Pocket Scavenger #5

Location Found: the coffee table in my living room

Time: about 1 PM

Date: December 10th

Story: This elephant was drawn by one of my friends that lives in the apartment across the hall from mine. It was a small part of a bigger page of a note that she left for us to find after class. Here is the whole note:

This is a really nice gesture considering finals week has rolled around once again! It's a nice little reminder during a stressful time. This little elephant drawing is one she draws on everything. In our heads, we associate elephants with her because she loves them and has them all over her bedroom. 

"Do something fast without really thinking" -As the alteration, I hung this cute note and drawing on our bulletin board in our apartment for everyone to see. That was the first thing that came to my mind to do!

Pocket Scavenger #4

Location Found: My bedroom

Time: 3:15 PM

Date: December 11th, 2016

Story: This ticket was to see singer, Kate Voegele, perform in a small cafe located in Pittsburgh. I went with my cousin and her friend to this event and we were soo soo, way to excited to see her! We watched her on our favorite TV show, One Tree Hill, over and over again for years before this. We enjoyed her performance very much and after the show we had the opportunity to meet and talk to her. We could not believe it really happened and it is all we talked about for weeks! This ticket was from last year and in a couple days we have tickets to go watch her again in Pittsburgh. This time will be even better because another former One Tree Hill character is touring with her. So we will also have the opportunity to see Tyler Hilton perform!

The pocket scavenger told me to combine my ticket with a photo. So here it is: when we met Kate Voegele! (pictured second from left)

Class Group Activity

Our professor had asked each class member of Digital Storytelling to gather a few digital pictures of body parts for our next class meeting. During this class meeting, we used these pictures to work with group members to construct a figure with. We also had to alter the pictures and create a specific rule for each group member to follow throughout the creation. There were lots of giggles heard from the entire class during this process. This is the crazy figure that my group came up with:

 
Our rule that we followed during the creation was that no body part could be in the spot it was supposed to on a human body. We had three members in our group and each member contributed and altered two images before combining them to make one. My contribution was the arms of the figure, that are actually pictures of feet. I used the platform, Paint, to airbrush colors onto the feet/arms. I also gave it dots using a variety of colors. The other picture that I contributed and edited was the nose picture, which is actually standing in as an eye on this figure. All of my group members used Paint to complete this mini-project.

Device 6?

To help with our upcoming interactive narrative project, we turned to interactive game play. My professor brought in iPads for the class to play on. We were split into groups and each of the three groups got to experience a different game. My group got to play a game entitled Device 6.

The game, Device 6, has a few chapters to it. As a group, we only made it through the first chapter. The game begins with giving the viewer a game player number. This element makes you feel like the controlled of the story, similar to game play. When first launching Device 6, I was thrown off by which way to hold my device (iPad) during play. I quickly learned that I had to hold my device multiple different ways throughout the story. The story was one the player had to figure out how to solve. My group and I found this part to be unexpectedly challenging. Yet the game definitely had us intrigued, we just had to figure it out!

After a pretty lengthy amount of time attempting to solve this puzzle, we admittedly turned to the internet for assistance. Although we were unable to solve it on our own, we realized we had come pretty close. I noticed the importance of sound in this piece, in which I was not expecting either. There was a statement regarding it's importance in the beginning of the story, yet I kind of ignored it at first. Along with the sound effects needed to solve the puzzle, the game had lots of great graphics to experience. I particularly loved how the pictures moved with the frame as you scrolled through, allowing more of the picture to be visible. I wish that was an element I would be capable of adding to my final project.

One of my group members, Lauren, pointed out that Device 6 reminded her of iSpy games that she played as a child. I agreed with her and thought maybe the creators could have somehow based the idea for this story from something like that.

Overall, the game had very interesting graphics and sounds. The puzzle the game player had to solve though, was rather difficult causing us to give up. We did not even make it to the remaining chapters the story had to offer us. The game also gave me a bit of a headache with all the spinning around of the device, despite that the experience was overall enjoyable.

Final Project Brainstorm

We made it to the final project of Digital Storytelling class! This project is creating a multimedia, interactive digital story. We have created many digital stories now for this class but the difference in this one is that it is required to have an interactive element. This interactive feature can be hypertext, game play, or anything that classifies as interactive. This story must include at least three of the elements we covered in class out of video, image, sound, and text.

I had no immediate ideas pop into my head when first learning about this final project. I first thought I need to figure out a digital platform to put together this project with first. So I did some research and found ideas such as Prezi or Google Docs. I eventually came up with some starting points to go off. I thought about putting together something for a college student with an undeclared major to explore. Or I could go a communication major route for it and have different options of ways they can use the major for a future career. I thought those two ideas could possibly be done on Prezi. I also thought about using my image, video, or audio story by adding addition elements to them on a different platform, yet still keeping the same idea. This may be a good idea for my image story in particular. I could apply it to Google Docs, taking the audience to the different locations. With the location idea, i also thought about doing something with a unique creature that I was introduced to while vacationing in Mexico last summer. This unique creature is called a Coati.

So those are the ideas I have at the moment and I have the rest of my Thanksgiving break/weekend to decide which one would help me create the best final digital story project! Happy Thanksgiving everyone! ☺

Investigating Nature

This idea came to me in remembrance of a Netflix piece I watched over the summer about some of the world's cutest animals. Red pandas stuck out in my mind and I have been interested in knowing more bout them. Their scientific name being Ailurus Fulgens, which I would have no clue where to begin in pronouncing that name. Kinda like how when you think of sunflowers, you don't imediately think of their other, less common name: Helianthus.

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The red panda species are endangered. They usually have a life span of 8 years when living in the wild and usually weigh 12-20 pounds. The pandas use their tails as wraparound blankets in the cold mountains they live in.

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Red pandas unlike most carnivores, are not actually carnivores. They are mostly herbivores. They eat bamboo and leaves, like the well-known black and white pandas. Unlike them, they also eat things like fruit, acorns, roots, and eggs. They are also a fan of fake sugar.

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This adorable species can be found in Nepal, northeastern India (West Bengal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh), Bhutan, and parts of China.

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Red pandas are generally solitary, yet there are a couple of exceptions to that. Young red pandas grow rather slowly and develop extended associations with their mothers. This can last for over a year in time. The red pandas also have short relationships during annual breeding seasons.

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Video Story Tell-All

My video story was inspired by a real event that took place in my life regarding one of my close friends. I had written a poem about this event for my high school English class. At the time, I did not reveal the actual meaning behind this poem, with respect for my friend, being that my friend went to that high school. I just let people believe that it was just concerned with an overall world view of one's purpose in life. Then in college, I was enrolled in a class called Creative Non-Fiction. For this class, I had an assignment to come up with a segmented piece of writing. This assignment gave me the idea to find that poem I had written in high school and to break it down with the written story of my thoughts during this time, in between each stanza of the poem. So that is what I did. Then for this Digital Storytelling class that I am currently enrolled in, I turned this new piece of writing into a visual, a video story to be exact. The words of the pieces of the poem, broken down by stanza, scroll on the screen in silence scattered throughout the video. In between stanzas I used my voice-over of reading the descriptive parts of my thoughts during this event. Occasionally throughout the narration, I added sound effects under my voice that went with what I was talking about at the moment. For example, I used hallway ambience noise, laughter, thundering rolling, and a brief part of a song. This added an extra element for the audience to relate to my feelings at the time. I also used some slow motion video shots. Overall, I was happy with the result of my video story, though there are a couple parts of it that I feel like I could've improved, had I had more access to certain places or people to film.