August 18, 2009

This class is winding down and this last week's assignment sort of put an exclamation point on what it has been all about. We have learned a number of ways of producing content to add to the web with different formats such as blogging, creating cartoons, podcasting and creating videos. We learned about a number of services such as flickr and google sites for portfolios to add to our web experiences. Our final reading lesson sort of brought that all into focus how all these tools that are at our disposal are helping create the new web that has emerged created by and for the people.
I didn't quite know what this class was going to be about when I enrolled in this class, and I certainly got a lot more out of it than I was expecting. I look forward to practicing and playing a little more with the a number of the sites I have learned about and now are a member of.
I have compiled my portfolio, moving my resume and previous accomplishments to the top while including the class projects under those because my goal is to present this to an employer. I feel that it is much neater and a more professional presentation than I had before, and that, I hope, will help me find a new direction to take my career.

August 10, 2009 - Reflections

I used the Movie Maker program that comes with my pc. I had to do a find to get it, but once I did, it opened right up. I have to say it was easier than the AVS editor I used a couple of assignments ago, maybe it was just practice. This was fun, but a little frustrating when I found great art that I couldn't use because of copyright issues. Restricting my use to just those that required attribution was hard to find. I'm finally getting the hang of talking into the microphone (I think) and I can see lots of possibilities for this form of media. I would rather video or images I created in the future, just because I can get exactly what I am looking for without worries of copyrights.

August 10, 2009

I have collected all of my artwork off of Creative Commons, tracked down who to credit if need be, and written up my script. I have also played around with the movie maker that came with my computer, I'll try making this with that. It looks pretty straight forward. We shall see!

Aug. 8, 2009

Took a while to come up with an idea for this next project, but I'm kind of excited about this subject, since it is near and dear to my heart. It will also give me a chance to research the details and answer some of my own questions.

Form: (How: video)
Audience: (classmates, teacher and anyone else)
Topic: (How newspaper production has changed in the last 50 years)
Purpose: (educational)

Aug. 3, 2009 post reflections

I have to note, after viewing everyone else's comic strips and animation it is funny how the majority of the themes chosen were based on views about the other sex.

Aug. 3, 2009 reflections

The cartoon was a lot easier to create than the animation, for one I used predrawn illustrations and made three frames, whereas the animation was a bit more complicated trying to line up the timelines. The biggest problem I had was figuring out why my frog kept blinking on and of during the clip. It turned out that my original drawing had 5 frames to it, don't ask me how, I must have cloned it? Once I got that straightened out it worked. The drawing tools in this were pretty easy to use, they didn't magnet to another line and then straighten out like they do in Illustrator, so that was great. Being able to save these files as a swf (which I did) makes me wonder why any of us spend so much money on software for these features.

This was fun! I used DoInk, after a practice run with some reanimated props I decided to use the drawing tool and create my own. It was tricky figuring out how to get the drawings to overlap right to get the result I wanted, but it was close. This is the link to the DoInk site where my animation should be shared.
http://www.doink.com/clips/sweetcicely/464947

Aug. 3, 2009

Going to do the animation portion of my assignment now.

Form: (How: animation)
Audience: (classmates, teacher and anyone else)
Topic: (TDB)
Purpose: (humor)

I really can't come up with an idea yet until I browse through the art options available and then an idea (hopefully) will hit me. I chose DoInk because I liked the fact that at some point I can do my own drawing on this program. Here goes nothing!

Aug. 1, 2009

Cartooning is our next assignment. This is fun.
First off my FATP

Form: (How: Cartoon.)
Audience: (classmates, teacher and anyone else)
Topic: (man, woman)
Purpose: (humor)

I chose toondoo because it had an option to doodle, which I ended up not using this time, but I may in the future.

I drew out a stick figure sketch to tell a story in five frames, however I couldn't quite get the tools to do what I wanted my characters to do so I refined my story to 3 frames. I actually like it better than my original plan.

This is my toon.

by cicelyvt | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

Reflections

I used AVS Video editor, not audio, perhaps we weren't supposed to include video? None the less this was quite a learning experience. There are a lot of possibilities to create. I do know what I would do differently: I finally figured out how to edit video in the AVS rather than using Photoshop, this made the clips smaller in size, but in the end didn't make a difference in the size of the final movie. It must compress it.
It also took a little practice to use the microphone, discovered I had to talk directly into it. (I bought an external one). This was a huge file and it took well over an hour to load, so I need to figure out how to make it smaller next time. I have to admit it was a lot more fun than I expected.

A Day in the Garden

July 27, 2009

Been looking for artwork through CC, and I 'm finding there just isn't anything to my liking on there, and since I don't want to risk using artwork off of google image search that may be copyrighted, I have to rethink my plan. So the new name will be A Day in the Life of A Garden, (since I really didn't find anything too secretive) with an introduction to give credit, music to entertain, then clips of some of the activity I had observed within one day of my garden. I discovered that Photoshop CS3 has the capability to edit my movie clip, which was a relief because it took me a bit to figure out how to stop some of clips. You really don't need my feet in them. I plan to give some informative chatter with each clip.

July 26, 2009

For my podcast I have chosen the topic "The Secret Life of Gardens" to entertain and to inform. I am still working on the script. I need to search the internet to see what may be available before I get a better idea formulated on what the content may hold. I have been making clips of different creatures that have been visiting my garden with my canon camera. The prospect of creating a podcast is exciting, but the logistics of creating one is putting me in a bit of a panic. Audacity just does the audio, I can make movie clips with my camera, but I am still trying to figure out what program I can use to combine these and I am running out of time. Stay tuned.

July 26, 2009 redo of July 24, 2009

For my podcast assignment I subscribed to Galavanting – Koldcast.tv. It initially grabbed my attention because the icon representing the podcast presented itself as an informative and fun way to view travel options that wasn’t a commercial promotion. I was right.

The one I chose to review was Guide to NYC: Galavanting-Koldcast.tv. The introduction is a simple but effective flash clip of their logo, then an interesting sort of 1960s style graphic that struck me as representing motion, transitioning on to an introduction of the girls on the assignment. This was reminiscent of the Charley’s Angels introduction of the 1970s, a silhouette of girls holding tech equipment rather than guns.

I enjoyed the photography even if it was a little grainy, because it really captured the essence of New York City with interesting perspective shots mixed in with a sense of fun that can be had in the city. The choice of music was great, used sparingly to punctuate a segment.

The podcast led the traveler through an itinerary featuring several businesses, interjected with great tidbits helpful to the traveler and humorous little episodes.

All in all, there was great style, great choice of music, smooth transition between segments and informational with a touch of humor.

July 20, 2009

In response to Alex's question about how newspapers (mine in particular) have adapted I replied:
The newspaper at which I work is too slowly incorporating some of the new technology with a web site and a new web site that is more interactive, and that has been way under utilized and promoted. We also have blogs and a twitter account only because our present editor has some web savvy, but the company needs to be much more aggressive in this. With recent events just staying alive is the narrow field of vision. In my particular office which is part of a parent company with three other newspapers there has been a lot of consolidation of different departments being handled out of one town's newspaper's office for the four papers, leaving most of the website stuff handled in another office. Newspapers still have a large older audience that don't want anything to do with computers and internet, but to gain the younger audience there needs to be a new approach added. There isn't enough advertising dollars out there right now to support both.

Alternative Energy

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Alternative Energy

View more presentations from sweetcicely.

After review slide shows on slideshare.net, I had to choose The Death of the Newspaper since it hits close to home for me. It was informational (nailed the problem from what I have witnessed) and the slides had a nice flow from one to the next. In terms of the Elements of Art used, the introduction pages was eye catching using texture. The next pages are appealing composition-wise, which I would categorize as shape (I know it's a stretch) and the use of text would be line. Not much color or tonal use.

http://www.slideshare.net/joannageary/the-death-of-newspapers-finding-business-models-in-a-perfect-storm

Here is my link to the set of photos for the composition assignment. Photography is a skill I'm still trying to get a handle on, and I found it difficult to produce photos to my liking in a short period of time, so I dug out a couple of old ones and included those that I felt would represent some of the composition examples.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40122497@N02/sets/72157621416584450/

The photo of Hogback is an example of framing, with the pine tree and building framing the view.
The road photo is an example of thirds with the subject road leading into the center.
The Strolling photo is an embedded photo of a circle with the exposed flesh of the two faces and the chest.
The fisherman photo is of saturated color. The original photo is taller with more of the sky exposed to balance more. Didn't realize flickr would crop it that way.
Fencing is shooting angles, unusual view.
I used GIMP for cropping these photos.

July 14, 2009 update

Update to my earlier post as I reread my assignment. I already had a flickr account so I added the three photos I posted earlier, placed them in a set under Photo manipulation in GIMP and edited them to be shared in Creative Commons with attribution. I used Greenshot to take a picture of the pages with the photos preferences set to be share with Creative Commons.

July 14, 2009

Creative Commons, a cooperative collection of art media of many forms is a way to share your art while maintaining some control over its use, depending upon the FREE license you choose. I love this. As this site grows and expands it will become as indispensable a tool as google or dictionary.com
For my open source photo manipulation I chose Gimp because it was the one program I hadn't yet played with and was wondering about it. It has a lot of similar features to Photoshop, such as the stamp to add more of scene to a photo such as more grass where there is mud, blue sky instead of a cloud.
In the middlle is my photo of an up and coming hosta garden in my front yard. In the bottom photo I chose the filter to convert it to look like an oil painting. How cool is that?
In the top photo I used the stamp that I referred to before in an attempt to stamp in some green to obliterate the over exposed sunshine in the photo.
I couldn't find find any options to change contrast or brightness or anything similar, so I guess I'll stick with Photoshop, but this is a great option for businesses on a tight budget that need a photo editing program.

July 5, 2009

My assignment was to for the program dia - a free, downloaded program for the purpose of creating diagrams. I was rather impressed with its capabilities because it had a lot of flexibility with changing sizes, shapes and positions to tweak your graphics to look just as you would like them to. There were a lot of preloaded shapes to use, plus tools to create your own. I liked that there were many editing options, and it was pretty clear what was what.
I didn't find any freestyle drawing options though, so there were some limitations there.I also had a little problem getting the text to assign the right size to the text I was working with, perhaps with practice.
I could see this program useful to draw out a demonstration for instance:



http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stVU9US0BIR11ZSF9VX19ZUVdR/dia_tutorial
I created this screen cast to show how the program functions. I had to use subtitles because it appears as though my microphone does not function.

July 4, 2009

Flickr is free webware used to upload photos to a website as an easy way to share your photos. It has tools to help organize the photos by placing them in sets or batches, and an editing tool to rename the photos as another way to help organize them. With a good naming system it would be quite easy to search for a particular photo. There is a group option, and by joining one, one can view photos by people that share the same interests. There is map where one can pin photos to a location on the map, and I could see it used by a traveler to keep family and friends posted about their adventures, a modern day post card so to speak.
The only draw back here is a 100 mg limit, and with many photos taking 1 to 2 mg, that limit would be reached quickly. I found uploading images a little slow, but I could do it in the background as I opened another browser window to work from. I also found links to order prints for a price which is apparently how flickr can offer this as a free service.
Learned a lesson here when posting images - post the first image you want to be seen last! These here are backwards in order, but here we go - The bottom image is a screen shot of the flikr site where one initially goes to open an account. The next screen shot shows my personal site where I have already uploaded some of my photos, the third screen shot shows the options that are listed in the top menu for organizing your photos, and the last (top) screen shot shows how sets appear after being sorted into batches. Pretty cool. http://www.flickr.com/

June 29, 2009

I have been posting my information on the my site created in google http://sites.google.com/site/cicelyeastmansportfolio/
and I am quite excited about the potential for really getting my information formatted in a neat and orderly way for prospective employers. I'm also mulling over ideas for what other uses google sites could be used for, family site, hobby site, the possibilities are endless.

June 27, 2009

I have to say I am quite excited about the wiki sites. Was not aware that they were so easy to create and I can see them being useful for so many purposes. From families keeping family reunion plans coordinated and on track, to a small business where a central informational post may be needed from several offices at different locations.
I have started my eportfolio at
http://sites.google.com/site/cicelyeastmansportfolio/Home
and not sure if I can create the site as I had imagined with my xmind map because of the constraints of the predetermined set up available. Still fiddling with how to edit it the way I would like. Onward.

June 22, 2009

Mind mapping is a great tool to build the structure of a site because you can visualize better how categories are being grouped and change what doesn't seem to work before building pages on a web site. If the project at hand was a large and complicated web site, using something like xmind would be necessary so that the end result would be orderly and professional.

June 20, 2009

Finished my mindmap with Xmind. The idea that the mind remembers better with curves linking ideas together than with straight lines when creating a map makes sense to me, but it would have been easier to draw it on paper I think. It was difficult to find the options I wanted and had to settle for what I could make it do.
http://share.xmind.net/sweetcicely/stuff-about-me-2/

The goals for my web site are as follows:
Form: A web site with slideshow
Audience: Teachers or prospective employers
Topic: Content will be accomplishments
Purpose: To sell myself

June 14, 2009

I'm filling up my notebook where I store passwords and usernames after this week! I think I will like the netvibes site a lot once I figure it all out. I love the idea of an easy click to my most used web sites. I'm still debating about setting up the delisious site for the social bookmarking, I have my personal bookmarking one pretty organized, not sure I want to go public. I'm still trying to figure out how to create my own widgets to totally personalize my page. I'm sure I'll stumble on it soon!

June 12, 2009

I have to admit I have entered into this whole blogging thing rather relunctantly, as I have stated before, but I'm starting to get the hang of it and I can see its usefulness, however I know I will never be one to be constantly online blogging. The most exciting thing for me is I learned a lot about RSS tonight. My limited knowledge about it before this class pertained only to daily news being fed to a web site. Was not aware of the possibilities and the customization, now that I could get into.

June 7, 2009

I have been checking out other blogs by my fellow multimedia applications classmates. I never knew that blogging more than just writing thoughts in a little box like this one I'm in. The layouts add a creative dimension that I am looking forward to investigating more. I toyed with one of the options that was suggested in the layout tab, but it had issues with unwanted type, so I'll look further and try another layout. If I don't watch out this could be fun.

June 5, 2009

Creating this blog was quite easy and straight forward because the directions are clear and the steps are few and simple. This would be a good example to study because when designing web sites I would want to include blogging as a feature and the last thing I would want to do is frustrate the customer.
Now the next hurdle. What the heck to write!
I couldn't resist testing the video upload. I recently learned how to create a little movie with my digital camera, and had gotten a little clip of my goldfish a while back just playing with that option, so here it is. For those that are concerned about the size of the tank, I moved them into a 10 gallon tank shortly after this was taken.

May 30, 2009

Okay, If this is posted already, I apologize, I'm new to this. I did it once, now I can't find it. So ... as I said before, this is my first post (well actually my second) and I admit I procrastinated creating it, instead enjoying the beautiful day outside and working in the garden. Did you know that working in a garden stirs up the soil which releases a mold that has the same effect on your brain as chocolate! And no calories, how great is that? I'm not sure what else to post here except the weather, which I already mentioned, and any newsworthy items. Susan Boyle didn't win Idol, how sad.