Time is flying by! 30% of the framed structure and suggested timeline of this ds106 course is now history for me. 5 weeks wow!

Unit 5 focused on Design. The topic that resonated with many who are on the path and has generated some awesome creations.

12 Stars total was the goal for the unit – plus 3 daily creates. My daily creates for this week were non #ds106 creating home decor and paint choices as my daughter is closing on a new home at the end of the month. Photoshop came in handy for inserting her belongings and trying out new colors, fabrics and textures. So another perk of an open course participant – altering the daily creates. I ended up doing a few, but late. Better next week is the plan.

Here are the assignments I created in Unit 5:
Design Assignment 313

Animating a movie poster.  4.5 Stars.
This was creating an animated GIF. In an early unit I created a few animated GIFs. This time I made it more complex and pushed in using features in photo shop that I had never even opened before. I struggled in deciding if I would use GIMP or PS. I settled on PS mostly because I have the software and wanted to make use of it. This poster came up in a search as NOIR, but it is a recent film. For the purposes of this assignment it had elements that made sense to me for animating. Still pushing me to try more, but not so complex that I would suffer learning thru complete failure. this took some time and went through a few iterations before coming to the product above. I don’t think I would have been able to tweak and improve on it without community feedback. No one gave me a specific answer- which is great, but the back and forth conversations, tweets, and idea sharing helped me see things I missed or had not considered as well as prompted me to go beyond input provided as well. I am pretty proud of the last iteration. The hard part is to not keep just making gifs! You get hooked.

I ran into a few issues with getting the gif to run in wordpress- but the community quickly answered and redirected. AWESOME!

Minimalist Movie Poster – Character Inspired 3.5 Stars

Queen Tillie and The Rabbi

I am finding wisdom in the themed aspect of the cohorts. The headless course is well structured and provides a great learning experience. The theme aspect, this time period cohort studying Noir Film within a ds106 framework has participants carrying a character they developed throughout some of the assignments. I did not hook up with #noir106 until after they had completed the writing unit and did not create a character. It really became clear how useful a character would be to tackle assignments. Keeping assignments interesting, but also allowing focus on the real skills and not trying to think of context or content from scratch each time.

I decided to develop a character. I am using my Dad. My future #ds106 #4life will be creating stories out of family content of photos, video, artifacts. So I decided I would start with him in this learning process. I will take liberty and embellish the truth at times, but he will be my character.

Jerry as my subject – I created a poster of a book that could be a movie written by the class president and class thug remembering the glory years of growing up and high school on the Eastside of Milwaukee. My Dad was on the football team. The poster came together in thought and design quickly with using my context and content. I think that was easier than trying to think of something new for a movie that already existed.

Learning By Design – Using Design and Visual images to understand content. 3.5 stars as listed – I bumped my version up to 5 stars!

Sketchy Dr. Groom on Assignment

This assignment was a blast! Time consuming, sometimes frustrating, but definitely got the problem solving and creative juices flowing. I wanted to do sketch noting and a RSA on a budget type of creation. I went through some prep in reading, looking into different ways to create and experimented with a few things. That took about a half day overall if added up. I again used Photo shop to use more features available. I also went back to Audacity to continue with more sound editing and features so that I could include in this creation. Using the Groom is missing theme provided some light-hearted and fun content for use as well. I think with the addition of audacity and creating the animation video it is worth the extra boost in stars.

Some of my favorites from others this week:

Most of my favorites from this week came from being able to see them on the Twitter feed. The visuals, the 140 characters or less, the ability to keep a column of the hashtags makes it so efficient to pop around and see great work. I went back to the blog post roll in the Noir106 site. While it is helpful it seems much more tedious and less interesting to find and view work that others have created and posted. Many more clicks, waiting for things to load etc. Besides a title there really isn’t much to draw one in to explore like there is on Twitter.

My plea to other ds106/noir106 participants.

SHOUT OUT YOUR WORK WHEN YOU POST VIA TWITTER AND USE THE HASHTAGS!

You will be amazed how it will connect and help your work when others can engage easily and provide critical friend feedback and support. Don’t be shy! SHOUT OUT!

Groom on Assignment and challenges from Burtis and Bond to use assignments with Groom as a subject seemed to pull the community together around a common topic and showing off their design skills. It was great to begin to see new avatars on the Twitter feed. I am also looking forward to Monday and taking some time to look thru the website feed to see which design assignments others chose and what their creations turned out to be.

This photo shop hack by J. Law was classic! Great job Groom does look a little schizoid here doesn’t he?

Brian Christensen used the Godfather as his Groom poster spoof. I loved these movies when they came out and actually read the books! – maybe that is why I was attracted to this creation.

THE GROOMFATHER @jimgroom #ds106 #noir106 pic.twitter.com/5sVvIDYaMV

— Gambino De Luca (@bchristi_1361) February 12, 2015

Check out his soundcloud sitcom song by Brian Goulet – Brilliant!

Mia Boleis has a very sophisticated and elegant poster going on.

50 Shades of Groom, coming THIS MONTH. get your tix ASAP. #ds106 #noir106 @jimgroom pic.twitter.com/W2SxBYHug9

— No Stain No Problem (@NOstainNOprob) February 14, 2015

Some terrific work by Landon Epperly http://landonepp.com. I think he will be showing us a thing or two of greatness over the next few weeks. Take a look at his work so far.

And I love the wit, humor and intelligence of Emily Bostaph! I am a fan!

Too many others to mention here – but I will stop by your posts if I see them in Twitter. Keep sharing!

My DAILY CREATES: 

Creative Hands

Super Power tc 1130: Home Design

Play with Your Food: tdc1134

Also did a quick animated gif in honor of @mdvfunes birthday Feb. 15.

It has been a jammed week with design but fun! Closing this week off by dinner on Sunday and relaxing for the evening – at least that is the plan!. Glad to see more participation in the social networks from others and hoping it increases.

What will week 6 bring?