I began the semester of CT 101 by focusing and motivating myself to complete each weekly task in a timely manner. Despite falling behind on blog post #5 and failing to complete it, I’m still doing well in class. I felt like the task was too long and difficult, and I was unmotivated to do it. I’m confident that I’ll get back on track and complete all of my tasks in a timely and innovative manner. 

I believe I am maintaining an A+ in CT 101 because I follow all of the requirements and go back to improve my material as needed. My blog posts have animations and explanations as well. 

https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/assignment-1-happy-on-the-internet/

https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/assignment-2-gifs-and-communication/

https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/assignment-4-to-meme-or-not-to-meme/

https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/assignment-4-ds106-assignment-repository/

The most essential thing I learned was how to be more expressive and vibrant by producing appealing gifs and memes. So far, digital storytelling has been my most valuable learning asset in this class because it requires successful technology integration and learning. 

The new skills I have developed, cultivated, and displayed regularly in my posts are using animations to convey and express my point of view. 

I would rate my participation, commenting, and discussion for Ct 101 an A+ because I always leave comments under my classmate’s blog. During Ct 101 class I always pay attention to the instructor and ask questions if I am confused. I also always participate by completing the weekly assignments. 

I didn’t know the process of creating a gif before taking this class, I thought it was more complicated, I can now create memes and gifs. 

Yes, I see my weekly blogging work expand creatively because I have more ideas on how to execute the assignment and I have a better understanding of creating digital content. 

https://giphy.com/search/i-got-this

I found two awesome projects to do.

The first project was a dream visualization. This project is simple, you just have to take a recent dream or nightmare you’ve had and make a visual representation of it for others to see. Dreams fascinate me, I love telling people about dreams I have and analyzing why I had such dreams. So that’s why I liked this project. I’m not really good at visual art such as drawing or even digital art I would say. I would need to learn how to shake that mindset off and to put my dream into a visual representation. I would probably go do this project digitally. I do think that making art in any physical form is important for your mind to express its feelings and such. I could see myself doing this project multiple times when I have vivid dreams.

I certainly think that we should do these types of projects a couple of more times this semester. These projects allow you to use the skills you have, to think outside the box, to develop new skills, to learn new tools to create stories, and to overall improve your storytelling. Storytelling is very important for everyone to explore because everyone has a story to be told.

The project that I had the skills to do was the music mashup project. For this project, I had to pick any two songs and combine them to make one song. At York I took music production classes so, I knew what to do. Making music and listening to it is a favorite that’s why I liked this project. I was very excited about this one thus, I choose this one to complete.

So for my music mash-up project, I used GarageBand to mix up the songs. I first had to find mp3 versions of the two songs I wanted to use. The two songs were Come Through and Chill by Migues and Midnight Blues by Umi.  I took snippets of each part I wanted to use and I aligned each part up so the timing would match. It took some trial and error but it finally sounded how I wanted it to sound.

Here is the final product! Enjoy 🙂

There is a lot I have been through, from the day I was born and where I’m from. And I could extend and extend myself talking about it (I actually did but delete it). When I know how alive I’m is not when I’m having fun. Is when I’m deep down in depression or when something bad happen.

When I started using this page, I just put disco music on and started to think back to those times when I was happy. To see what were those memories that I really enjoy. As I was thinking of those memories, all of those memes and stuff I used to watch begun to hunt me. I tried to put it together, but it was so disorganized even in my thought. When I did start, it became much easier. I know which background I needed to use, and the chaos monkey gave it to me. It completely set the vibes. I remember having this video as my waking up alarm. Just the sounds make me cringe a little, but I finally laugh listening to it. I was so young back in high school. It was really those little things that I enjoyed the most.

The website I created is called “Rango” is the nickname I use for everything. I love how easy it was for me as I finally put the first few images. It was disorienting, but little by little it does start to make sense. I did have a total other idea before I started, but I’m happy with the result.

Before I begin this, I won’t be using that many images for this. I’ll only be doing one. Please understand that I’m doing this out of respect.

I’ve been doing…moderately well in this class. At least, I feel that to be the case. I’ve only missed one assignment, and that’s only been due to my mental health and personal health getting in the way. Speaking of which, I think I went from a solid “A” to a “B.” Luckily, I was able to do one of the two assignments I was missing.  It’s a steady process. (I’ll put a list of hyperlinks at the end of this post). I definitely need to improve on my participation, both in class and in the comments. My issue with participating in the class is that I don’t really feel the need to speak. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always willing to answer questions about how I’m doing personally, but there are never any questions that feel related to the subject of class. Maybe that’s too hyperbolic of a statement to make. For comments, however, that’s entirely my fault. Simply put, I tend not to comment because of poor time management. That included with the notion of me not caring enough to do so—the latter reason not being a good one. Perhaps the lack of care came from my mental issues.

Academically speaking, I’ve learned to make memes, gifs, inputs for faster functions (screenshot, hyperlink, etc.), and other websites for creating websites. While those are good things to learn for my career, I find that this class teaches me more psychological lessons and habits. For example, this class has taught me that being consistent with work does not have to come at the expense of my health. Meaning, I don’t have to, nor should I overwork myself to the point of burnout.  I reference this class specifically because of its fluid work system. Said work system has also helped me with time management. While not perfect, I’ve learned to make compromises with my workloads. The most significant aspect of this fluidity being acceptance. Acceptance of making mistakes. I have a hard time accepting my flaws, as do most people. Yet, this class has a more lenient feel to it. Our professor is incredibly understanding when it comes to learning styles as well as just life in general. He understands that unexpected things happen, which has led me to question my morals about work ethic.

I feel my work for this class is rather stale creatively. It has passion and emotion behind it, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily creative. Begrudgingly, I answer the questions that are provided to me without getting too off tangent or too “creative”. Making the visual aspects is where I tend to get the most “creative.” However, I wish I had more of a hand for drawing, pixel art specifically. Maybe I’m just a tad bit disappointed in my lack of control of the gifs appearance. As of right now, I do not have the time to learn how to make pixel art. So alas,  I’m stuck in my limited creativity.

What am I to do then? Well, I did get into this class for storytelling purposes. Perhaps I’ll tell some stories! While I can’t think of anything on the spot for today, I have another treat for you guys. I’m going to share one of my very first written works on the internet. It’s incredibly embarrassing compared to my current work, but that’s a good start for this new work method.

(After looking at all of my posts, I’m realizing I’m missing #3. I could’ve sworn I had done it)

/document/d/1mJ8xH1GYQWzV8eGyg5A_h1xGoaWBAqvFjHV_d6pDY1E/edit

Previous Posts:

Assignment #5- Creative Challenge

Assignment #4- Memes and the Art Scene

Assignment #2- GIF Tales

Assignment #1- What is making me happy on the internet?

In the beginning of the semester: 

I have learned so many things so far in this class. So now:

→How am I doing in CT101? Honestly, I think I’d do better in CT101 if I was a creative person. I do not think I am overall a creative person. I am someone who is good at following instructions and get an assignment/task done by the due date it has to be done. CT 101 is a great class, in fact one of the best classes ever. So, while answering this question, I would say that I am doing great in terms of attending the zoom sessions, completing each assignment weekly following Professor Ryan’s instructions on each particular assignment. But, the quality of my assignments could be better only if I was a more creative student.

→What grade do I believe I am maintaining and what evidence shows my assessment?  (List each completed blog post as a hyperlink and also state what assignments you are missing)

I believe, actively participating in all the zoom sessions and completing assignments on a weekly basis, I am maintaining an A- so far. I do not think I am maintaining an A because my creativity is not that great. I did not miss any assignment so far:

Assignment#1

Assignment#2

Assignment#3 

Assignment#4

Assignment#5

→What have I learned the most? What is my greatest learned asset in this class so far?

I have learned several useful things from CT 101 so far. Not only course materials, but also life hacks that can be useful for me in the long run as a student. “Digital Storytelling” course made me realize how creating art like GIFs, memes can also be meaningful. While completing the assignments in this class so far, I have had to read articles assigned by Professor Ryan which gave me insights into how GIFs started their journey as internet breakers. I got to know that there are so many people passionately working as GIF and MEME makers by maintaining their own exhibitions. I loved it. It made me realize once again that it’s never the wrong choice to follow your heart and do what you actually want to do with the potential you have. I don’t think I’d ever think so deeply about how GIFs and MEMEs can bring so much into someone’s life if I didn’t enroll in this class, honestly. We only see them as the options to send to a friend and laugh at it together. But I never thought of it this way that there are people out there who are creating and submitting these for us to use and communicate. I think this is the best asset CT 101 has given me so far. I learned to make GIFs and MEMEs on my own, how to decorate blog posts, how to think deeply while answering assignment questions. From the blog posts of my classmates, I have noticed various thinking capacities of each individual. Another important life hacks this class has taught me so far is that, it is equally important to stay mentally healthy to be a successful student. So, all the academic pressure that we all take upon us will result into zero if we cannot stay well both physically and mentally.

→What new skills have I developed, cultivated and displayed regularly in my posts?

Professor Ryan taught us the basic skills to organize a meaningful, educative blog post. He taught us skills which I did not have before taking this class. Hyperlinking texts, images, making GIFs, MEMEs. He introduced us to different sites like Photopea.com, Pixabay.com, etc to manipulate images so that they can be used for the purpose of a particular kind of assignment. On my posts I regularly hyperlink texts and images. I use imageries to better express my thoughts and ideas. I keep in mind to maintain an eye-catching format for each of my assignment posts. Being able to use websites like imgur.com and giphy.com has helped me to have fun creating my own GIFs. For every assignment, I think of how can I be creative differently this time. It is difficult for me because I am less of a creative artist and more of a writer. But I read assignment instructions attentively so that I do not miss out on any part.

→Aside from publishing my blog post assignments, how do I assess my participation, commenting, and discussion performance in this class?

I regularly join the weekly zoom class sessions with my camera on. But I rarely comment on my other classmates’ assignment posts. But whenever I do, I make sure I have the time to read their posts attentively and make a relatively useful comment. I am looking forward to continue to do so. While in the zoom class, I answer to Professor Ryan’s questions if I think I know the answer. Before starting to do each week’s assignments, I go back to the zoom tutorial he posts.

→What do I know now that I did not know before taking this class?

I have learned the importance of the level of creativity, immediacy, intuition while making an art, or any creative piece. Together, these three elements can help us produce a unique material. I have learned several unknown facts by reading the articles assigned by Professor Ryan. Meme-maker Lauren Kaelin’s project “Benjamemes” sounds like a dream come true for any kind of passionate person towards their work. This class introduced me to various platforms that helps creative people expand and express their creativity. Professor Ryan introduced us to an awesome page named “DS 106 Assignment Repository” that has so many different options and categories to creatively complete different types of storytelling assignments. Platforms like the mmm.page can be great to extend one’s skill to be creative and express their imagination into a visible piece for others to enjoy. 

→Do I see my weekly blogging work expanding creatively? If so, please explain how –  or am I stuck in a loop where my posts seem to look the same most of the time, how will I change that?

As I have mentioned before, I am not that much of a creative person in terms of creating arts. Putting my imagination into an empty canvas and call it art will not be my best work because I don’t think I have the great potential to be an artist. I am more of a writer. So, when I look at each of the assignments for this class I have completed so far, I do not see my creativity expanded so much. I am following the instructions, answering all the questions and completing each part of each assignment. My posts do not look the same because each week we are working on different things like GIF, Meme, mmm. page etc.

CT 101 is a great class for every student. Students like me who are not that much creative at least gets to start or learn a journey into the world of images, animations, etc. The format of this class is different and creative than all the other classes. In this class we realize that there is a whole different universe of art. Artists live their lives creating art that not only they love themselves, but they spread their work for others to value it. Internet plays a major role here. Any individual using internet can connect themselves to a piece of art most probably created by someone they do not even know. CT 101 plays a major role by connecting and introducing students to platforms which were unknown to us before joining this class. This form of communication establishment can also be considered as an achievement. 

From the assignment bank I choose a visual assignment, specifically drawing a musical Puppet This assignment originated from Lynda Barry AKA “The Nearsighted Monkey”  

For this assignments the rules are

1. While watching the Tame Impala video “I’m A Man” 
2. make four separate drawings on a single piece of paper divided into quadrants. For each drawing you make, set a two-minute timer to tell you when to stop.
3.  Choose one of the band member puppets to focus your attention on and make your drawing about. 
4. Make each drawing in a separate pose. 
5. Do not stop the video while drawing! Try to capture the energy and motion in each of your drawings. 
6. Do a cartoon-style drawing, not a fully rendered fine-art work. 
7. Focus on capturing the essence of the character in each different pose.
8. The whole project should take a total of 8 minutes which means you can only watch the video a total of two times. 

I decided to change the original foot -print of the assignment and to make it more visually appealing to myself and the viewers. I decided to use color pencils to try and capture the color of the puppets to make it look more aesthetically pleasing and realistic to the real puppets. I also decided to add more time so I could have enough time to draw them. In addition I didn’t incorporate rule number six because I wanted to make the drawing as similar to the real puppet as I could. Also, In reality each drawing did take me 8 minutes for each muppet because I also added color, but I did only watch the video twice to make follow the rules.  

This is my image of one of the guitar players.

 I like this assignment because we got to choose what type of media we wanted to create for example visual, design, audio, video, mashup, writing, fanfic, and animated gifs. 

In order to complete this assignment successfully, something that I did was read the description of the assignment and look at some examples of how other students have executed the assignment just so I have an idea. In addition, I think I am pretty good at drawing. I don’t think for this assignment you need to necessarily know how to draw very well but it is an advantage if you do because you don’t have a lot of time to fix mistakes, and since these are moving images it is even more challenging to draw them. 

I think we should be doing these assignments weekly because they are very fun but I think the more I do them the better digital storyteller I become and then these projects become better and cooler than the last. I really want to see improvement in my  video and design skills. Sometimes I feel like I have some really good ideas in my head but executing them can be a real challenge for me. The first time I ever made a gif or a meme was because of this class and it was a really great project. I had a fun time thinking about all the different memes i wanted to create and how I was going to execute them in terms of which image I was going to use and what type of language and content I was going to use to make the viewer engaged and relevant and of course funny, it was all a lot of thinking but it was a fun process.  Also what really has inspired me and made me more interested in this class was the class work and projects of my class members. Everyone has such cool and funny ideas and I got to learn more about them and the things they like and find funny. 

Assignment #4- DS 106- FuN tImE

DS 106 has been one of the most exciting projects I have completed for CT 101 so far. It could seem easy, but it is challenging, especially when scrolling through all the options available on DS 106. Honestly, it took me a few hours going through all the projects posted on DS 106 website, as well as reading through them to see what looks engaging.

When I finally decided to choose the topic I would be working on. I realized that using photopea website was not an easy task. However, I looked over the zoom recording and some YouTube videos to get as many tips as possible when using photo pear. I can proudly say that I have learned a lot, and I would like to share them with you.

First, let’s discuss the number one part of the assignment. Using DS 106, I found an assignment called “Concert you want to be at.“. The details of this project require having access to any photoshop app, looking up your favorite concert picture, and a picture of yourself that you would like to merge with the concert photo to make it seems like you were there at the concert.

Once the concert photo and picture of myself are ready, I used the recommended edit website of photopea. The next step was to upload both images to the website. I cut myself of the picture using the magic cut button on photopea. You must carefully use this magic cut button to make sure you cut off all the background to get a clean version of yourself. You need to copy and paste the photos into the concert background to turn this magic into creative work. Once both images merge, we must adjust the added photo size to fit the concert audience and make it seem authentic using the free transform option on the website.

For the second part of the assignment, I chose a project labeled as “Hybrid“. The assignment asked to use and combine two or more animals or plants to create a new creature using GIMP or any other photoshop apps to connect the photos of the two animals into one.

However, as a kid, I’ve always thought about what if two different animals get married? What new animal would they produce? as I got older, I realized that was impossible, but photoshop allowed me to picture my childhood imagination. Therefore, I decided to choose a photo of a running cow and an angry lion. I used Photopea to cut the cow head off and replace it with the lion head. My next step was to use the size adjustment to minimize the lion’s head to fit the cow’s body.

I believe I have learned some significant lessons while doing these projects. Firstly, I can create my imagination and use the different apps to turn my imagination into reality. Secondly, I can say that I can now use different photoshop apps and shift my thinking into art.

It might have taken me some time to complete this assignment. Still, since I have the basic skills of cutting, pasting, and turning random photos into one picture, I would like to do as many assignments as possible. Having this type of project will Enhance my creative skills, develop better storytelling skills, and give me more inside knowledge about what to do when using photoshop websites.

These skills are indeed essential which could be used someday in the future. There might be some time my future employer will require me to create a poster that will include some information sessions which need to be creative, and of course, having these creative skills will make me an outstanding individual.

Its Mid-Semester Assessment Time!

Wow, here we are at the midpoint of our CT101 semester! Time… goes by waaaaaay too fast.. Lets take a minute to reflect, lets take a minute to regroup, lets induce a class reflection and stretch it through out this week.

**Important Info – This assignment should be completed and published by our next class meeting time**

*Zoom Recording / Tutorial from class on 10/19:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/sE4qRiSpJwZi_hBizpmzQH6DYKg7KRY4CPMPBB1nWQcOT6fA7Na_EiZnTGgv3pho.HvE-EIA-B2UYYJdd

Passcode: GGk3^mCg

Let us begin and ask ourselves the following questions, and reflect:

“How am I doing in CT101? What have I learned? What skills have I developed, cultivated and displayed regularly? How does the class format contribute to my weekly progress?

How do I measure my performance through self-reflection in this class?”

The measurement part is tangible and clear as we have been producing results over the last 6 weeks in the form of publishing our assignments through blogging, commenting on our classmates work, creating visual imagery and participating in our class zoom sessions.

Lets take stock on what we have accomplished and organize those tangible things into a new post – follow me below,

The CT 101 Course Schedule page is where everything is – this is the CT 101 HUB – this is the space where all the assignment criteria and learning details take form each week – (just in case you forgot) – this is also where you can recap and catch up on assignments. The CT101 homepage is where you can read and comment on your classmates work. The feed of posts is all chronologically ordered –  https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

The Mid-Semester Assessment post is assignment #6 – let us move down to the assignment details. 

Assignment Details:

In a new blog post titled; “The Mid-Semester Assessment Post”:

Please assess and reflect upon your last 6.5 weeks here in CT 101. Please answer and address all of the following questions below, and also provide a list of hyperlinks back to all of your completed blog posts. This will help illustrate some of the questions below as you tell this compelling story here in the CT 101 blog space: (of course, the use of imagery is helpful and needed but please don’t default to using too many GIFs or memes to fill in the gaps, the emphasis should be on the balance of imagery and the written word.)

Questions to include and answer:

How am I doing in CT101?

What grade do I believe I am maintaining and what evidence shows my assessment?  (List each completed blog post as a hyperlink and also state what assignments you are missing)

What have I learned the most? What is my greatest learned asset in this class so far?

What new skills have I developed, cultivated and displayed regularly in my posts?

Aside from publishing my blog post assignments, how do I assess my participation, commenting, and discussion performance in this class?

What do I know now that I did not know before taking this class?

Do I see my weekly blogging work expanding creatively? If so, please explain how –  or am I stuck in a loop where my posts seem to look the same most of the time, how will I change that?

Have fun with this! Feel free to include relatedness in the form of links, images, video or Make Something New to express how you feel about this post! 

**Important Info – This assignment should be completed and published by our next class meeting time**

Creativity with Digital Art

Creativity flows through my mind on a daily basis. Creativity is what helps people think of abstract things and it also helped in advancing towards the future. I can confidently say that I have a creative mind because it feels like a whole new world inside. My mind illustrates and provides an illusion of a world in which I am the main character. These thoughts are usually depicted from previous movies, videos or scenarios that happened in real life to cause my brain to begin working.

The most of my creativity comes from either superhero shows or musicals. My brain created two separate worlds where I can either be the vigilante who isn’t really a superhero, but has the “cool, bad boy” persona or a world in which is filled with music which is basically derived from High School Musical. Either way, my brain will often create these narratives and unique stories that is very hard to explain, but very interesting to contain. It’s been like this for years now and it still continues either after finishing a movie, or listening to music. The creativity flows through these activities and that brings me to the assignment.

For the assignment, it requires students to put their creativity to the test and translate it to digital artwork. Now I could have attempted to bring the illustrations my mind creates into the digital artwork, but it would take too long so I opted to focus on a future.

My mind instantly went to the basic thought process of what I really value and would want in the future. Automatically, my brain thought of a Cabin. For some odd reason, I really like the look of a Cabin. Even though, movies have depicted cabins as a dangerous place to live in. I am more of an introvert rather than extrovert so a Cabin would definitely resonate with me. I like the quiet, ominous feeling towards Cabins and I feel like it speaks to me more than the typical mansion. Also, during my thought process of what to focus on, I found stickers and stumbled upon a sticker of Michael Myers. I thought the clever thing to do was add the sticker of Michael Myers stabbing a pumpkin into the photo since Halloween is nearby and movies that often have Cabins are horror films.

The next photo I chose from Pixabay is a Money picture because in the future, I want to be successful. My definition of being successful deals with money. Money does not buy happiness, but it can dictate your life. I added a sticker that says “get rich or die blogging” only because it was a funny sticker to me and then I added a gif of an animated cartoon looking character holding money.

On the third photo which should have been first now that I think about it, I put family up there. Not family of my own, but the family that I have right now. They are the most important people in my life and I am still going to try my best to make them proud in the future. The sticker on the pic is the marvel character Deadpool making a heart sign with his hand.

After the pictures, I started checking the other tools. I learned that you could change the font and the colors and so that is what I did for the heading. Firstly, I moved around the heading and added a shape of a heart underneath. I then added random shapes next to the headline which I still can’t describe, but after turning the background page Black, I decided to just call it Stars. In terms of the Colors within the heading, I remembered during class about the discussion on “what’s your favorite color?” My favorite color is Red, specifically Dark Red just due to how it looks. I definitely favor the colors over the rest and I prefer it over the lighter Red. So in conclusion, this was my creation of dream future.

I am alive. I have survived every moment on this birth since my birth. Isn’t that amazing? When I think about that for a moment, it actually does feel like a miracle. What a pleasure it is to be alive on this universe! Or is it so? Who knows? I do not know. Living, laughing, loving. Repeat.

Above are the two screenshots of the page one I created as a tour to my daily imagination.

I am a simple girl. I love simplicity. In my imagination I am always in a calm and quiet place where only peace and love can be felt. On my first page, the picture on the center represents me. I close my eyes and remember that I have come so far. I am here for a reason and still breathing for a purpose. I am someone who feels too much and always searching for reasons of everything. I believe live, laugh, love has to be the motto for an ideal life. That makes me title my second page .

On my second page , I created a GIF on how should it feel like to be A-L-I-V-E. We should be looking for reasons to live, opportunities and of course search for happiness. I added a poem on simplicity from YouTube.

Turning my imagination into something creative is the biggest challenge I have ever accepted. It is impossible to visually represent everything we think, everything we imagine, everything that we are. No amount of sources will ever be enough for that. I decided to keep my pages simple, as I am myself.

This mmm.page platform seems like an amazing platform for starting to put our creative abilities into words, images, etc. The options for organizing everything is so helpful. I have worked on my laptop for this assignment. I tried to make use of all the options available on the platform.

A challenge that I’ve seen everywhere (Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) is “Drawtober.” I don’t know why, but October seems to be the month for visual artists to thrive. “Drawtober”, is where you draw for the month of October, as the name would suggest. However, usually, they draw with a certain theme in mind, commonly something horror related. You are allowed to make your own challenge with your own theme.

I’ve held an interest in this challenge for a while now yet, one thing always holds me back: I can’t draw. Not to say that I haven’t tried to draw but I wouldn’t say I’m skilled at it. Yes Drawtober would be great practice but, I feel the most important aspect of the challenge is how the work conveys the concept of the day. So the first thing  that I could do for me to partake in this challenge would be to change it from “Drawtober” to something relating to writing. “Scribetober”, or something.

Other than that, I would make the theme of the month based off of RPGs (Role-Playing Games). I simply adore RPGs. Pokémon, Final Fantasy, Pesrona, Deltarune, all of them.  It would only be fitting to challenge myself with games that challenge every aspect of the player. I would have the daily themes refrence common traditions within the genre. The Hero/Heroine, the first dungeon, all of the classes commonly associated with genre, the possibilities are endless!

This challenge in particular builds the good skill of a working spirit. By that I mean that this challenge helps build a groove for working. A rhythm. No, what I’m describing is not time management. You could plan your day out to be the most productive it could possibly ever be but, that doesn’t you can keep it up throughout the week. This challenge helps with that. Something that I could definitley practice more.

After the week I’ve had, this is necesary. It wouldn’t be that hard either. Just a my computer and time. That’s it. I need to work on feeling comfortable with other people. But, I’ve realized that I’m not really comfortable with myself. Hopefully this fixes that.

I browsed through every section of the  DS106 Assignment Repository.  The first one that really caught my attention was this Nike Run GPS Map.  The purpose of this assignment is to create an image by running. The GPS will track your run and create an outline of the area you ran in. I’ve seen this done on Facebook many times. I’ve seen people create animals and even purposing using this “running art.” It seems like a fun way to get your cardio in.

However, I do not have the endurance to do this type of art. It’s complex and it hurts my head thinking about how people use the city grid to create an art piece.  I’ve never done something like that before. It’s definitely something that requires a lot of planning. When I think of CT101 I only think about a screen and I thought this was a neat way to incorporate the “outside environment.”  Here is an article show casing some examples as well as how long it took to complete them. I can barley run for 10 minutes without feeling like I am dying. I will have to pass on the physical torture.

Another assignment that really caught my attention was a digital facelift on money.  It looked like a fun assignment to do. The assignment requires that you reinvent the dollar bill by giving it a face makeover.  I have never used photoshop and was intimated by the thought of it. I wanted to push myself a little out of my comfort zone and give it a try. The assignment said to not limit yourself to American currency. So I put my own twist on it. I am indigenous to Ecuador and decided to use the currency sucre. This currency is no longer used and Ecuador now uses American currency.

To show homage to the old currency I did a mashup of the two. Pictured above is a an American dollar bill with the face of an angel that would be found on the one sucre bill. I created it using photopea and I hope to improve my photoshop skills in the future. This assignment forced me to use photoshop but it was also very beginner friendly.

I think we should definitely have more assignment like these. It gives you creative freedom and you get to improve your editing skills and knowledge. This assignment was a warm up and I hope to grow my skills more and more with each blog post. In doing so you are no longer limited to images you can only find online. When you tell a story you can tell it and show how you visualize it. It can be anything you want it to be and that’s what makes storytelling special.

Do I think meme is art? Hells yes.

I already knew my answer was going to be yes when Prof. Seslow introduced this assignment to us but I was curious to see what popped up on google when I searched, “meme is art.” The results were oddly satisfying to look at because when I looked at the images that related with the search, everything looked so familiar. I was not lost nor did I feel like an outcast for not recognizing anything.

The goal of art is to express a person’s truth, and if the purpose of art is art, then memes fit the bill. As an example, consider the works of art exhibited on the Internet as cultural icons. After watching,

Mike Rugnetta, the host said, “But wait, people are creating images and sharing them with strangers for the purposes  of communicating their personal experiences? That my friends, is art, plain and simple.” I couldn’t have agreed more with this statement. 

Memes have gotten me through my days when I wasn’t able to articulate my feelings through my own words. It helps people describe past memories and experiences they had with people in their life. When you share it with your followers on instagram  you see the instant connections with people you don’t even know.

… I thought I’d join the revolution of art by creating my own meme. Yes, I know its not like the cool animated ones but trust the process!

I have been using gifs with my friends for a long time now and we have them ready to send while talking about anything. From all of the choices on  ds106 assignment blank, I picked one in the animated gifs section.

I can relate to this a little because the NBA season started back up and while in a conversation with my friends we were sending each other gifs of random basketball plays. I thought of these block Lebron James did and thought to include them in this assignment.

This is one of the many blocks that Lebron James has done but I like this one a lot because this was during the 2016 finals where, in my opinion, he played one of his best series and it was the only time that a team has ever come back from a 3-1 in the finals to win the championship.

This was another block that he did which was in the same series and the trophy getting blocked away from the opposing team (Golden States Warriors) is Lebron James denying the repeat win for them and taking the win for himself and his team.

Another assignment that I find interesting is Profiles of ds106 Super Heroes. 

The idea for this assignment is very simple and its something I can write about. Since I have been learning front-end this assignment will take 20-30 minutes to do finish and it will take about one or two projects for me to be comfortable with this concept and it is something anyone can pick up. The tools needed to make a simple page about superheros requires the use of basic HTML/CSS which is very easy to pick up in my opinion. For someone going into software development I think the skills used for this are important as you go more in-depth learning about HTML/CSS.