Reflection

Early in my educational career I considered myself a very creative person and I took art classes to really bring that out. As I got deeper into my education I found that creativity isn’t really a pet peeve. Furthermore, computer science has really “dulled my sword”. I really enjoyed taking this course because it rekindled that creative fire in me with my book, that I absolutely loved to do, my 3D drawing, and my short film documentary on welfare, which really brought out my perspective. I really hope the video editing skills that I developed return soon and hopefully my field brings some of that creativeness out once again.

Spotify Playlist and Tuesday Guest

I really enjoyed the Spotify playlist on Thursday and I realized that my peers have similar music taste to me. Although I didn’t add more songs, my peers kind of filled that gap with artists such as Kendrick Lamar and Solange, whom are really vibey. As far as the lecture Tuesday, I really enjoyed how enthusiastic he was on the topic, because coding in that way (with the boxes) looks super complicated and dreadful, from a CS major perspective. It did peek my interest though, because it seems problem-solving-esque. I also tried to understand some of the code when playing the chords at the very end and that grabbed my attention.

Music

Although I am mostly a hip hop/rap fan I am a pianist. I have played for around 12 years and stopped as soon as I got to college. A typical rap fan likes Drake or Future, but I like artists that have driven beats and I can really hear the influence in the background. I also like to listen to the actual meaning of the piece. I feel that my influence from being a classical pianist has affected my taste in music and has looked for different things. That being said, I prefer artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Benny the Butcher, and OutKast.

Short Video: Welfare YouTube Link

This is my project on welfare and how it effects everyone. Next time I would probably use a more professional video editing software instead of Windows 10 Video Editor. Adding text in a timely fashion where I wanted it was next to impossible and transitions don’t exist. Regardless, I think it turned out exactly how I wanted, except for the drawbacks stated.

https://youtu.be/lejM-m-jcjk

Spring

Personally, I have always hated spring because of the pollen and the allergies that I had in the past, fortunately I had baseball and finishing up classes to lean on as my positive vibe. Although it is my least favorite season, it has gotten drastically higher on my list, because I found out that my allergies were simply a sinus infection that I had for a long time and I have started to appreciate the rain a lot. It has been able to calm me down and provide a peaceful evening when I want to watch a movie or my favorite show. Not only that, but it helps me sleep and it makes everything greener and more colorful outside.

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography Short Video

This is my annotated bibliography for my short video. I hoped to look at very knowledgeable sources, so I used the JSTOR database for all of my sources that weren’t my interview. I mostly went for general education about welfare and how it works. I also took a look at some of the programs that are categorized under welfare.

Short Video

For this video I attempted to make a first person perspective with some of the transitions being “blinks”, just to simply represent looking out at the road from my deck. I also added some cheesy transitions, just to represent something of all of the different cars going by but all condensed into a minute. This is also my first time video editing and so I wanted to get better a trimming and making transitions look smooth between car changes.

The file size was a little to big so I sent a link to it below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nZRakUWcpujm0ZaV_zWfOHt8IfRO2jz8/view?usp=drivesdk

Book Project

I originally got my design from my previous 2D and 3D pictures. The concept was boxes going back into the page, so I cut out smaller and smaller rectangular boxes out of my book and found that it was really sloppy, so I used some sandpaper to clean the edges up.

Then I thought that just doing this to my book probably wasn’t enough and I took advice from prof. to throw tissue paper in between the pages, so that when you hold it to the light it shines through. At the start I thought it was a cool concept, but I found out it looked pretty bleak when it wasn’t held up the sun.

I ripped out the tissue paper and decided to do something a bit different. Similarly to my peers collage concepts, I used my paper cover of my hardback to accentuate the squares proceeding into the page. I cut them so that they would fit within half of each page showing, just to create a contrasting view and to give a little vibrancy to the book design. Not only that, but I decided to change the binding portion of the hardback cover (last picture) to add a little bit more.

My Favorite Film: Dr. Strange

I really love this film, for the same reason that I love movies like an Inception. Although it doesn’t give that brain-teaser-esque, it fills that void with the hero. The tragic downfall from the beginning makes you hate the character and then over time learn to appreciate his genius. Similar to Inception, it provides lots of CGI, for when done right, is great. Wonder Woman 1984 is CGI at its worst, making me hate that movie. He is also the strongest avenger, not because of brute strength (Thor or Hulk or Captain Marvel), but because of magic. It brought a different aspect to the cinematic universe that I absolutely loved.

How Crayons Are Made!

This week I watched a short video about how crayons were made. First they take a waxy substance called Petamime and melt it down. It is melted down at 63 degrees Celsius which is fairly easy for machinery to perform. Then a powder is added as a filler, just so that there is more material. Then similar to how you add sugar or whatever to a cake while mixing the batter, they add the dye in a powdery substance to the mixture to make your favorite colors!