I now have the bed of my proverbial dreams.
It is a full sized bed, and it should be noted, the first and only full sized bed I've ever owned.
I picked it up in Austin Texas, where it had been left by my older brother. Originally having been appointed only with a single four or five inch thick futon mattress bearing a single Japanese symbol, it resembled sleeping on the floor in every manner apart from being about 2 feet from the ground.
I have since added, for the benefit of my lovely wife, a box spring and mattress. These items I purchased nearly new in Ann Arbor, Michigan from a University of Michigan student who was relocating. I rented a truck from home depot, picked up the items and surprised said wife that night.
We currently live separately and I have had this full bed all for my lonesome. I have heretofore improved upon this bed piece by piece. I have kept the flannel snowflake sheets since they are generally less useful in New Mexico, where my better half sleeps. In addition to these sheets I have one of the pair of black and white zebra striped comforters originally purchased by my mother for my brother in 1988. Yes, 1988.
About three years ago, I longed for a more substantial covering unit and purchased a "red on one side, pink on the other" quilted pillowcase and blanket set from Target, discounted from 75 to 30 dollars. I love this blanket. The cats look great on it.
About one year ago, I was visiting a friend in Whitmore Lake when I noticed his dense, lush comforter. Overcome with envy, I resolved to make such fine bedding my own. It took nearly one more year before my plans saw fruition. I found myself once again, at my local Target sleuthing for heavily discounted luxury linens.
While the cashier may have remarked, "For ten bucks, who cares what it looks like!" I loved my new comforter as soon as I saw it. It was thick, it was fluffy, it was heavy. It had a mid century style print featuring various plant and flower-like forms running from the feet to the head. Upon a classic off-white background, such heavenly hues as pea green, tangerine orange and rich Indian maroon climbed from stem to blossom.
Almost every night I climb into my cloth cave, pull my covers up to my face, fold them back so I have only flannel sheet in my face, and disappear.
One day I hope to take a more active interest in my waking life. But for now my alarm goes off at 1PM sharp and I generally have to answer the question, "why" before I climb back out into Mid Winter Michigan.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Looking back at past readings, looking forward to the essay about the movie-making process
The process of creating is what stands out in these exercises. Figuring out which tools to use when and why is pretty interesting. Sometimes, during the writing process you feel a certain way about how you want to sound, but in re-reading it, it no longer sounds "right" and figuring out what to change is actually pretty rewarding. Using words is still a chore for me. For instance, editing video feels a lot more like fun, but that's also something I can learn at home. Learning to write and revise is something I wouldn't even know how to do on my own.
Making a video was the best kind of group assignment I've had. Everyone had really good ideas, which we pooled and organized collectively. Not only were the examples and media (dry erase, lincoln logs, balloons etc.) the product of ALL of our creativity, but the story boarding and assembling of the film itself was a collective effort. I think we did talk about some of the McCloud ideas with regards to transitions, but mostly we mimicked the format of 1950's educational films. We felt that we could get our ideas across in a simple yet entertaining manner within that format. McCloud could certainly say a few things about our narrative technique and visual simplicity, and I think he would agree that our goal was aided by these conventions.
Making a video was the best kind of group assignment I've had. Everyone had really good ideas, which we pooled and organized collectively. Not only were the examples and media (dry erase, lincoln logs, balloons etc.) the product of ALL of our creativity, but the story boarding and assembling of the film itself was a collective effort. I think we did talk about some of the McCloud ideas with regards to transitions, but mostly we mimicked the format of 1950's educational films. We felt that we could get our ideas across in a simple yet entertaining manner within that format. McCloud could certainly say a few things about our narrative technique and visual simplicity, and I think he would agree that our goal was aided by these conventions.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Blog 14: YouTube/Low-bridge videos
So far the collaborative movie making is going great. We all have good ideas and miraculously, we've been able to film a few of them. I decided not to mess with editing it at home, since I use a PC and we'll be using iMovie in class, but I did do some background music searching.
Well, the video process is all about sharpening your abstract ideas and turning them into something which can be effectively communicated visually. So far, we've been able to do that. This is probably because what we're talking about in our film is pretty straightforward.
Using "low bridge" technologies is certainly best for our project, since our main intent isn't to dazzle any viewer with our production value but to translate our ideas as clearly and entertainingly as possible.
I find the process of film making to be very much like writing in that you have to cater your point to the medium and audience of each outlet. The tough parts are the same.
1. Your thoughts and ideas must make sense.
2. You need to balance developing and supporting your ideas with embellishing the format.
3. We, as classmates need to work together either in peer review (which is a kind of collaboration) or as direct collaborators in film.
Both are laborious and rewarding to varying degrees, and always challenging if you're doing it right.
Well, the video process is all about sharpening your abstract ideas and turning them into something which can be effectively communicated visually. So far, we've been able to do that. This is probably because what we're talking about in our film is pretty straightforward.
Using "low bridge" technologies is certainly best for our project, since our main intent isn't to dazzle any viewer with our production value but to translate our ideas as clearly and entertainingly as possible.
I find the process of film making to be very much like writing in that you have to cater your point to the medium and audience of each outlet. The tough parts are the same.
1. Your thoughts and ideas must make sense.
2. You need to balance developing and supporting your ideas with embellishing the format.
3. We, as classmates need to work together either in peer review (which is a kind of collaboration) or as direct collaborators in film.
Both are laborious and rewarding to varying degrees, and always challenging if you're doing it right.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Peer Review #3
When we discussed our paper and peer review in class, the peer reviews I got the next day were very, very helpful. Since I specifically said in class that I felt like I ran out of things to say, my peer reviewers came up with tons of excellent suggestions about bits from our readings I could reference and portions of my paper which could easily be expanded upon. I think the discussion before or during peer review this the most productive peer reviewing session of the three.
Monday, November 3, 2008
McCloud pt.2
Even though many students have already blogged about McCloud's "The Right Number", I thougt it had enough in it to warrant some more notes.
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics2/trn/
McCloud uses both "narration" and "speech" bubbles in this comic, as well as an interesting amalgam of the two. He also places text within the frames, but with no bubble at all, perhaps to emphasize the artwork and the importance of the moment, bringing the narration out of its hiding place, but freeing up more room fr the illustration as well. This technique first occurs on panel twenty.
The most interesting or at least unconventional use of bubbles occurs on panel thirty one, when the narrator is relating something Jodie actually said. Since he is narrating it as well as drawing it as it happened, the dialog is both a closed bubble AND has a speech "wing" or "leg" denoting that the words also came from Jodie at the time this scene took place. Word up, Holmes.
In the opening panel, we have narration. This isn't someone's inner monologue in response to an event or during a conversation, but rather the voice of the narrator setting us up for his story, unattached to the Beginning on panel six, some actual dialogue bubbles appear. These are used to show speech which actually took place. Rather than writing, "Most nights would find me in the library, leaning on a desk and chatting up this nice girl Jodie, who worked there..", McCloud draws the scenario and writes the words, using both narration and speech bubbles. I know McCloud uses the term "balloons" not "bubbles", but this is my blog, and I think the term "balloons" is less accurate. Also am I selling "dialogue" wrong? spell checker says it should be, "dialog", but that looks wrong to me. Am I just being pretentious?
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics2/trn/
McCloud uses both "narration" and "speech" bubbles in this comic, as well as an interesting amalgam of the two. He also places text within the frames, but with no bubble at all, perhaps to emphasize the artwork and the importance of the moment, bringing the narration out of its hiding place, but freeing up more room fr the illustration as well. This technique first occurs on panel twenty.
The most interesting or at least unconventional use of bubbles occurs on panel thirty one, when the narrator is relating something Jodie actually said. Since he is narrating it as well as drawing it as it happened, the dialog is both a closed bubble AND has a speech "wing" or "leg" denoting that the words also came from Jodie at the time this scene took place. Word up, Holmes.
In the opening panel, we have narration. This isn't someone's inner monologue in response to an event or during a conversation, but rather the voice of the narrator setting us up for his story, unattached to the Beginning on panel six, some actual dialogue bubbles appear. These are used to show speech which actually took place. Rather than writing, "Most nights would find me in the library, leaning on a desk and chatting up this nice girl Jodie, who worked there..", McCloud draws the scenario and writes the words, using both narration and speech bubbles. I know McCloud uses the term "balloons" not "bubbles", but this is my blog, and I think the term "balloons" is less accurate. Also am I selling "dialogue" wrong? spell checker says it should be, "dialog", but that looks wrong to me. Am I just being pretentious?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
McCloud Comics Pt. 1
(Edited 11/03 to fix links, typos, and add an image. -RT)
I just read 14 pages of THIS.
It's called "2nd Shift" by J. Gray.
I really didn't think that there was anything interesting to write about with this comic, but I'm too tired to go back and start searching again. I chose this one because I thought it was going to be about some kind of aliens working at a copy shop. That sounded great to me. No aliens as of yet.
Luckily for me, I reached page 14. This page was the first one which interested me to any great degree. Oddly enough, it was the first page to encorporate a whole slew of neat comic writing techniques.
First off, we have narration on this page, not simply traditional dialogue. Most panels on this page have both dialogue and narration running simltaneously. McCloud talks about the "desperate device-ness" of the dialogue bubble (word balloon) and references some attempts to subvert it on page 134 of his Understanding Comics guide, and this comic uses an excellent creative solution here. In addition to the traditional dialogue bubble, the author uses a drawing of a torn-off page from a notebook with hand writing on it, rather than standard comic font text.
This is quite effective in communicating the tone of the words. The character we're watching perfrom the action is almost interpreted as a background to the narrator's notes. While the "handwritten" notes are on the bottom of each panel, they're interpreted as the foreground of the panel.
I also found this to be the most compositionally interesting page of the comic. If we look at the first panel, we see the figure on our left hand side in the foreground, is logically much taller than any of the other figures and her line of sight is fixed towards the bottom right hand side of the panel. since the figure on the right hand side is in the background, he is smaller and less "weighty" composition wise. Intelligently, the author has repeated the figures form in the line of customers to the right. This helps balance the frame.
The second panel is excellently symmetrical. Equally sized figures stand on either side with dialogue on the top center and narration on the bottom center. If feels like a nice, square box. This compositional style follows for the next three frames until the last frame, which mirrors the composition of the first frame where a line of weight implied from top left to bottom right. In the final frame, the artist actually draws a lightning bolt reinforcing the line.
The last frame is also an anomaly so far in the comic in that is isn't a drawing of two people having a conversation. There is a break in the linear narrative which signifies a momentous change on the horizon. We'll see how and if that comes to fruition.
This page also functions most effectively as a self-contained, active narrative.
The characters and background artwork is what McCloud would call, "Cartoony" which leaves more room for the reader to superimpose themselves or their impressions onto the characters, rather than focusing on the beauty of highly-stylized artwork.
Scott McCloud, in his book, Understanding Comics, discusses the different impacts of various drawing styles. He states that the more simplified, iconic and "cartoony" the character is, the better the reader is able to project his own image onto that character, whether that image is the reader themselves, or a person imagined by the reader. If the character is drawn more detailed and realistically, then there is less room for the reader to fill in the gaps with their imagination. Thank you for pointing out that I didn't explain that at all!
Also, here is a screen shot of page fourteen, the page I wrote about, just click on it for a larger view. Enjoy!
I just read 14 pages of THIS.
It's called "2nd Shift" by J. Gray.
I really didn't think that there was anything interesting to write about with this comic, but I'm too tired to go back and start searching again. I chose this one because I thought it was going to be about some kind of aliens working at a copy shop. That sounded great to me. No aliens as of yet.
Luckily for me, I reached page 14. This page was the first one which interested me to any great degree. Oddly enough, it was the first page to encorporate a whole slew of neat comic writing techniques.
First off, we have narration on this page, not simply traditional dialogue. Most panels on this page have both dialogue and narration running simltaneously. McCloud talks about the "desperate device-ness" of the dialogue bubble (word balloon) and references some attempts to subvert it on page 134 of his Understanding Comics guide, and this comic uses an excellent creative solution here. In addition to the traditional dialogue bubble, the author uses a drawing of a torn-off page from a notebook with hand writing on it, rather than standard comic font text.
This is quite effective in communicating the tone of the words. The character we're watching perfrom the action is almost interpreted as a background to the narrator's notes. While the "handwritten" notes are on the bottom of each panel, they're interpreted as the foreground of the panel.
I also found this to be the most compositionally interesting page of the comic. If we look at the first panel, we see the figure on our left hand side in the foreground, is logically much taller than any of the other figures and her line of sight is fixed towards the bottom right hand side of the panel. since the figure on the right hand side is in the background, he is smaller and less "weighty" composition wise. Intelligently, the author has repeated the figures form in the line of customers to the right. This helps balance the frame.
The second panel is excellently symmetrical. Equally sized figures stand on either side with dialogue on the top center and narration on the bottom center. If feels like a nice, square box. This compositional style follows for the next three frames until the last frame, which mirrors the composition of the first frame where a line of weight implied from top left to bottom right. In the final frame, the artist actually draws a lightning bolt reinforcing the line.
The last frame is also an anomaly so far in the comic in that is isn't a drawing of two people having a conversation. There is a break in the linear narrative which signifies a momentous change on the horizon. We'll see how and if that comes to fruition.
This page also functions most effectively as a self-contained, active narrative.
The characters and background artwork is what McCloud would call, "Cartoony" which leaves more room for the reader to superimpose themselves or their impressions onto the characters, rather than focusing on the beauty of highly-stylized artwork.
Scott McCloud, in his book, Understanding Comics, discusses the different impacts of various drawing styles. He states that the more simplified, iconic and "cartoony" the character is, the better the reader is able to project his own image onto that character, whether that image is the reader themselves, or a person imagined by the reader. If the character is drawn more detailed and realistically, then there is less room for the reader to fill in the gaps with their imagination. Thank you for pointing out that I didn't explain that at all!
Also, here is a screen shot of page fourteen, the page I wrote about, just click on it for a larger view. Enjoy!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Picturing Texts on the Web
This site is a little different from what a person might expect to run into or a few reasons.
1. It doesn't try to sell you anything, at least not overtly.
2. It uses virtually no text, making it available to people regardless of their language or literacy.
3. The visitor has to be a little creative and curious in order to get to all the content, rather than having the content be as obvious as possible. For example, doing the same thing repeatedly often yields different result, in direct contrast to the popular mantra that repeating the same act but expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
Much like the road sign or airport security poster, this site utilizes (fairly) universal iconography to entertain and stimulate the viewer.
Can you get the Spaceship Tramway car to work? It can be done. And each step along the way is fun and surprising!
If you want to check out more of this stuff, here's the home page.
1. It doesn't try to sell you anything, at least not overtly.
2. It uses virtually no text, making it available to people regardless of their language or literacy.
3. The visitor has to be a little creative and curious in order to get to all the content, rather than having the content be as obvious as possible. For example, doing the same thing repeatedly often yields different result, in direct contrast to the popular mantra that repeating the same act but expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
Much like the road sign or airport security poster, this site utilizes (fairly) universal iconography to entertain and stimulate the viewer.
Can you get the Spaceship Tramway car to work? It can be done. And each step along the way is fun and surprising!
If you want to check out more of this stuff, here's the home page.
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