#brassey

When I was 18 years old, I was very lucky after I graduated because I got to take my first cruise for my senior trip. Naturally, because it was my family, we went on a Disney cruise. We spent a week in Orlando visiting Disney World and Universal Studios. Then we spent a week on the water hitting four ports in the Caribbean. It was a trip and an experience I will never forget. I am beyond grateful for these memories and this time with my family, and storymap gave me the perfect way to hold onto those memories. -Erin Brassey

When I first created my portfolio, I was a freshman in college. I was still floating. I was unsure of myself and even more unsure of my goals. Well, more accurately, I was unsure of whether I could actually achieve them. Since then, I have grown in my skills, my confidence and my goals. I am ready to own that I want to work for a major fashion or lifestyle magazine like Cosmo or InStyle. My original portfolio was not up to representing the person I want to be from here on out. So I took advantage of this final project to redesign and rebuild my portfolio into something more representative of me and my goals. -Erin Brassey

I have hated history for my entire life, but I have learned to love the people who created the history. I think about and believe in all of the strong women in history both real and fictional. For me, a created character can be just as inspirational as a real person. These are all women who I have loved and looked up to throughout history. This was an interesting project because I took it a little differently. I took these women and presented them in chronological order. I think it was the perfect way to represent them because it shows how there are wonderful women at every moment in history. - Erin Brassey

I had a lot of fun making these comics, and I have come to realize they are both about the dogs I have had. It took a lot of trial and error trying to figure out how to use the platform. I do wish I had a little more control over the design of the characters. I kept finding a character I thought would work, but then there was something that wouldn’t work for who I was trying to recreate. For my first comic on kindness, I did a conversation I had with my boss over the summer about my dog being really sad when I would leave her to go to work. For my second comic, I did it on the story of how I got my first Corgi, Max. I was disappointed I couldn’t make him look more like Max, but it was fun to make. It was a funny story for my family that I love to think about. - Erin Brassey

When I first wrote this story it came out as a bit of a stream of consciousness that turned out to be very reminiscent of my childhood and a great vehicle for learning about all that Medium has to offer. For my illustration, I did a combination of edited photos and illustrator drawn images to create a collage of a lot of the things that I reference in my story. We had a big discussion about how to bring sound into stories, so I spent a lot of time trying to think about all of the ways that I could utilize sound. I tried to keep a bit of a soup theme to the links and videos I embedded. The last thing I wanted to do was to find one more way to pull it back into being a story about my interests growing up, so I created and embedded a playlist of the songs from Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows that I loved as a child. Now, they just make me feel happy and nostalgic just like soup does. - Erin Brassey

In May of 2020, I bought my first townhouse, and all I wanted to do was to grow a garden in the backyard. I grew up in a bit of an agricultural state where gardens and farms are seen all around. I am used tot his atmosphere and wanted to bring it to my new home. I quickly learned that it is very different gardening in Arizona as compared to Idaho. This is a little guide I put together based on research as well as the struggles I faced as a new gardener in this state.

-Erin Brassey

I have a big love for sunflowers, and lucky for me they play into my visual story just perfectly. I used splashes of color to create a movement across the main image in my gif. My word for my visual story is yellow, so I wanted to let the color speak for itself with these splashes of color as well as with the dramatic overtake of complete color at the end. I have a lot of experience in photoshop, but the animating is one thing I had never done before. It was great getting to learn something new as well as to play with a new way to present media. - Erin Brassey