Show & Tell

My Little Masterpiece

Tumblr deleted my last post JUST as I was about to hit “post,” so here I am, angry, and starting over.

I decided to use a photo of my dog Luna because, duh. She’s adorable. But! I took this photo of her at our cabin and I loved it.

I’m sad that I didn’t take one of what I saw behind me - if I had to describe it though, it would definitely look like this Unsplash photo. 

Lots of gorgeous pine trees, brush along the ground, but not too much, because we’ve firewised our house, and the beautiful sunlight filtering in through the trees. I decided to blend these two images together to simulate what we would see through Luna’s eyes in the original photo. She’s staring off into the distance, blatantly ignoring me, but she’s seeing something amazing, so I’m more than okay with that. 

Life’s More Fun Through Your Eyes

My dog, Luna, is absolutely crazy. Every day when I come home, she basically yells at me until I take her out of her mini dog run that she has inside so she can let her zoomies out and then snuggle with me for a while before we play an aggressive round of tug. Even though she spends the day digging holes and exploring the yard as she pleases, I like to think the highlight of her day is when I come home, because that’s definitely the best part of mine. For my Medium story, I decided to talk about dog training and how that has impacted our lives. When Luna was a puppy (and to this day, on occasion), she would bring HUGE sticks in through her tiny doggy door. Not just sticks - pieces of concrete, rocks, pieces of things from my dad’s garage (i.e. car parts), and more, plus the socks she’d steal from my room and bury outside. That last part hasn’t changed, unfortunately. I knew I wanted to take her to training classes so I could give her the best chance at socialization and all that good stuff since we didn’t do that with my last dog, and I was too young to know any better. I’m glad I was able to do right by Luna and develop a different bond through training - I hope you all enjoy this info!

The Future of Typography

My final project tied together one of my passions, Korean, and something new I had learned in this class, typography.

I knew from the day we watched that short Netflix documentary about typography and the art of design that my final project would somehow relate to this field. Taking what I learned and my own experiences with digital platforms I saw faults within modern typography. So many people have passions and academic focuses beyond just what occurs in the United States. For me, as of right now, my focus relates to media in both the United States and Korea. I always have thought about how the two continue to influence one another and what opportunities lie ahead for collaborations between companies and audiences. However, in order to accomplish this, compatibility between English and Hangul is crucial.

Typography is one of many arts and tools that can be utilized to benefit those who aspire to work in a field that must reach an audience consisting of different languages. My final project introduces the current downfalls of typography and provides what fonts and typefaces are currently available for multilingual users. 

While my project does not offer concrete solutions I hope to continue to research this topic and find new ways to apply typography to the ever changing world of intercultural media exchanges.

But First, Coffee!

For my final project, I wanted to breakdown the fast growing coffee industry in the United States. It’s crazy to think that over 400 million cups of coffee is consumed by Americans every day. I personally am not a huge coffee drinker but, as a barista, I see how coffee plays a role in people’s daily life. Coffee shops In my project, I included the history of the coffee industry in the US, how the opening of Starbucks played a huge role in the growth and simply why do coffee drinkers drink coffee. 

Once of my favorite parts of this project is that I had the opportunity to conduct a survey asking coffee drinkers why they drink coffee, what kind of coffee they drink and where do they get their coffee from. With the information I gathered, I was able to create a infographic highlighting my key findings. Overall, I enjoyed getting to dive into the coffee industry and see how social media and innovative coffee drinks and shops will continue the growth. 

I enjoyed every project and assignment I created for this class. It has introduced me to new softwares I hope to use in the future. I also enjoyed getting to see what everyone else creativity with our assignments. Thank you!

Butterfly 

For my medium project I focused on butterflies. All of last year it seemed as if I saw a butterfly everyday, if not that at least a few times a week. Leaving my house or walking around campus a single butterfly would flutter across my path and almost every time I would stop in my tracks.  

Originally I wanted to focus on the symbolism of butterflies but then I remembered my time at Butterfly Wonderland, an attraction here in Arizona attached to OdySea Aquarium. Before you enter the sanctuary for butterflies there is a short video played to watch the great migration of the Monarch butterfly. I was awestruck by their journey so I wanted to include that in my medium post as well.

I concluded my post by briefly addressing the metaphors and symbolic spiritual significance of butterflies and what I chose to interpret them as. I hope you enjoy, learn something new and perhaps consider what butterflies may represent in your own lives.

The Brief History of Coffee in the US

For my timeline, I wanted to highlight the history of coffee industry in the United States. It’s crazy to think how large the coffee industry is today, especially in our country. Most Americans love to enjoy a nice cup of coffee before they start their day. Just within 15 minutes from my house, I have a variety of coffee shops to choose from. 

When researching the origin of coffee, I was surprised to learn that coffee was founded accidentally by goat farmer Khaldi in Ethiopia. It was also interesting to learn that The Boston Tea party played a role in the growing popularity of coffee in the US. 

At first, the KnightLab software tool was a little tricky to navigate like having to grab links for images instead of pasting them in the spreadsheet box. Once I gotten the hang of it, the rest of the project was a breeze and quite fun to experiment with. I am excited to dive more into the booming coffee industry in my final project where I will include this timeline. 

Squiggles, Lines and Roundness

This assignment gave me the opportunity to mess around with Photoshop’s filters and some other random ones that I have downloaded and added to the program, which was really fun to delve into.

Squiggles -

For my squiggles picture I decided to go with this mess of cables and cords that are at the end of my living room, and went for a rainbow filter to go on top of this picture. The idea was definitely better than the result, as is with most of these pictures. With the light coming in from the window, I expected this filter to create a different effect, but instead it kind of spit colors all over the image.

Lines -

This picture for lines is one of my keyboard, with a white print filter placed over it. This one definitely came out the best, the lines around each of my keys turned into even more lines - and it was really interesting to see it come out with that. I really like how this filter ended up turning out.

Roundness -

For my roundness picture, I went with these water bottles (more specifically the tops of them). The filter I put on top is one to make images look a little plastic-y, if that makes sense. Kind of like a crushed water bottle. That’s why I thought it would look good over actual water bottles, although these ones aren’t crushed to maintain their roundness.

Storyboard That!

I was excited to create some Storyboards since I remember making them in my high school history class. Here are the two storyboards I created!

For my first storyboard, I created a random act of kindness story. This is a story of a woman who is running errands around town and is having a hard time getting through her day. She decides to stop by for a cup of coffee to find out the person in front of her payed for her drink. It is a classic act of kindness that can make any person’s day. 

For my second storyboard, I went a little creative and decided to do a commercial highlighting a mattress. I wanted to create a story board that used a variety of different backgrounds. The Wonder mattress is said to be so comfy that if transports you to the dreamiest places like a sandy private beach or below the vibrant northern lights. 

Disneyland Day Recap

For my GIf2 project, I wanted to showcase my most recent visit to Disneyland. I usually visit the resort at least once a year. My friends and I enjoy going on the rides and eating some of Disneyland’s famous treats. I don’t usually take a ton of photos of myself there which is why half of the photos from my gif are of my friends and I on the rides. 

I enjoyed getting to pick out my Disney photos to create this Gif. It was an easier Gif to create in comparison to my first one since I was familiar with creating gifs on photoshop. I just feel that this Gif perfectly summarizes a day at Disneyland with me. 

Blinding Lights

For my Gif assignment, I chose this photo I took last summer of the Dodger game in Los Angeles. I originally choose this photo because there are a variety of things happening that catch your eye from the sky to the fans in the stands. In the photo, the sun was beginning to set and the stadium light has just turned on. With this gif, I wanted to highlight the stadium lights since it sets the tone for the game once the sun sets. I chose to make the photo appear brighter due to the lights becoming brighter into the night. This gif was overall fun to create and showcases an afternoon baseball game at Dodger Stadium. 

A NYC Blend

For my blend, I choose to combined two photo I took on my recent from to New York City. I selected two photos from my trip that perfectly highlighted my trip. The first photo is the bagels my boyfriend and I had that tasted absolutely amazing. The second photo is of a block on the Greenwich Village neighborhood during the sunset. 

Creating the blend photo was fun and allowed me to play with the two photos. I would say the hardest part about it was deciding which photo should be the “background” photo. Having both images be the same size helped made the blending process easier. I enjoyed being able to create this blend. It allowed me to highlight two different days on my trip. Not only did it highlight my trip, it also highlights a glimpse into what the city has to offer. 

The Defining Battles of WW1

Hey everyone! For my storymap project, I once again decided to make something that will tie into my final project - so once again another thing about the First World War.

There were a number of large battles and small clashes throughout the war, so many that it can be hard to understand what was even happening. That’s why i created this storymap showing the different locations that the most important battles of the war took place, along with giving some context to each battle and how they changed the progress of the war.

Welcome to the Renaissance Festival

For my words added I wanted to use my time at the Renaissance Festival this year since it was such a happy memory for me. I used to go to the Renaissance Festival every year but as I got older I stopped going. This year my friends surprised me with tickets and we went together. I got to relive some of my happiest moments but as a young adult. Despite the horrible sunburn I loved every second.

For this assignment adding words to each layer proved a little challenging because the images did not have a consistent space that was either dark or light enough for the lettering to be seen so I decided to add a colored background behind the words so they could stand out. However the font I chose may make it hard to read so just in case,

Welcome to the Renaissance Festival

A magical place to hide in trees

Smile as you see a whole new world

Cast spells with bubbles

Duel your enemies

And always find joy and laughter

If you have never been to the Renaissance Festival, the turkey leg is always recommended… but from me: hidden in the back corner is a stand with flavored sorbet served in an orange and make sure to always leave with a bag of roasted cinnamon almonds.

King Froggy

Everyone, meet my son King Froggy. I knew I wanted to use photos of him for my second gif assignment but I had so many challenges to accomplish this small gif assignment. Every time I went to load these images in a stack my photoshop would crash, but I refused to change my idea because I wanted the chance to show off my little guy. So in the future if someone else faces these challenges I want to share how I was able to pull this off.

Once I was able to actually load my images in a stack I encountered yet another issue, none of the images were the same size. One image fit the screen but the rest only fit the corner and the gray and white boxes filled the rest. I tried to change the size of the images but it would crop out my face or my cat so that wouldn't work either.

So here is what I did:

(Warning this was a process but it worked)

-Load two images separately and arrange your workspace to see both at the same time (similar to the blend steps)

- Adjust each image to overlay evenly

-repeat this process with each image

-close out all other tabs leaving only the file with the even layers

-From here you can follow the gif steps and create a gif with the same sized images

Good luck to those that encounter challenges with photoshop. It usually ends with you working harder but in the end you will be an expert with overcoming issues in the digital world of photoshop.

Change In Filter

For this assignment I really enjoyed changing the style of the photo and turning the original into more stylistic pictures. My original thought would be to change the sharpness or perhaps the color but I ended up changing the style of the image itself.

For my first image I played it safe with the filter I used created a realistic painted finish over the photo. It doesn’t look like there is much of a filter as compared to the original one but to me there was an added depth. Especially if you look at the window and the sunset. The lines and dimensions are much sharper than what would appear in the original photo.

For my second image I ended up choosing a filter that clearly distorted the image from the original picture. I think this filter on this image was my favorite because it gave almost a 3D effect. When I saw it I couldn’t help but think of digital programs that create 3D animated art. It felt like I should be able to grab the image with my cursor and spin the building around.

My last image, the filter actually revealed an already existing filter I didn’t know was on the image I chose. I decided to use the mosaic filter because I think the affect it had on the existing filter. In the end the two filter worked together to create this piece of art that I feel like you could actually see being created as a physical art piece, like a mural, one day.

The Progression Of War

For my timeline, I decided to pick something that I could use parts of, or even all of it in my final project. That’s why I went with a timeline of the major events of World War I.

I couldn’t think of anything more fitting for a timeline than one of history. Why World War I? Because to this day it is still the most relevant war to our current situation. The entire world order, the 19th and 20th centuries have only been like they have because of this war.

World War I tore down entire ways of thinking, ideologies, and monarchies that stood for centuries. After nearly a century of relative peace, it was inevitable that war return.