5/4/12 – Presenting

4/4/12

This morning we got ready for presentations. Alex and I were to collect the Photoshop pictures and come up with something to say. The Photoshop pictures were not the “real world cartoons” but the first practice ones that we made our first day. We made a Google doc and types down what we were going to say. We were only suppose to talk for five minutes which was good because we didn’t have much to say about each picture. The presentation was also sent to us so we put some pictures on that. We also printed some pictures. The first people to present was the— visual hacktivism –group. It was hard to understand the logistics of it especially since I never worked with code before but they all seemed to have worked on the projects a lot. All their projects were really thought out and brought out well.
After lunch our group presented. Alex mostly did the talking and gave the introduction. He used a lot of the presenting tips that Mr. Neil talked about yesterday and he did a nice job. One by one we talked about our story we made with the real life pictures and what our experiences were. It was quick and easier than the other presentations. Today seemed like a short day and it was fun hearing about the other groups’ project.

Link to website:

http://www.shakeinto.appspot.com/

5/3/12 – Barney Frank

5/3/12
This morning we were getting ready for Barney Frank’s arrival. Everyone who thought of questions were printing them out for Saeed to check. My questions were:

1) Constituents: From all the letters that you have received over the years, have you ever taken an interest in one particular question or topic?
2) Casinos: In some towns casinos are being built, do you think that they would benefit the town or corrupt it?
3) Constitution: When our founding fathers were creating the constitution they did not realize how big our country was going to get. Do you think America has outgrown its own constitution?

Saeed liked the third question the most so he told me that was the one I was going to have to ask Barney Frank. He also made an order for people to ask their questions and I was the third person. After we gave the questions to Saeed Quin, Steve, and I went back to work on the short film that we made yesterday. I sent the last clips of the video yesterday but the only problem was that it was hard to hear what people were saying. Steve wanted to do a voice over everything but we soon found out that that was not going to work. It was hard to match the voice with the video exactly so we ended up re-filming the first few clips. We did it quickly and the video was much better than the first one.
We finished before Barney Frank came in. I was expecting him to come in and have something to say about his experiences and maybe tell us a short story about his life but instead he came in, sat down, and wanted to hear us talk. To paraphrase what Barney Frank said in answer to my question, “The founding fathers wrote the constitution vague enough so people could be able to interpret it in different ways. If they had made it more specific then it would have been harder to stay under the constitution without changing it.” He had very long answers for each person’s question and I liked his answer to mine.
Tomorrow we are presenting what we have been doing. I don’t know how exactly how we are going to present it since usually we just work individually on a project but it should be interesting. Steve said that he was just editing the clips and that he did not need any help so I was somewhat free for the afternoon.

5/2/12 – Filming

5/2/12
This morning Raghava went hardcore on us and set to us straight what we needed to get done. I only really needed to get done a rectangle for the shape project even though I thought I did that. We worked on what we needed to finish first then we split up into different groups then yesterday. We were creating a new storyline for the format that Raghava made. I was with Quin and Steve. We were to come up with a game that people could interact with on an iPad. We all had the same idea to have the user create the story themselves. The user would choose if the story should change or if it should keep going. Quin came up with a movie idea that we could create different skits and have the reader shake the iPad whenever they wanted the story to change. We storyboarded it and decided to make the story about Steve and have him go through a day and have to make different choices. The user of the iPad can control the choices he makes. The first scene is Steve waking up and having the choice of either waking up to the sound of his alarm or pressing snooze and sleeps in. If he presses snooze then he is late for school but if he wakes up then he has the choice of either riding his bike to school or taking a car. If he takes the bike he will be healthier but if he drives he will be thought of as lazy. The next scene is at school when Steve is taking a test and he has the choice to cheat or except the grade that he gets. If he cheats then he gets caught but if he goes through with his test then he gets a good grade after all. The next scene he witnesses bullying and he has the choice of walking away or helping. If he walks away he gets beat-up himself but if he intervenes then the person stops bullying the other kid. The next scene Steve has the choice of either going to MacDonalds or going to Veggie Galaxy. The scene after that is after that Quin (who is the bad influence) offers Steve a cigarette. Steve has the choice to either accept it or walk away.The story goes on like this and at the end we see two versions of Steve. The Steve that made all the bad choices is a homeless man that has coughing fits and still smokes. The Steve that made all the good choices is married and is rich.
Mr. Neal came in and presented.. well on presenting. He gave us some good pointers about presenting that I will use this Friday.

5/1/12 – New Project Using Perspectives

5/1/12
This morning we worked on finishing up the shapes book, collecting the rest of the political cartoons, and making the last touches on the Photoshop pictures. After about an hour of this Raghava brought in his friend. I do forget her name but she has spoken in TED talks before, she was named one of the most influential Asian women in the world, and she helped TED talks to become what they are today. She was interesting and she talked about her website called INK (http://www.inktalks.com/) and how she wanted India’s edjucation to be like NuVu’s. She wanted the children of India to be brought up with a different environment of learning. She was a good speaker and she seemed like a very interesting person.
Nolan and I had already finished most of the Photoshop pictures, Nolan just had to do the last one. Which he finished quickly of course. I was checking up on all the pictures that I made to make sure everything was alright. I also needed to categorize the last of my comics. In Photoshop I made the shapes more apparent and then I put them in the dropbox. So I think I am all set with everything so far. We worked on a new project for a little bit too. We split up into groups to create a new perspective story. I was in the drawing team. By the end of the day we were all tired so we tried to concentrate on our work but it was somewhat hard. We did manage to come up with the idea of making a book on the different perspectives of Columbus’ voyage to America. We had the glorified version and the perspective of the Indians. I drew two pictures and the group came up with different ideas on how we would proceed with the rest of the project. Tomorrow we are going to be doing mostly this and Raghava said that he will be bringing in another friend.

4/30/12 – Shapes

4/30/12
The first thing we did this morning was yoga. We did a lot of the same exercises that we have been doing for the past few weeks but we focused more on self awareness today. We meditated for about eight minutes all together. I have to admit though, by the last three minutes I was half asleep. After yoga we read an article that talked about two different ways to pronounce someone dead; brain dead or heart dead. Then it all leaded to when do you know when organs can be donated, how much care should the donor have to keep their organs healthy, and what is the cost of both brain dead and heart dead patients to keep them “alive”. It was a very interesting and also a disturbing article. After we read it we wrote down our opinion and how our opinion could could be affected. My opinion is that if there is nothing that could be done to save a heart dead or brain dead patient then they should be pronounced dead. Unless if the patient formally already declared that if he was pronounced brain dead that the doctors would have to stop everything that they are doing to revive them (A DNR). What could have affected my opinion would be the fact that my whole family is in the medical field. My mom is an anesthesiologist, my dad is an emergency doctor, my grandmother on my maternal side was a nurse, and my grandfather on my paternal side was a dentist. My grandfather never pronounced someone dead but you see my point. After we discussed our own opinions we discussed the opinions of others such as people in the medical field, the donor, the receiver of organs from the donor, and the business that ‘give’ the organs. I had to write the opinion of an anesthesiologist, which was pretty easy considering my mom is one. I tried calling her but sadly she did not answer but I wrote opinions that I already knew from her and I also did some research.
After that Raghava showed us the format of the iPad app that we are creating, with all our stories, is going to look like. He had us make another short book using the same format. The book was going to be teaching children different shapes such as a square, a rectangle, a circle, and an octagon. We went out to take some pictures of shapes from the outside world. For a square I got part of the sidewalk, for a circle: a bike wheel, for a rectangle: a poster, and for an octagon: a stop sign. After we were done taking our photos we went back and quickly Photoshopped some of the photos so that the shapes would be more clear.
After lunch we went onto this website that had political cartoons. The website is: http://www.cagle.com/. We had to choose a theme for our cartoons and I chose China. I had to find cartoons with the theme of China in them that were either “pro liberalism” or “pro conservatism.” Which was kind of difficult. Here are some of my favorite comics with a China theme that I found:

4/26/12 – Mt. Auburn Cemetery

4/26/12
This morning we worked on our projects for an hour as we waited for Raghava’s friend to come. His friend happened to be John (The person with the British accent that came in to talk about journalism.) He came in today to talk about different ways that the dead could be buried. He is very interesting and very smart as well. After he talked and showed us a presentation of what we were going to see and what to look out for we went out. We had to get into four taxi cabs for the whole group to fit in. I was with John, Jilly, and Molly. It was funny because John started to speak in French with the taxi driver and we were all impressed. We got to Mt. Auburn and walked around looking at all the different types of headstones. It was a beautiful cemetery, the trees were all in blossom. We walked up this tower that was above tree line and taller than anything around us and the view was great! A 360 degree view of the cemetery and Boston. We walked around for about two and a half hours and by then everyone was getting hungry and bored. We took the bus part way back then everyone except Maddy and I went to get burgers. John left so Saba and Raghava took us back to Central Square on the T. Maddy and I had to go back because we had left our lunches back at NuVu. We got back around 2:00 and were starving. After everyone showed up we went back to working on our projects.

4/26/12 – Loki

4/26/12
This morning we practiced cartooning which was really fun. We practiced drawing this character called Loki that Raghava (our studio teacher) made up in highschool. We practiced making him with different emotions such as happy, angry, sad, and in love.
Here is my doodle of him:

We also learned how to make expressive blurbs, such as a thought bubble or a special bubble when a person is singing or talking in a special way. It was interesting and I learned some new techniques on cartooning.
After that we went back to the Photoshop project which took the rest of the day. We got a lot done but we still need to do a lot more. Raghava was thinking of deleting some photos but he ended up not deleting any but extending the time till next Monday. I’m glad because Nolan and I really do need all the extra time we can get.

4/25/12 – Almost The Same

4/25/12
This morning we did yoga, as usual, but today he wanted us to make up our own stretches. He had us make up five different stretches and create a sequence with them so we could do the stretch as one motion. He wanted us to stretch our back, our chest, and our sides. He also wanted us to practice on making certain parts of the body stronger such as legs, arms, and even our butts. I liked this session better than I did the others because we could lean more towards what really would benefit us.
After yoga we worked more on the Photoshop project. It took me so long last night to do just one. So my friend, who is really good at Photoshop had to help me with the second picture. He did a really good job even though he did not know what the project was. (Just mentioning that because he deserves the credit).
Nolan is also really good with Photoshop so he showed me a couple of tricks. We did the Photoshop pictures for the rest of the day. Here are some of the drafts of our pictures:

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4/24/12 – Practicing Photoshop

4/24/12
This morning we watched another Ted talk. The speaker was the woman who wrote “Eat, Pray, Love” and her lecture was about creativity. She was talking about how all genres of artists have this pressure that is put on them. Sometimes artists feel like they are not going to get any better and that the best of their careers are behind them. She was saying that in ancient Greece and Rome they thought that creativity did not come from the person themselves but from another source as well, what they called a “genius”. If you messed up and your idea was not perfect it was not totally your fault, it was also your genius’ fault. She was very interesting and it was an interesting concept.
After the talk we practiced more on PhotoShop. I had to redownload it so that was nice and annoying. We practiced making faces. Here is the face that I drew:

Then we practiced monsters, here is mine:

It’s eating a tomato by the way, so the red liquid on his face isn’t blood it’s tomato juice.
After we practiced with that we went out and took some more photos, I thought I already had enough so I only took a couple more. I brought by Nikon D3000 camera in today so I am glad I got to use it. After we loaded the pictures into DropBox and Photoshop we turned them into black and white and drew little cartoons in them. I was almost done with mine but I just noticed now that when I closed my computer last it deleted it. We also made cartoons (on paper not on Photoshop) which came out kinda funny.
We split into groups at the end of the day to make a cartoon with our photos and our cartoons (on Photoshop). Nolan and I were grouped together so we worked on our projects for a little bit till it was time to go. We are going to work on this project most of the day tomorrow.

4/23/12 – 3rd Studio

4/23/12
We started a new studio today and I am liking it so far because I have not been able to take any art classes this year so I’m glad that this studio is more art based. The teacher told us a little about his life and why he picked the choices he made. He was very interesting and his life and his art seem very complicated. He showed us this website called “Harmony” (Not the dating website, don’t worry) but a website where you can make doodles using your mouse. We played around with that then he had us download DropBox and make our own files in it. We practiced using that for a little bit and put out sketches that we made into our folders. We watched a movie on perspective and how technology changes the way we see art. Even though the movie was written around the 1930s it was still surprisingly related to us now. After lunch we played with this website where you could make a fake facebook page. We then had to relate it to the presidential elections and to same sex marriage. Maddy and I were in a group so we made a small, not so funny, one. Then after we all worked alone. I could not fully finnish mine or think of what to add to it…so I’m not going to show you because I’m embarrassed.
Our homework for tonight was to take some photos of places that represent us or comfort us (but we could not have people in the pictures). I’m excited because I finally get to use my new Nikon camera.