Week 15

Assignment- our assignment this week was to actually put out website up using Xythos and iWeb.

Craft- we logged onto x7.sxu.edu to post our website. first, we needed to publish out web pages from iWeb, so once that was completed, we uploaded the files onto our account on Xythos, which allows others to finally see our web pages. 

Composition- if we needed to make adjustments to the website we already posted, we fixed the problems on iWeb, then published it, and erased our old files on Xythos and replaced them with the new and improved web pages.

Concept- the concept of this project was to learn how to create a web site on the SXU server so that other students can see our work and make comments on what we can do to improve.

Week 14 - NEW WEBSITE

To see my new website, click here:

Assignment: our assignment for this week was to do more work with iWeb and complete our website.

Craft- i took the rough draft i created last week of just my about me and about vc page and expanded upon it.  also, i added other pages of my different projects i have completed throughout the semester, such as the Lincoln era project, our second mash-up project of something we are passionate about, and our comic storyboard project.  with each project which had a different page, i added a paragraph explaining what the project was, how i did it, why i did it, etc.

Composition- we were told we had to change up the layout from the original.  we were supposed to make it look significantly different that how it originally looked so that people wouldn't even know by first glance, which template we used.  i changed mine up by changing the colors, adding shapes and other unique little touches that would make my web pages look different.

Concept- the purpose of this assignment was to become familiarized with iWeb and its an easy way for us to show off our art work to our classmates.

Week 13

Assignment- make a website with 2 pages- a welcome page talking about what visual communications means to us and an about me page where you talk about you.

Craft- use the program, iWeb, on Mac that allows us to create our own website. we were to add pictures and information about us to make the website original and all about us. we were supposed to add pictures of ourselves, along with pictures of the projects we have completed in this course thus far.

Composition- we first created different folders for the different projects weve completed so our artwork would be organized. we then picked a ayout of how we wanted our website to be. next we added the information about us as well as our past projects.

Concept- to express ourselves and through this website and also let people know what visual communications means to us.

Week 12

Assignment- improve our comic by creating and adding dialogue and creating more of a story in the Comic Life program.

Craft- we improved our comic story by adding dialogue so the audience would have a better understanding of what the characters are thinking. we also decorated each page with a background and outlined each picture. we also put several pictures on one page to give it more of a comic book feel. on monday, as a class, we decided on one groups project we felt was the most complete, and they would be done with this project. the other groups still needed to work on some things to complete their projects, taking the classes constructive critisism into account.

Composition- we stayed with our original color scheme- blue and yellow, but changed our filters to a clearer, more understandable filter. we created a title- bun in the oven- which creates a fun, more upbeat, tone to our story.

Concept- the purpose of using comic life was to put a different twist on our project- make them more than just a series of pictures telling a story. we now have meaning behind those pictures, and comic life helps the story become more complete. using all the tools comic life has to offer, our project has come a long way from what it was on day 1.

Week 11

Assignment- our assignment for this week was to take the storyboard we have already created and apply only 2 colors to it.

Craft- the first step we did as a group was split up the photos between the group members. then, we chose blue and yellow as our colors. next, we all desaturated the pictures, made blue the background color and used yellow to make certain parts of the images pop. we each did our pictures differently with different values of the colors and when we brought our work together, we decided on one style we liked so we could keep our project consistant. then we just adjusted some of the other slides.

Composition- it was difficult only being able to use 2 colors to send the right message of each frame. we chose blue and yellow becaue they are opposite the color wheel and work well together, as well as set a good tone for our story. we also thought blue would be a good color because there are so many shades and values of it, we knew we would have a great variety.

Concept- same concept as other weeks, it is just expressed and understood easier because we used only the colors blue and yellow

Week 10

Assignment- 9-12 frame storyboard of pictures that tells a story, with one person traveling, another waiting, and one of them giving a present to the other.

Craft- After picking the pictures to use, we needed to decide on a filter we would use for all of our pictures so our project would stay consistant. we decided to use the filter artistic- poster edges, distort- diffuse glow, and for some of our pictures, we thought the edges needed to be more crisp, so we used sharpen- sharpen edges. then, when it came time to decide on colors we chose blue and yellow. we chose blue because there are several different values and hues that we would be able to use, plus it is more of a sad/cold color which fits our story because it is kind of a sad story until the end when the kids are reunited. the other color we chose was yellow. yellow is opposite blue on the color wheel, so is very compatable with blue, plus it is a bright color that will add great contrast to the dark shades of blue we use.

Composition- we believe the pictures we chose to complete our storyboard express our message the best. each picture we picked has a different significance that adds to our story and completes it. when it comes to deciding which group member will complete which part of the final project, my group is pretty good. we split the work up evenly and do approximately the same amount of work. it is good to know that i can count on my group members, though.

Concept- our story is the same as before. a teenage girl gets kicked out of her house by her parents and she has no where to go, so she decides to visit her boyfriend, who happens to be in the marines. she is pregnant, but this information isnt revealed until the last frame. the audience can then assume it is the marine's baby.

Week 9

Assignment- to continue working on our comics as a group

Craft- we finally had all the pictures necessary to complete our project, so then all we needed to do was use photoshop to collage them, enhance them, and use filters to create more of a unique twist to our stories.

Composition- we decided to use the filters artistic ->poster edges, distort -> diffuse glow, and sharpen ->sharpen edges for the majority of our frames. we liked the whole speckled black dots look, so with each frame, we tried something different, but not too different so it would match the theme of our project.

Concept- we decided to use 9 slides because we felt it would be more efficient then dragging the story out for 12 frames.

Lipstick and Dynamite

Assignment- This week we had the option to watch Lipstick and Dynamite documentary for 10 points extra credit.

Craft- this video was created by Ruth Lietman and is a documentary of former women wrestlers from the time around 1950. It has a variety of old and new footage of the women in the ring and interviews of these women.

Composition- it started out with a women on a talk show introducing herself to the audience as a professional women's wrestler. after that, it continues with several other girl wrestlers explaining their stories. these women's stories included their struggles, competitors, championships, etc. throughout the video, these women explain how that part of their life has changed who they are today. at the end of the video, all of the women wrestlers get together for a women wrestler reunion, which was nice for them to all see each other again, although one of the ladies, i believe her name was Gladys "Killem" Gillem, said she didn't care to see some of these women again. i thought that was funny. i also thought it was interesting how one woman said back when she was a wrestler, she and the rest of the women wrestlers were appreciated for their athleticism, but now a days, what are these women trying to say? it almost sounded like she was ashamed to associate herself with the current wrestlers

Concept- in this video, Lietman is expressing women's role in society in the 1950s was to be the typical housewife; cook, clean, and take care of the children. these women wrestlers definitely did not fit the stereotype during this time. some of society was accepting to their decision to play a man sport, but some of the public, such as Classy Freddie Blassie, felt "girl wrestlers are pigs". i believe this video was also to show this was a major reason why women have the freedom to do what they want these days.

Week 8

Assignment- our assignment for this week was to think about our story board and take pictures that could be used to help send the right messages.


Craft- after deciding with my group what each slide would look like, we each took pictures of people and situations we thought would relate. now in the next couple of classes, we are going to go through them and decide which ones to keep and use in our project. we drew out a sketch of the pictures and the order in which they will be used.


Composition- after deciding which pictures we were going to use, we had to collage some of them to make them look like original pictures and also so they would go along with out story. there were still some slides we didnt have pictures for, so we needed to take care of that as soon as possible.


Concept- our message is the same as it was last week, but now we have both models, so the story makes more sense.

Week 7

Assignment- our assignment for this week was to get into a group and decide on a story with these 3 components:
1) one person is waiting 2) another person is traveling 3) and one of them is giving the other a package/gift.

Craft-after picking a group to work on this project with, we spent a week apart for spring break and then talked about our different ideas and elaborated on the idea we decided on. we wrote down the different slides we would have, and on a separate piece of paper, we wrote down descriptions of each. Then we needed to decide how we would get the different pictures for the story board. there is a young couple in our story, so one of my group members decided she would take the pictures of the younger girl and i would take the pictures of the young man.

Composition- our story is about a pregnant teenager who is scared to tell her mom and dad about the pregnancy. the audience doesnt know she is pregnant until the very last slide, tho. her belly is always hidden. after telling them, they kick her out of the house. she decides she will visit her baby's dad who in the marines. the gift is the baby. she is also nervous about telling her baby's dad because they are no longer together, but she had no where else to go, and she hadn't seen him in a while, so she wanted to see him. when he finally discovers shes pregnant, hes shocked, but still accepting and happy to see her and her news.

Concept- our message is that parents who are not understanding to a teenage pregnancy and kick the kid out is just putting more stress on them. this is another reason why kids are pressured into getting abortions. they know their parents wont be accepting of this. also, we are saying babies are gifts and we should be happy when they enter the world, no matter the circumstance.

Week 6

Assignment- our assignment for this week was to elaborate on our idea of something we are passionate about.

Craft- I wanted to keep the cell bars the same, but I feel like expanding the background will have a bigger affect on my message and make the people stand out more. Also, I am going to change the guy's outfit instead of a dark, mugging scene to a jock, letterman outfit.  This is to represent the youth of these kids, and symbolize how most of the abortions today are done by kids who are younger than 20.  His current outfit makes him see like a mugger, which is not the message I wanted to send.

Composition- I started out looking at my project I already completed and after professor peck comments, I decided to make some changes. I liked the cell bars in front the the people and did not want to change that, and also wanted to keep the girl the same. I really like her facial expression. For the guy, I am going to have it appear he is a superstar jock and is encouraging this abortion because he can't handle the responsibility of a child.  He has too much other stuff going on right now. 

Concept- Changing the mugger to a jock shows that most abortions are done with kids in high school who are too busy to take care of a baby, and cannot follow through with their actions.  if one is old enough to perform sexually, they should be old enough to make the right decision when the outcome is pregnancy.  In these cases, these two kids should be put in jail for murder.

Week 5

Assignment- our assignment for this week was to think of idea we were passionate about and express our opinion about it through artwork.
Craft- Whenever I am asked to think o something I feel strongly against, abortion is always the first thing that comes to my mind, and now that I have the opportunity to express my opinion through artwork, it is that much more exciting and challenging. I have always felt strongly against abortion not just because of my religious beliefs, but also because it is inhumane to kill people, and murder is wrong. Then I needed to figure out how I would express my opinion about abortion through artwork.

Composition- Once I got some ideas flowing, I knew exactly how I would express my opinion. First, I will have a a pregnant girl about the age of 17 and a boy about the same age appear to be in a jail cell. the boy would be holding a gun at the pregnant girl's belly.

Concept- my message with this piece is it should be illegal to get an abortion, and people who do have abortions should and deserve to go to jail. There is no difference between an abortion and someone killing a grown adult. a person is a person. Some people debate whether or not the fetus is actually a person or not, but those are just excuses. It has been scientifically proven no matter how early the abortion is, by the time you realize you are pregnant, the fetus has formed into a baby. So again, my message is it is wrong to have an abortion and people who do get one, should be put in jail and receive the same punishment as a murderer.

Week 4

Assignment- after our first mash draft was completed, our peers commented and critiqued our work in class. our assignment after that was to use the comments to improve our work or completely start over.

Craft- I tried to take the critiques I heard from my peers from class to improve my work, but it still didn't look right. In order to make my origianl project more successful, I added soldiers and cannons to the bottom of my work to give it more of a civil war feel. I thought this would fix my project, but it still didn't look right. So after the second critique, 2 days ago, I decided to just start from scratch. I had a picture of Lincoln's house where I photoshopped my friends just sitting around his living room. I first started by taking pictures of my friends just sitting around, but when I got into the lab to begin, I realized I didn't get my friend's feet in the picture. So then I began to start this long process of photoshopping other feet and shoes into the picture, and also copying and pasting my friend's jeans to lengthen their legs. I still can't get this project to look right, but I believe it is an improvment from my first attempt. I am hoping I can come to class today and have some help from my peers to complete my work.

Composition- It was pretty easy to decide where my friends were going to sit in this room. There was a limited amount of space to sit, and I knew I was going to use this picture of Lincoln's living room as my background, so I asked my friends to sit in certain ways so the picture would look right, I just accidently cropped their feet out. Whoops. When I first look at it, My eyed immediately go to my two friends sitting on the couch. I think because it is kind of centered in the picture, that's why. then my eyes drift to the guy in the front. And then the dog. I don't know if i have a preference as to the order of people in the picture people see first.

Concept- Several people from class choose to have Lincoln's face/body in a modern or current setting. I choose to flip it; I had a picture of Lincoln's living room, and decided to photoshop my friends into it. My message is saying Lincoln was a very welcoming guy and was happy to host people in his house, even my friends, who are just regular people. It kind of has the same message as others in my class and their works (the whole Lincoln is just an average Joe), but instead of having him in a current setting, I have pictures of my friends is a Lincoln era scene.

Week 3

Assignment- This week our assignment was to pick one picture from the Lincoln era and one from our own era and mix them.
Craft- First, I needed to pick two pictures I wanted to combine. I liked the idea of not having Lincoln's actual picture in there, so that narrowed down my choices to a chair of Lincoln's, or a picture of San Fransisco at that time. I picked the San Fransisco one, and also the picture I took of the residence halls on Campus. I then decided to use the San Fransisco pictures the background and I then photoshoped the residence halls of SXU into the picture where they fit appropriately.
Composition- It was a tough decision which buildings to keep from the Lincoln era photo and which buildings to put the residence halls over. I really liked all of the buildings from the San Fransisco page, but i took out the lighter ones because the residence hall pictures are lighter, and so if I kept the darker buildings, it would create great contrast.
Concept- my message was not explained very well in the picture, so I need to add to it, but what I was trying to say is that a lot of things have changed from when Lincoln was president; everything down to the architecture. Also, one can tell the surroundings are different as well because in the background of this picture, the ground is very dry, deserted, etc. We have fields now, dont' get me wrong, but it is not very common for our grounds to look like that like they all looked like back then.

Week 2

Assignment- This week our assignment was to find 25 pictures from the Lincoln era from the internet and either take 25 pictures of our era or use 10 old pictures and take 15 new pictures.

Craft- I choose to look through pictures from Google Images, extra- large images, and flickr for the licoln era pictures, and for the 25 pictures from my era, I used 10 pictures from facebook, either of people, like my friends and family, or other scenery pictures I liked that I have added from facebook. the other 15 pictures from my era I took from around campus. I didn't want all of the pictures to be of the snow, so I took pictures of lightposts, trees, buildings, and pictures from inside a building.

Composition- My two favorite pictures are as follows. The picture from the Lincoln era is a picture of the streets at that time. This picture was my favorite from the Lincoln era. Out of the pictures I took from my era, I decided the one of my dog. I have taken several pictures of my dog because she is so photogenic, but I picked the one with her and the leaves. I love the way her ear is flipped up. I love my dog :)

Concept- If I were to mix one photo from the Lincoln era and one from my era, I would mix the old, red chair from Lincoln's era and the bench in the snow from my era. This bench is from on campus. I picked these two because i think they would look interesting mixed together. I can't wait to see what I can put together when I mix these two images.

Week 1

Assignment- set up blog

Craft- I went through the steps on blogger.com to set up my blog, and then I picked a picture off of Facebook, added it to my page. I then added information about me, as well as filled out all the information about my assignment.

Composition- I picked this photo because it is different than the normal 'smiling' picture, it's more fun, and I'm with my cousin, Madison in it, and I just love her :) I picked this layout because my favorite color is lime green, and I liked the design of the template.

Concept- The reason for this assignment to to get us familiar with blogger.com, since we will be using it all semester to post our work and to view our peers work. What makes me so good?? I would like to consider myself a good listener and good friend. Some people would consider me funny, and I know how to make someone feel better when they are down. I am pretty responsible and thorough. I like to put 100% into everything I do.