things.

On the first day of class I was impressed by how Professor Seslow was able to connect with the class. Most professors don’t even bother getting to know their students, so I was interested in how this class was going to go. Especially knowing that creative freedom is encouraged through the course of this class.

I enjoyed hearing about the course and it’s creative content. I was excited that we would be using a completely different program other than blackboard because I quite frankly find it to be tedious to use at times. I nearly broke into song

Well apart from the one thing that we are all relieved about which is not having to deal with boring long-winded essays and discussion boards, ct101 compared to my other classes actually pushes me to share the creative part of myself. It also allows me to give others a look at my sense of humor and interests.

The creative potential of this class was more than I initially thought. My mind was blown when I learned that we would be doing assignments in the form of blog posts, and also creating our own websites. All the creative ideas I was envisioning sent my brain into overdrive.

I am completely open to learning skills that utilize internet tools. This new generation of technology is rapidly advancing, and I want to learn more about it if I can. I’ve always been fascinated by electronics and the way they work so this is familiar ground for me.

Assignment #1: What’s Making Me Happy This Week

Hello everybody, what’s been making me happy this week(as well as my entire childhood) is none other than the amazing and absolutely hilarious, Keke Palmer.

Keke Palmer is an actress, musician, dancer. My introduction to Keke was through her first leading role, “Akeelah and The Bee”. I also grew up watching her play as True Jackson in “True Jackson VP”, among many other iconic roles in movies and tv shows. This show was very important to me because during its time it wasn’t common for a black girl to be leading her own show also while unapologetically being herself.

This week I’ve been indulging in her YouTube channel and binging a whole bunch of her content dating from years back. What’s been having me laugh until my stomach hurts from her channel is her self produced comedy series “That’s The Gag”

“That’s The Gag” is a parody coded, Mockumentary style web-series that is very loosely based on Keke Palmer’s experiences as an actress. In this show Keke is now seen as a washed-up actress who can no longer book gigs the way she used to. She desperately tries to revive her career through many useless attempts that will leave you rolling on the floor.

As unserious as it was, I was fully entertained till the very end.

Another thing that has been making me happy this week is Ice Spice and PinkPantheress’s unexpected but extremely well received collaboration, “Boy’s A Liar pt 2” released not too long ago. This song has been on repeat since I found it. I love music that sounds experimental and does well with mixing genres, so I’m pleased with this collaboration.

Author: Matthew Danquah