Week Three – DS106 Says Design

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 7 Comments Tags: ,

We’re into the third week of ds106 and sadly our poor Prof. Oliver Lindenbrook seems a bit out of sorts. So I’ve brought my friend Chris Stein to talk about design, as well as discuss some of our favorite ds106 visual and design assignments.

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So for the next week I’d like you to do two of the assignments we talked about. The Four Icon Challenge and Messing With the MacGuffin. Here’s a tutorial for Messing with the MacGuffin using GIMP and MPEG Streamclip. Also pick a third assignment from either the visual assignments or the design assignments.

Very, very important that you tag your assignments properly. So for example, the Messing with the MacGuffin assignment needs to be tag with both:

  • DesignAssignments
  • DesignAssignments172
It will look like this in your dashboard for the post:

Below are all the links from the Google doc we shared in the webcast.

DS106 Design Assignments4 Icon Challenge
The Assignment
http://ds106.us/2011/01/25/the-four-icon-challenge/

The Inspiration
Kyle Tezak
http://kyletezak.com/portfolio/the-four-icon-challenge/

DS106 Examples
Megan Mc

Ben Rimes

Jim Groom

Tim Owens

Galago

Resources
http://thenounproject.com/

The Exquisite Corpse
The Inspiration
“poetry must be made by all and not by one.”
http://www.exquisitecorpse.com/definition/About.html

The Assignment
http://ds106.us/2011/06/29/exquisite-corpse/
DS106 Examples

Cheryl Colan
http://hummingcrow.com/2011/06/28/my-exquisite-corpse/

Leelzebub
http://blog.leelzebub.com/2011/07/05/my-exquisite-corpse-girl-with-a-pineapple-heart/

Exquisite Corpse Interactive
http://newexquisitecorpse.net/
http://foldingstory.com/

Messing with the MacGuffin

DS 106 Examples

Jim Groom
http://bavatuesdays.com/alternative-movie-history-not-ganas-but/

Minimalist Travel Posters based on Movies

The Assignment
http://ds106.us/2011/02/08/minimlist-travel-posters-based-in-movies/

DS 106 Examples
http://cogdogblog.com/2011/07/03/fly-with-roy/
http://andrewsthoughtsandstuff.com/?p=48
http://www.liddellsystems.com/blog/?p=132
http://bring.theruckus.info/archives/127

The Inspiration
http://screenrant.com/sr-pick-minimalist-star-wars-travel-posters-robf-44551/

Other Travel Poster Examples
http://screenrant.com/quentin-tarantino-minimalist-movie-posters-ibraheem-youssef-robf-43364/
http://ibraheemyoussef.com/

Other Related Links

Picasso’s Bulls
http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/nbisaria/archives/001985.html

Book Cover for Brazilian edition of Journey to the Center of the Earth
http://veerle.duoh.com/inspiration/detail/journey_to_the_center_of_the_earth

Lost World’s Fairs
This is a site commissioned by Microsoft to show that IE9 could handle web fonts (web fonts are downloadable fonts that allow people who don’t have the font you want to use to download and display the font in a web page).
http://lostworldsfairs.com/

Design with a capital D
Film about the design of objects
http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/objectified-trailer/

“Design Thinking”
http://designthinking.ideo.com/

Of course once something is named it becomes commoditized. Here is someone making that point while also selling a newly packaged version of the same thing
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663558/design-thinking-is-a-failed-experiment-so-whats-next

D school instead of B school
http://dschool.stanford.edu/

Any Threes?

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

This seemed to be the best way I could find to comment on Alan Levine’s Animated MacGuffin which is now a “MacGIFfin”. And if you know this scene in The Sting, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) set’s up Harry Gondorf (Paul Newman) with a hand of four threes, which he is to beat with his setup hand of four nines. But Gondorf is the better cheat, substituting four Jacks. Go fish Lonnegan!

Messing with the MacGuffin

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 2 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

Earlier today, Tom Woodward tweeted the ds106 community a link to a blog post entitled, “8 Lines That Would Have Ended Star Wars Real Fast.” The post is a fabulous riff on script writing, imagining how a movie might turn out if the characters acted differently at a particular moment. And what makes the post so satisfying is the screen-cap from the film matched with the divergent dialogue.

Of course re-envisioning a movie’s plot steering moments makes perfect ds106 grist for the assignment mill. So I posted the assignment on behalf of Tom and entitled it, “Messing With the MacGuffin.” Alfred Hitcock popularized the term, to describe the moment in a story that get’s the “hero up the tree.” Without the macguffin the audience doesn’t get to see the tree shaken again and again and follow the hero’s response.

So for this assignment, stop the hero and let her know, “Hey you might not want to climb that tree. It looks really dangerous.”

Todd Conaway deserves credit for jumping aboard and submitting the first assignment with, “I’m Just Not Ready For This.” And though I’m going to put this into the syllabus next week as a must do (tutorial to come), I couldn’t wait either.

Dr. Oliver Takes a Tumble

By mbransons in Digital Identity, Digital Storytelling 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

My colleague Dr. Oliver Lindenbrook has asked that I send you this update regarding his quest to reach the Center of the Internet. He’s had a spotty start to his journey to the center of the internet, taking a bit of a tumble at the end of yesterday’s broadcast. He’s actually in the hospital right now having some tests done, I’ll keep you updated. Look a weekly broadcast started between 4-5PM every Wednesday. The twitter #ds106 stream will give an exact time that day.

Two weeks ago, digital storyteller/adventurer, Dr. Oliver Lindenbrook received a cryptic message from one Dr. Oblivion. The message had come from a far away place, deep within the Internet, and Dr. Oliver realized that Obilivion must have successfully journeyed to the center of the internet!

Recently Oblivion spent his summer teaching the digital storytelling course ds106 with Jim Groom as his TA. I had heard that it was quite an experience and left the poor Oblivion shaken. No one has heard from Oblivion since Jim Groom last spoke to him.

Dr. Oliver felt it was a good idea to contact Jim Groom, hoping he might shed some light on Oblivion’s message.

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Sure enough Groom understood that Oblivion had made it to the center of the internet, but also he revealed something new – that ds106 was the portal in. My good friend Dr. Oliver was quite excited to learn this and hope to start off right away.

But something went wrong. By the end of the broadcast Dr. Oliver was ranting about having been left alone for weeks now and it was all Jim Groom’s fault? I’m still unclear what that all means.

Yesterday marked the start of Dr. Oliver’s journey to the center of the internet and he’d brought along his assistant, Iddan Brown, to talk about all the supplies they’d brought for their journey.

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It’s remarkable to me how little Dr. Oliver seems to understand about digital storytelling as he’d brought a bunch of camping equipment – a knife, tin cooking pans, a flashlight. Thankfully Iddan was able to step in and talk about widgets and a number of plugins (Twitter Tools, Subscribe to Comments, Google Analyticator, Akismet, and Flickr Feed Gallery) to help with your journey. Students should start experimenting with aggregating their various digital services into their sites.

Lastly, Dr. Oliver went on another rant about Jim Groom towards the end of the broadcast. I’m still trying to make a connection to what it’s all about.

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