ENG 344 FINAL PROJECT!

Here is the link to the blog I made for the final project.

BMBros. - GO GREEN GROW TREES

GROUP PROJECT RESPONSE

Not only did I like the DISTRICT NOISE website but I connected with it since I am a musician and music fanatic. I go to as many concerts as I can fit into my schedule so I especially liked the links to local venues around the D.C. area. The links navigate you to the venue's website that further gives information on the club including upcoming shows, ticket prices, locations etc. 

The group also included reviews on their website of new and upcoming music. I read many blogs and reviews online about new music so i found that the group's reviews on their page was informational.

Another key part of the DISTRICT NOISE website was the music player. The music player allowed me to listen and stream new and upcoming songs, and artists. I thought that it was a very creative way to allow people to navigate and listen to different songs by different musicians all in a little music player, as opposed to surfing the web for the artists/songs.

I thoroughly enjoyed this project, its a shame the group made the blog for only the project...if the group kept up with the website and updated the blog, I would definitely visit it daily.

GROUP PROJECT LINKS!

Here are the two links to the two characters I made on Myspace.com for the Group Project.

Daniel McDonald

Carter Collins

Click on their friends to see the profiles of the other characters made for the Group Project

REMIX Projects - Response

After viewing everyone's REMIX Projects, there was one in particular that I connected with.  Tierney's "Emo-Animals" REMIX included images of animals in the wild in a rather lonesome, depressed state. The photos had captions explaining  the angst, and sadness that the animals were experiencing.  The captions added humor to the sappy wildlife images.

I felt that I connected with Tierney's REMIX because...sadly....yes, its true, at one point in time I could have been considered emo.  Back in my younger, more immature days, hah, I was in a screamo/rock band with my friends back in Maryland. I was big into the emo music scene, so why not dress the part? I was more about the who "look" thing, not the whole emotional part.

 Here's a good example of the "emo-look". Hanging out at JAXX Nightclub with J. Rabbit a few years back. No eye make up yet, but don't worry, I am sure if you could see my hands, you would notice splotches of black nail polish on my fingers.

As you can see with the array of facial piercings, use of make up and the color black, not to the mention to ever trendy "emo-swoop" hair style.

Digital Manipulation Exercise

Original Image

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Manipulated Image

The first image I acquired from my old band's myspace page.  I created a few years ago for the band I was in at the time, About Silence (I'm writing a future entry on the band). A few of my friends and I started the band as a side-project from our main project. We all have a pretty eclectic taste when it comes to music. We listen to just about anything and everything, so we started a screamo/hard rock band, playing a few shows and parties here and there. I designed this image for fun. At the time, I had my Wu Tang Clan discography in heavy rotation and was influenced by their name and various Asian/Karate themed sounds that they would include in their songs throughout the album. I created it using Adobe Photoshop.

To create the second image I mainly played with the colors, layout of the design, and saturation. I also repeated the design  while resizing and adjusting the angle of the image on the page.  The color associated with About Silence was an orangish yellow because we used a yellow smiley face to represent the band (loooong story), so I chose purple as a secondary color in the piece to compliment the yellow.

  

Project Remix Statement

BE SURE TO VIEW THE IMAGES IN THE PREVIOUS BLOG BEFORE YOU CONTINUE READING!

The piece of existing work that I chose to Remix was a wallpaper I had made in my free time in the fall of 2005. At the time, one of my favorite bands was a screamo/power-pop band from North Carolina called the Secret Lives of the Freemasons. The text in the background are lyrics off their first full length album, This Was Built To Make You Dance. I created the wallpaper using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

During the fall of 2005 and spring of 2006 I was spending a good amount of my free time in Mt. Vernon with my close friends. One night, like most other nights, we were having a few drinks and having a casual conversation. My friend was sitting at the table with her sister and I happened to have a camera handy and took a candid photo of her smiling, resting her chin on the palm of her hand.

I began making the wallpaper on a lame night in Potomac Heights on campus. I was reorganizing my computer's hard drive and stumbled upon the collection of pictures that were taken that one night in Mt. Vernon.  As I was looking through the photos I happened to be listening to the Secret Lives of the Freemasons, which began my inspiration to design a desktop wallpaper using lyrics from their song, It Only Took A Whisper.

I designed the wallpaper by distorting , cropping and de-saturating the photo and playing with the contrast and brightness. The color choice came from the colors used in the albums insert.

When I was thinking of ideas how to Remix my wallpaper, I thought that it would be interesting to change the emotion of the original wallpaper by taking aspects away from it and adding new ones to portray a different mood, ultimately creating a different wallpaper.

The text used in the Remix Project is from another song from the same album entitled, Less 'Tude, More Dude. Since the emotion of the lyrics from the original wallpaper was presented in a playful, and flirtatious manner. I wanted to Remix the wallpaper by portraying completely different emotions. For example, the lyrics from the Remix are expressed in a bitter and disgusted way by grey-scaling the original piece to show that they were past emotions and that they were old, washed out feelings. I also used different colors as well as a different font to show the change from a particular emotion to another.

I enjoyed this project because I was able to rediscover my own art as well as Remix it by expressing varying emotions from the original work. I was able to accomplish this with the use of color, font, contrast, saturation and layout of the text.

Project Remix Images

Here are my Remix Project images. My written statement will be posted soon...

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Secret Lives of the Freemasons Wallpaper (Fall 2005)

created using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator

lyrics & photo

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Remixed Wallpaper (Spring 2008)

created using Adobe Illustrator

lyrics