My within my collage are several things that represent or inspire me. We have my parents, the reason I am alive and the people who molded me into the young woman I am today. Of course we have my cat, Dash, who has stuck with me no matter what. And of course we have some of my good friends here at Kent State, including my mentor from the Kupita/Transiciones program, Mariah, and three friends I made in that same program, Zoe, Mariah, and Carmen. I wanted to be sure to include people I met at K/T in my collage, because participating in that program truly helped me to accept myself and express myself with pride. K/T and the people who participate are literal embodiments of representation and its importance. This is an idea I plan to elaborate on later.
I included several other images in my collage, including a picture of my computer screen with a folder next to it. I took that photo at a period of high stress for me, and it sort of inspired me to find proper coping mechanisms for that stress rather than letting it build until it boils over. Additionally, I included an image of several KSU magazines. As a journalism major, it is a literal dream of mine to work on one of these magazines while I am here. Though now may not be the right time, I will get there one day. I added a few other images, including some pictures of myself as well as a picture of my favorite book, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini.
In my revision, I focused on organization and flow of the collage. I felt that in my draft it was too stiff and harsh. I wanted to make sure that it told more of a story about who I am in some way, rather than being a bunch of images stuck together.
The tools I probably used most in my collage must have been the Layer and Brush tools. I hid the background in all of my pictures to reveal the image of the sky in the background. Additionally, I added some more vibrancy and color variance in the image of the sky, along with posterizing it to make it stand out a bit more. I also used the Transform Scale and Transform Rotate tools a lot to ensure that my images didn’t alter at weird ratios when I was resizing them in order to make them fit within the document. Lastly, I used the brush tool again in the colors red, yellow, and green, to add doodles in the blank spaces. I feel that this adds both an interesting element as well as represents the colors of Africa which have a strong influence for me, knowing that somewhere down the line those are my true roots.
When looking for inspiration for my logos, I found that I was drawn more to the ones with words or with the blog title over the ones that were drawings or images. I also found that it was much easier coming up with designs revolving around my blog title, rather than trying to come up with one image that sums up my “about me” topic. I was really interested in the logos that had some sort of doodle incorporated into the text, along with multiple fonts throughout the design, as I felt this added an interesting element overall. So, I decided to keep it simple and make my design an interesting interpretation of my name/blog title.
So far, I have made use of the rectangle and ellipse tool, which is how I made the Z and the J. I also used the Pathfinder, unite tool to combine that into one shape that flowed together. I used the line and arc tools to make the small black letters to complete my name, and the text tool to add the cursive text at the side. I also used the brush tool to add the dots around the letters, and will likely be using it again to add linework to the image as well. I also made use of the gradient tools, and the multiple stroke options to make the logo stand out more. I also made use of the copy and rotate tools with some of the smaller letters as well as some of the dot clusters.
In my revision, I focused on fixing the J first, since the shape in my draft was fairly off-putting. In my final, I feel that I used figure and ground pretty well. The size of the J now allows for both the Z and the J to have equal visual weight. In terms of balance, I would say the dot work I employed made a pretty balanced piece. I feel like I gave everything an eyecatching placement.
Inspiration:
The 6th logo here,
this logo,
and this one.
The link to my final soundcloud file can be found here.
For my audio story, I decided to conduct my interviews as a game a “Two Truths and a Lie.” Since my blog topic is “About Me” I figured this would be a good way to share a few facts about my topic (myself) in a fun way while also spending some time with my friends. In my audio story, I “interviewed” my friend Hannah, a freshman journalism major, and my boyfriend Drew, a freshman Visual Communication Design major.
I interviewed both people separately, asking them the same questions in the same order. When it came to editing the audio, I took a large sample of it from my interview with Hannah. From her interview I used the part where I ask each round of questions. I felt that the audio in Hannah’s interview was a little bit more clear so I chose to use it in the final. I used the introduction of the interview (the description at the beginning of the audio) from my interview with Drew simply because I felt that my explanation was a bit more clear and easy to understand.
The responses to my questions were pretty short, but I tried to make them flow and lead into an explanation or story about my life. I thought that it was important to include the explanations because that would give a little bit more information about me. I had a little trouble making things sound totally natural at some points, but I think for the most part it sounds okay. I haven’t added music yet, but when I do I will focus on making sure it doesn’t over power the audio, since I found that to be a bit of a problem during my tutorials.
In my final, I really wanted to touch up the sound levels of the audio, add music, and make sure the balance between the dialogue and music was pretty good. I found string music and used that because I used to be in orchestra and I’ve played the violin for eight years, so I have a soft spot for it. I think the music provides a nice background music and makes fills in any pauses that are in the audio overall.
Here is the link to my video.
For this assignment, I decided to end on a fun note and make a fun little skit with my boyfriend. Being a journalism major, a lot of my assignments so far have been very informative with limited room for creativity, so I wanted to do something different and have a bit more fun. I came up with a little story line kind of like the bachelor, but the plot twist is that almost every character on the show is played by Drew. Unfortunately, I have not yet recorded all of the shots I need for the video so refer to my story board post to see where I’m going with the rest of the video.
I was mainly inspired by the Kent show The Agenda, which airs on TV2. I have had to help a few of my friends with several skits this semester, and I found them to be super fun to both write and film. The skits on the show are comedy skits, and the people I know from TV2 are all really cool. While this video is super different from everything I’ve done before, I think it relates in the sense that it shows my growth throughout the semester. When this class started, I would have never suspected that I would be interested in writing, filming, and editing skits like this, but I had a lot of fun!
In comparison to my story board, I had to cut out a few things at the end, but that was only to fit within the three minute time limit. Overall the video layout is very similar to my storyboard.
I filmed all the shots with my phone, and I tried to incorporate motion into the shots to give it more of a sitcom/reality-show feel. So far, I have made use of the intro-outro tools, the dissolve tool, the title tool, and the effect control tool (to change the proportion of some scenes). I ran into a bit of difficulty when adding the text, because I first went to “Graphics” à “New Layer” à “Text”. I could not get this sequence to allow me to edit the text. Instead, I realized that the way shown in the tutorials was to go to “File” à “New” à “Legacy Title”. This is the option that opens the text editor and shows you where the text will appear on the screen and so on.
For the music, I downloaded several tracks from bensound.com and edited them together in Adobe Audition for smooth transitions between tracks.
Life as Zaria Jay 